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Kate Powell was consistent, focused, and often inflexible. As Margo strode down the corridor of the second-floor offices of Bittle and Associates with their buzz of activity, ringing phones, and clattering keyboards, she realized this was exactly what Kate had had in mind for herself since childhood. She had, without detour, worked steadily toward it all of her life.
There had been the advanced math courses in high school, which of course she'd aced. Her three terms as class treasurer. The summers and holidays she'd worked in bookkeeping at Templeton Resort to advance her training and on-the-job experience. From there the scholarship to Harvard, her MBA, followed by her refusal, gracious but firm, to take a position in any of the Templeton offices.
No, Margo thought, eyeing the discreet carpet and walls, feeling the jittery tension in the tax-time air. Kate had chosen
Bittle, taken
an entry-level position. Her salary would have been higher at a firm in Los Angeles or New York. But she wouldn't have been able to stay close to home.
In that, Kate was also consistent.
So, she'd worked her way up in the firm. Margo didn't know a great deal about accountants other than they were always whining about taxes and shelters and projected earnings, but she understood that Kate was now responsible for several important clients in the old, respected, and—in Margo's opinion—musty firm of Bittle and Associates.
At least all those years of effort had earned her a decent office, Margo mused as she peeked into Kate's door. Though how anyone stood being cooped up in four walls, facing away from the window all day was beyond her. Kate, however, looked contented enough.
Her desk was neat, and that was to be expected. No tchotchkes, no fancy paperweights, no frivolous doodads cluttered its surface. To Kate, Margo knew, clutter was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, along with impulse, disloyalty, and a disorganized checkbook.
A few files were arranged in an orderly stack on the edge of the plain, boxy desk. Dozens of lethally sharp pencils stood in a Lucite holder. A jazzy little computer hummed as Kate rattled the keys.
She'd taken off her navy jacket and hung it over the back of her swivel chair. The sleeves of her crisp white shirt were rolled up in businesslike fashion. She was frowning, a concentration line dug between her brows above the studious horn-rim reading glasses. Though her phone rang busily, it didn't earn a blink of response.
Even as Margo stepped in, Kate held up a single finger, continuing to work the keys one-handed. Then with a grunt she nodded and looked up.
"You're on time for a change. Close the door, will you? Do you know how many people wait until April's knocking to hunt up their receipts?"
"No."
"Everybody. Have a seat." As Margo took the dung-brown chair across from the desk, Kate rose. She rolled her shoulders, circled her head, murmuring what sounded like "relax." After slipping off her glasses, she tucked the temple into the breast pocket of her shirt so that the glasses hung there like a medal. Then she turned, chose two plain white mugs from a shelf, and reached for the pot on her coffeemaker. "Annie said Josh was home."
"Yeah, he just got in, looking tanned and terrific."
"When did he ever look anything else?" Noting that she'd neglected to open her blinds again, she did so now and let natural light slant into the room to war with the glow of florescents. "I hope he plans to stay a while. I'm not going to have any free time until after the fifteenth." From her desk drawer she took a bottle of Mylanta, uncapped it, and guzzled like a veteran wino with a bottle of Crackling Rose.
"Christ, Kate, how can you do that? It's hideous."
Kate only lifted a brow. "How many cigarettes have you had today, champ?" she said blandly.
"That's hardly the point." Grimacing, Margo watched Kate tuck the bottle back into the drawer. "At least I know I'm slowly killing myself. You should see a doctor, for God's sake. If you'd just learn to relax, try those yoga exercises I told you about—"
"Save it." Kate cut off the lecture in midsentence and checked her practical Timex. She didn't have the time or the inclination to worry about a nervous stomach, certainly not until she finished calculating the realized capital gain and loss summary currently on her screen. "I've got a client due in twenty minutes, and I don't have time to debate our varying addictions." She handed Margo a mug, slid a hip onto the edge of her desk. "Has Peter shown up?"
"I haven't seen him." Margo struggled for a moment, but lecturing Kate had always been a study in frustration. Better, she decided, to concentrate on one friend's problems at a time. "Laura doesn't have much to say about it. Kate, is he living at the hotel?"
"Not officially." Kate started to bite her nails before she studiously stopped herself. Just a matter of willpower, she remembered, and drank coffee instead. "But from the buzz I get, he spends more time there than he does at home."
She moved her shoulders, still working out kinks. Her head was throbbing nastily. Between tax time and the mess her closest friends were in, she welcomed each day with a tension headache.
"Of course, it's a busy time of year for him, too."
Margo smirked. "You never liked him."
Kate smirked right back. "Neither did you."
"Well, if there's trouble in paradise, maybe I can help Laura through it. But if he's just staying away because I'm there, I should leave. I could stay at the resort."
"He missed plenty of bed checks before you rolled back into town. I don't know what to do about it, Margo." She rubbed tired eyes with unpainted fingertips. "She won't really talk about it, and I'm lousy at giving advice on relationships anyway."
