Next to You Read Online Free PDF

Jackson Hole. Sure everything’s fine? Beause I can call him.”
    “No, no. Everything’s cool. It’s just if I’m going to be here for two weeks, I feel like I should know his name.”
    As soon as Phlox ended the call, a text pinged through from Zee. “That was your one call for the day, missy. Hope it was important!”
    Phlox rolled her eyes. Was Zee really going to enforce this rule for two entire weeks? She shook her head. Doubtful. Sooner or later something would come up that required her attention. And in any case, Zee had not extended Phlox’s work prohibition broadly enough. She wasn’t allowed to call Phlox Beauty, but Zee had said nothing about other companies.
    Phlox’s grin was ear to ear as she texted the account director at the public relations firm. “Any rumors yet on the Glossy Award nominees?” She and Zee had their fingers crossed for the new A2Z Cream. Their retinol serum had been a runner-up two years ago, but Phlox wanted that top honor this year, wanted it so bad she could practically taste it.
    Her father had been disappointed when she told him she was leaving her job at a well-known pharmaceutical company just a year after graduation to start a beauty products company with Zee. “Makeup,” he’d scoffed. “Snake oil, you’ll be selling.” It wasn’t serious enough for him, but to Phlox the manufacture of high-powered prescription painkillers was too serious. Too many people were addicted to them, too many lives getting ruined in the process. An addiction to mascara or face masks was relatively harmless.
    And then she'd gone and hired her brother Rye to be the chief financial officer, sucking even more of the family into the cosmetics industry. Would an award or two sway her father's opinion? She didn't know, but it probably wouldn't hurt.
    Rye wasn't bothered one way or the other. "As long as we're not living in their basement playing video games all day long, they can't complain." That was easy for Rye to say. He didn't grow up in a tug-of-war between their parents. Their mother had wanted Phlox to be a pretty debutante type, going to college for the sole purpose of getting her MRS. degree. Their father, being perhaps more realistic about Phlox's odds as a social butterfly, had pushed her toward science and math. She'd spent her childhood and adolescence trying to strike an acceptable compromise between the two. It wasn't lost on her, either, that Phlox Beauty was in some ways another one of those compromises.
    She poured a cup of coffee and drummed her fingers impatiently against the counter until a reply came back from the pr agency. “No news yet. Keeping both ears to the ground.”
    Phlox smiled at the thought of someone actually, physically trying to keep both ears to the ground at once. Another text came through, this time from Zee. “I know what you just did. If we need you, we’ll let you know. Now go eat something fattening.”
    As if on cue, her stomach rumbled and she got up to top off her coffee. She strolled over to the screen door at the back of the kitchen and looked out toward the garden, wondering idly what the caretaker’s schedule was. What did he even do all day? Not that she minded paying him, but she had certainly never spent eight hours five days a week taking care of this place. Granted, the place might look slightly better now under the care of a professional.
    She pushed the screen door open and carried her mug of coffee out to the porch. She hadn’t had time to look at it before her untimely freak out the day before. It had been a long, snowy winter in the northeast but her peonies should be blooming with petals and ants by now. She returned to the kitchen and retrieved her kitchen shears, then sedately walked down the porch steps. If the lilacs were blooming, she’d snip a few heads and put them in a vase inside. They would keep her spirits up and remind her of how much she loved her house and gardens and pool, of how much she had always cherished