Newport Dreams: A Breakwater Bay Novella Read Online Free PDF Page B

to work.”
    What did he think the rest of them were doing? Oh, how she was tempted just to tell him off. And he would fire her, which would put her right back where she didn’t want to be, headed for Daddy’s corporate office.
    Carlyn rolled her eyes. Meri pressed her lips together. They were more amused than upset. Maybe Geordie was just oversensitive.
    She sped through the rest of the slides, tagging and ditching and counting to ten, twenty, a hundred. Then it was finished. She waited for the architect to pass judgment.
    But all Bruce said was, “Okay. Put the tagged ones in one file and send it to the database along with all the rest. With all the data filled in.”
    He walked out of the room.
    “Good work,” Doug said and patted her shoulder, which was almost as bad as being barked at.
    As soon as they left, Meri sat down. “You’ll have to forgive the boys, they get into the zone and forget their manners. You got some great photos.”
    Geordie just looked at her.
    “So now can we see the photo you were so quick to hide? I may be going crazy but I swear I saw Carlyn’s face in that photo.”
    “No way,” Carlyn said, moving closer.
    Geordie pulled a face. “It just got in there by mistake. It was late when I decided on the final presentation”— for all the good it did me —“and it just slipped past me.”
    “And we’re glad it did.” Meri pulled up a chair. “Show.”
    Geordie scrolled through the photos until she got to the “Wood” photo. She took a breath and opened it. It appeared on the wall before them.
    “Wow,” Meri said.
    “What is it?” Carlyn asked.
    “Me playing,” Geordie said. “There was this shaft of light hitting the windowsill.” She moved the cursor to a separate image. “That’s the original. It looked like it pierced the wood, like it would shatter it, but not in pieces like glass but in slices revealing the form in black-and-white as well as the manifestation in color. But right after that, I caught the sun glowing on Carlyn’s hair, not shattering it but glowing and—” She stopped abruptly.
    Carlyn looked puzzled. “That’s me?”
    Meri smiled. “I can see where your interest lies.”
    “No, I—”
    “No need to explain, but why are you here doing documentation photos, when you could be showing your work in a gallery? Or do you do both?”
    Geordie shook her head. She couldn’t speak. Meri was being nice, even enthusiastic, but her tone of voice said that Geordie had blown this job.
    She’d tried so hard and she’d only lasted one day.

 
    Chapter 4
    “Y OU HAVE TO admit she’s not bad,” Doug said pouring coffee and handing a mug to Bruce.
    “She can take a decent picture, but there was a lot of garbage in there. She doesn’t have a clue about what her job is. She didn’t even have the sense to ask what documentation form we use.”
    “So she’s green. It was her first day. She hadn’t even been walked through the site and was working cold.”
    “That’s beside the point.”
    “Is it? Then tell her what you want and how you want it and—”
    Bruce burst out laughing. “You sound like one of Meri and Carlyn’s karaoke songs.” Bruce wiggled in a gross parody of the two women singing that morning in the office.
    “You’re hired.”
    Bruce spun around, nearly spilling his coffee.
    The three women were standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
    Meri and Carlyn were grinning. Geordie looked like she’d just eaten glass.
    Okay, he was an idiot. And he’d just been riding Geordie for being unprofessional. Some example he was setting.
    Carlyn came in and poured herself a cup of coffee. Held up the pot to the other two. Both declined. “The office is halfway organized, so I’m returning Meri and Geordie to you for assignment.”
    Doug glanced at his watch. “I have a crew coming in to clean at ten. They should be fairly thorough, half interns and half pros. But Meri, if you will keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t cart anything