Kate Welsh - Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door - Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door

“Well, you obviously don’t need me around here as much as you’ve led me to believe all these years. And since I have six weeks’ vacation coming to me, you’ll see me then. If I decide to come back!”

Her grandfather stiffened, his bushy eyebrows drawn together, his gray eyes almost as sorrowful as she felt. “I did need you. I do. I was just trying—”

“Don’t, Grandfather,” Cassidy snapped, cutting him off before he could do what he did best—entice her into believing him once again. “Don’t say anything else,” she said, her voice suddenly—maddeningly—full of despair. “Please. It’s too late for explanations and more promises. Way too late.”

With that, angry at both herself and the old man, she turned and rushed from the room, closing the door with a definite thump. She made it as far as the hall to the elevator before the burning started in her stomach, before tears of pain and utter desolation dammed up in her throat, and before she felt each beat of her heart inside her head.

She’d given up her dreams. He’d said that without her he couldn’t run the business he’d spent a lifetime building. And out of gratitude—out of a need to be loved—she’d tucked away her charcoal, pencils and paints and had gone to work for him.

In her little German sports car some minutes and a minor traffic jam later, Cassidy sat in the parking lot and stared up at her apartment building. She’d thought of it as a haven not five minutes earlier. Now its white facade looked cold. Empty. And she knew the inside of her own apartment would be even worse. Gray and depressing. She couldn’t make herself get out of her car.

Her stomach started to burn again, so she grabbed the roll of antacids that she always had sitting on the console and popped one in her mouth. She looked at the roll. Really looked at it this time. She’d stopped last night on the way home to buy it. It was nearly gone. How could that be?

Rubbing the heel of her hand where her stomach constantly stung, Cassidy remembered her doctor’s diagnosis of an ulcer. He’d prescribed medication just last week. Cassidy had never taken the time to fill the prescription. Apparently he was right. She really did need it.

Half an hour later, a prescription bottle and a new roll of antacids on her passenger seat, Cassidy started her car and wondered what to do next. Her grandfather had beeped her no less than ten times since she’d left his office. Her beeper was now turned off, as was her cell phone. She picked them both up off the passenger seat and glared at them. Sometimes these well-touted modern conveniences felt more like a pair of handcuffs chaining her to Jamison Steel.

But right now she was on vacation.

Without ceremony she tossed the offending technology into the backseat and determinedly put them and the company out of her mind.

For the first time since her childhood when she woke up with her grandfather sitting at her bedside in a Colorado hospital, she had no one planning her next step in life. No. This next move was all her own to make.

Rather than feeling free, Cassidy felt suddenly very alone. With her grandfather out of the equation, she had no one to rely on. He was all she had. Her friends were really more acquaintances, and most of them, save a neighbor or two, worked at Jamison.

She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, narrowing her blue eyes. When had she gotten so drawn looking? She fussed with her short, straight, blond hair for a second and bit her full bottom lip. What do you want, Cassidy Jamison? Where do you want to go?

“I want to get away from the rat race,” she said aloud to the near-stranger in the mirror. “I need time to just think.”

A penny winked up at her from next to the nearly empty antacid roll in the console. She remembered a scene from a book she’d read several years earlier. The hero had flipped a coin—a penny—and had driven toward his uncertain future, giving the coin the power he no longer felt over his life. At each crossroad, he’d let the penny send him wherever it chose. Right then, feeling adrift, she felt an acute kinship with that character and decided her discarded penny just might know more than she did about her life’s choices.

She picked it up, turned it over in her hand and stared down at old Abe Lincoln’s coppery visage. Above his head were words she’d seen all her life and never really read. In God we trust.

Cassidy wondered suddenly if there was a God. She remembered vaguely her parents talking about Him. But God hadn’t been part of her upbringing under her grandfather’s rule. Recalling her father’s calm, easy smile, she wondered if maybe that was part of her problem. She flipped the coin. Caught it. Slapped it down on the back of her hand. “If You’re up there, God, send me where I need to go. Heads north, tails south,” she called, then peeked. Honest Abe stared up at her again. “North,” she said, then wondered once again if she or some higher power had control of her destiny.

Winston Jamison turned from the window that looked out over Rittenhouse Square when a sharp knock echoed through his office door. “Come,” he called.

His longtime secretary walked in and as far as his desk. She stood, arms crossed, and glared at him. “She hasn’t answered her pages or her cell phone. I’ve tried her apartment. No go there, either.”

“Where could she have gone?”

“Well, I doubt she went to cry on a friend’s shoulder. Thanks to her hours these last several years, she hasn’t got any close friends.”

Rose had been with him for years. He’d kept her with generous raises and stock options. He’d kept her because he couldn’t intimidate her. But just now, he wished he’d fired her thirty years ago at the first sign of insubordination. He scowled, knowing it wouldn’t cow her in the least. “I’m sure there’s a saltshaker in that credenza over there. Care to throw some into the wound?”

She tapped her foot and moved her hands to her ample hips. “Don’t think I’m not tempted. Why on earth did you do it?”

“I didn’t have a choice. The job would have been too much for her. I did it for her own good.”

“You told her the vice presidency was hers. You told me it was hers. Why the last-minute change? I’ve never known you to vacillate like this.”

“I was trying to save her from herself. And from me. I love that girl, Rose. This place is dragging her down. The circles under her eyes have circles.”

“So this was for her own good? That child was in tears! I’ve never seen her cry in all the years I’ve known her!”

He winced. “I was wrong to insist she come in to the business. I’m trying to right a wrong.”

“Oh? Now you see it, when you managed to ignore a double major and her real talent? What, pray tell, caused this sudden revelation?”

He knew he deserved her scorn, but he felt the need to squirm and didn’t like it in the least! Instead he walked to his desk and sat in his big leather chair. “I overheard a conversation she had with her doctor last week. She has an ulcer, Rose. And it’s my fault.”

She sat in the chair where Cassidy had been sitting just a few hours earlier. “But to pull the rug out from under her like that was cruel.”

“It was a last-minute decision. I just couldn’t let her take on more. But I intended to explain. I really did. But she started shouting. Then I did. I lost sight of what I wanted to say and defended my choice instead. Before I knew it, she was storming out. By the time I calmed down enough to realize what had happened, she was gone.”

Rose shook her head in disgust. “For your sake, I hope she isn’t gone for good.”

“You know, Rose, if I knew where she was, that would be okay with me. Just so she’s happy.”