Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series Read Online Free PDF

heard Elise’s voice as she entered, but she wasn’t at her desk.
    “Behind you,” said Elise.
    Nina looked back to her right and saw Elise standing over a table in a small room off her office. She’d never noticed it before, but then she had never been in Elise’s office long enough to know where the doors led. Laid out on the long table were flat-plans of each page of the next issue.
    “I could do this digitally, but there’s something about being able to see it, large, this way that appeals to me so much more,” said Elise, who continued to look at the pages in front of her. She was one of the few women Nina knew who could pull off a red pleated skirt and silk cream T-shirt without looking as if she was returning to high school. The gunmetal gray suede pumps probably helped. The metal toe seemed perfectly suited for Elise.
    Nina didn’t know if a response was expected, since Elise hadn’t even made eye contact yet. She knew what Elise meant because sometimes, especially when she felt stuck, Nina outlined and wrote drafts of her stories on her yellow legal pads. Moving a pen across something tangible connected her to whatever she was working on at the time. But before she could move the words from her brain to her lips, Elise picked her coffee cup off the table, finally looked at Nina, and said, “Let’s go to my desk.”
    “Sure,” Nina replied.
Oh, brilliant, Nina. What a sharp response
. But whatever Elise’s reason for this particular summons, Nina felt confident it wasn’t another cloud. Elise seemed too relaxed. When it came to terminations or demotions, Elise was a guillotine. Fast, sharp, and irreversible.
    She reached in her desk drawer and handed Nina an envelope. “Here are two tickets to the We Care benefit next Friday.”
    The swish of panic zipped through Nina’s chest because her lack of an immediate response stood between them. Nina knew that Elise knew that she didn’t know enough about the benefit to reply. She watched the realization move over her face as if a window blind had been lowered to block the light.
    “The We Care benefit? The fund-raiser for The AIDS Memorial Quilt?” Elise filled the quiet with a question meant to shovel enough mud out of Nina’s brain to unearth the answer.
    The shovel hit paydirt. “The quilt in Washington, D.C., right?” Nina unwound her fingers from the chair arm. She’d been holding on like she was preparing for an airport landing.
    “Yes, that one. Local support groups donate quilts for a silent auction as a fund-raiser. The money goes to support local projects and the NAMES Project Foundation that preserves and cares for The AIDS Memorial Quilt.”
    She took the envelope from Elise and wouldn’t have been surprised if she snatched it right back. Now that she’d saved her head from being chopped off, Nina wondered why she was covering an event so meant for Daisy. Feature writing was definitely not her forte, and schmoozing with Houston’s gilded made her uncomfortable. Daisy could handle being out of her element, especially if it involved such an important cause.
    “I know you’re working on the story about that local politician and questionable contracts, so you’re going to have to add this one to your list. Janie will be in New York looking for an apartment. If Daisy’s out longer than we or she expects, well, Idon’t want to take that chance.” She took a sip of coffee, then looked at the cup as if someone had just handed her the wrong baby in delivery. “What is this?” Elise set the cup aside. “How difficult is it to order coffee?”
    Nina assumed that was a rhetorical question, but rather than risk a conversation about Shannon being the orderer of the coffee, she asked about Daisy. “Michelle told me this morning that Daisy wouldn’t be in for a while. Do you know how she’s doing?” Nina tread cautiously, unsure how Elise would react to being asked information about another employee.
    Elise stopped tapping her pen on her