by Lisa Martin
Loving Him Peacefully
by
Lisa Martin
Other Books by This Author
Please visit http://goo.gl/rE1 to discover other books by Lisa Martin.
Loving Him Peacefully Series
“Loving Him Peacefully 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)”
“Loving Him Peacefully”
“Loving Him Peacefully: 2”
“Loving Him Peacefully: 3”
Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Martin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Loving Him Peacefully
All rights reserved.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording and faxing, or by any information storage and retrieval system by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use.
This Book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Lisa Martin, except in the case of a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages for the sake of a review written for inclusions in a magazine, newspaper, or journal—and these cases require written approval from Lisa Martin prior to publication. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Other Books by This Author
Chapter One
I sighed as I pushed the small pile of paperwork on my desk to the side, into the stack that would simply have to wait until tomorrow. It seemed like no matter how much I got through in a day, there was an endless supply of it that would be there, sitting and taunting me.
Yes. The paperwork is taunting you. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s part of the job. I rubbed my head with the tips of my fingers, the stressed out thoughts fighting for the dominant spot in my head. It had been a long day, and an even longer week, the hours stretching into endless measurements of time that seemed determined to be as difficult as possible. My head was throbbing from the complications that had arisen with one of our clients, a man that was filing his first patent with our company, and who was the problem that had been preoccupying my time when I should have been working on other things.
They were claiming that their rights had been violated in part, something about a breach of confidentiality on their patent, which hadn’t even technically been sealed yet. I was head of the patent research and enforcement team. Most of the research legwork was done by the up and comers, the same type of person that I had been when I’d first started here.
But even with my standing there, this wasn’t something that should have come across my desk. There was no way that I should have even had to worry about the mess that the case had become, but the two partners who owned the business where off gallivanting around the world, nearly impossible to reach unless they wanted to be, and the other executive who ran the office with me had his head so far up his backside that I was always surprised he was able to find his way in the front door of the building. The immediate board members were demanding answers, and there was no one else besides me qualified or willing to take on dealing with the case, hiring the lawyer, and seeing it through.
I had been a part of Trestmont Inc. for nearly eight years, and had been an executive, and acting member of the board, for the last two. I had poured my blood, sweat and tears into building the company. I hadn’t done it single handedly by any means, but I’d certainly done more than my share of the work to make it what it was.
I had done all that I could for today, looking over the information and lining up an appointment with a lawyer for next week. I needed to go home, get some rest, and get all of this garbage out of my head for a little while. Maybe even call my mother, who I hadn’t made the time to talk to in nearly a month.
When was the last time you ever made time for her? I thought irritably to myself.
When I’d gotten a scholarship to the state university of my choice, I had left the two bedroom apartment that she’d moved us to after my father passed away, and put myself through school at a pace that was unthinkable to most people. Eighteen hours most semesters, fifteen at the end when I got down to my senior level classes. I only went home for holidays on occasion, one day, maybe two, at a time.
And that had been my life. No second guessing where I wanted to go, or how hard I was willing to work to get there, aside from the small blip on my resume that had deviated from the corporate world. I had thought that I was interested in teaching, helping people in that way, before I found out that standardized testing was taking over the profession, and that they got paid next to nothing. Still, a double major looked good on any resume, so I proceeded, entirely unsure what I would do with it when I was done with college; but knowing that having both business and educational skills couldn’t hurt me in the long run.
Working in a corporate firm, my first choice of careers hadn’t been quite as fulfilling as the idealized version I had built up in my head. But it did give me a comfortable lifestyle, allowed me to interact with people and in this kind of economy, I couldn’t ask for more. At the time I consoled myself with the saying that my father used to say when he would come home from a long day of work: “They wouldn’t call it work if you enjoyed it.”
I just had no idea at the time that the effort it had taken to get me there, that the money and stability that I had become used to, wasn’t going to last forever. That last day was the proverbial calm before the storm. The final time that I would experience the normality that my life had started to revolve around.
***
“Mrs. Rougio?”
My assistant poked her head in the door, a clipboard in her hand, pleasant as ever, except for the tired lines that had appeared around her eyes in the past few months.
“Wimberly, how many times have I asked you to call me Katherine or Kate, or anything but my last name?” I asked her with a small smile. My last name was such a mouthful to anyone who hadn’t grown up pronouncing its vaguely Italian sounding pronunciation.
“Sorry, Mrs. Katherine,” she corrected herself, pushing her glasses a little further up her young and eager face, “But Mr. Jones is asking for you.”
I looked at the clock, which was showing three minutes until five. “And this can’t wait?”
“He seemed pretty insistent,” she told me apologetically. “But I can tell him I didn’t manage to catch you before you left?”
“Don’t worry about it.” With a wave of my hand, I dismissed her for the weekend. “Why don’t you go and get some rest. Maybe have some fun. I won’t need you on call this weekend.”
Her eyes lit up. “Thanks, Katherine.”
“Anytime,” I replied, watching a genuinely happy smile replace the girl’s tired features. It was always nice when I could manage to do something for someone else. I pushed myself away from the desk and stood to my full height, stretching my arms from the long hours of sitting. My feet were aching from the heels that they were squished into, and it was all I could do to not kick them off in that instant.
I knocked softly on the door to Mr. Jones, the head of the board’s, office, which was just down the ha
ll from mine, on the topmost floor of the building. The instant that I walked in, all thoughts of kicking off my shoes fled from my mind. I was suddenly very, very fearful for my job.
They didn’t gather all of the board members together just to promote someone or pass along good news.
“Katherine,” Mr. Jones said, waving his hand and motioning me forward into the room, where four other men were pressed around his desk, looking uncomfortable, and stifled. None of them would look me in the eye, which did not do anything good for my nerves.
“Is everything all right?” I made sure that my voice sounded as strong as it was able to under the circumstances. The business world preyed on any kind of weakness, and these men were circling like vultures.
“No, actually, which is why I called you in,” he said. He gave a long sigh, like he had been thinking long and hard about something. “I need your help with a problem that’s on our hands, Katherine.”
“Anything, sir,” I told him. The feeling of relief over not being called in to be fired was so overwhelming that I almost didn’t catch his next words.
“I’m glad to hear it. I need you to delete all records we have of Oliver Bertrand, and the pending patent paperwork we have concerning his product.”
Chapter Two
Oliver Bertrand. The name that had been on the breach of confidentiality agreement that had come across my desk. They wanted me to delete all records of him.
“If I may,” I asked, my voice finally starting to show a little bit of a worried wobble behind the words, “Why are you asking me to do this? Why not simply do it yourself?” I knew how disrespectful the words sounded, but I couldn’t keep them from coming out of my mouth.
“Don’t worry Katherine, I’m not asking you to do anything illegal,” he said, making a motion like he was trying to assure me, and not doing so in the slightest. “We haven’t pushed through with the paperwork yet, so technically we can delete the files, as though we never had them in the first place.”
“But…won’t that be hard to do? He’s already filed a petition for breach of confidentiality on our contract,” I responded, shaking my head slowly from side to side. Even if I could do what they were proposing, it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be ethical, no matter whether or not it was technically legal.
“He’s started the beginnings of a petition. He needs documentation to move forward, which will take him at least a few weeks to get a court order to retrieve. But by that time, the files will be long gone. Mr. Bertrand will have never been listed as a client with Trestmont.” Mr. Jones sounded so sure of himself, so confident that this would work and that I would do what was being asked of me.
“But if Mr. Bertrand doesn’t get his patent, won’t his competition be able to lay claim to his ideas?” I asked, almost stumbling over the words. My heart was pounding ferociously in my chest, my breath starting to shorten from the panic that I felt over being asked to do something like this.
Mr. Jones stroked the length of his chin, his fingers scratching at the short stubble of hair that was stretched across it. “Mr. Bertrand’s problems of losing his patent would no longer be our problem, once this matter is taken care of.”
“Isn’t there another way to handle this? My mind was scrambling for any kind of answer that would break me out of this shell, get me out from in between a rock and a hard place.
“Do you think,” one of the board members behind Mr. Jones said dangerously, placing his hand flat on the desk and moving himself forward, “that we would resort to this if there were any other options left to us?”
“What Mr. Hatton is trying to say,” Mr. Jones interrupted, his eyes darting nervously to his college and then back to me, probably afraid that the man would say more than what was necessary, “Is that we have reached the end of the line. We respect that fact that this is a difficult decision, but it is one that you need to make if you intend to continue working for us.”
“So that’s it.” It was a statement, not a question. They couldn’t risk me staying there and working for them if they didn’t know that I would be one hundred percent loyal to their cause. The sad thing was, up until about five minutes ago, I would have fought tooth and nail to keep my position there, I would have defended the company’s abilities and trustworthiness in front of a damn jury.
How wrong I had been.
“How long do I have to give you an answer?” I asked quietly, looking from man to man, searching for something to give me some hope. Mr. Jones sounded cold and indifferent when he answered me.
“We need your answer by the end of the day, Katherine. If I don’t hear from you this evening, I’ll assume that you aren’t serious about keeping your job here.”
“I’ll let you know.” My answer was short and curt, nearly matching the tone that he had used when talking to me. I gave him a slight tilt of my head, having lost all respect for him. I knew he was in a bad position. Hiring a lawyer for the company would look bad, would run off other potential clients, and would be costly and expensive, not to mention probably centered in the public eye. He wanted to keep his company alive. But that didn’t justify stepping on someone else to get there.
I walked from the building that had meant so much to me over most of the past decade. A piece of me, the weakest part, threatened to well up with tears, wanting to rid itself of the worry that had invaded my body and made itself so comfortable. Another part marveled at how, half an hour ago, my biggest worry had been the shoes on my feet. But the most dominant part, the part that led me out of the building and kept me going, was the part that just wanted to forget it all. To not remember that it mattered.
***
I couldn’t even bring myself to crawl into the confining space of my car. The car that had been bought and paid for by my endless hours spent at this company. The luxurious car that I’d saved and drooled over like a teenage boy seeing a Porsche for the first time. It had meant so much to me at the time, a symbol that I was finally moving up in the world.
Now? I couldn’t give a damn about the stupid thing, couldn’t get away from it fast enough. I relied on my own two feet to carry me as far from that building and that lifestyle as they possibly could. The world that I had so longed to belong to, and for so long been a part of, suddenly seemed full of treacherous uncertainties.
How many other times had they done something like this without telling me? Suddenly, I was reliving everyone that had been let go in my time there, analyzing every little moment that seemed suspicious to my sleep deprived, and strung out on worry, mind.
Stop doing this to yourself! The command was coming from whatever sense of self-preservation that I had left. I was going to drive myself crazy trying to discover some meaning behind it all. They were doing something corrupt, plain and simple. It didn’t mean that there was some great, big conspiracy theory behind it, did it?
No. But it means that you don’t want to be a part of it.
I struggled with the realization, but it had taken root, and refused to be pulled up and cast out. The truth was, I was more than just a little uncomfortable with what they were asking me to do.
So the question became, not if, but when. I only had a few hours to call them and tell them what I was thinking, or they would let me go anyway. At least this way, I could do it on my own terms. It may not mean much to some people, but that was the difference between being dragged to your own death, or walking into it with your head held high. In the end, I would still be terminated, my work life there cut short, but it would be of my own doing.
Because I would not be a part of ruining a man’s life, legal or not. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.
Chapter Three
I picked my cell phone up out of my pocket, only allowing myself one terrified moment to stare at the tiny black device before taking a deep breath, and dialing the number to the office. It couldn’t be put off any longer. My decision was already made, so why waste the time and energy letting it eat away at me for even longer?
&nb
sp; The phone only rang twice before it was picked up.
“Clarence Jones,” came the voice on the other end of the phone, businesslike and straightforward, even though by now it was after hours, and there couldn’t have been many clients calling.
“Mr. Jones,” I started, “It’s Katherine.”
“Have you made your decision yet?” He asked. His tone was flat, neutral, with no anticipation in it. He must have inferred from my tone of voice that I wouldn’t be participating in his plan.
“I have, sir. I won’t be erasing the evidence of Mr. Bertrand from the computer system.”
“I see,” he said slowly. I could almost imagine him stroking his beard again with his hands as he spoke to me. The image didn’t help the nervous flutters in my gut that were stemming from the displeased sound of his voice. “I’m sorry to hear that Katherine. You were a valuable asset to our company. Are you sure that you won’t reconsider?”
“I’m sure.” My voice was firm and unyielding. No matter what the cost, I couldn’t bend my own morals around something that was obviously and totally wrong.
“Then I’m afraid this is good-bye. You can come and collect your belongings first thing Monday morning. Return your key to me before you leave.” Click. The phone line went dead as Mr. Jones slammed the receiver into the cradle, making me wince at the sound.
There would be other jobs. But at least I could go home to bed that night, and know that I hadn’t compromised my beliefs, that I hadn’t been the one to do the wrong thing. And at the end of the day, that had to matter more than a comfortable lifestyle, right?
At least, that’s what I told myself at first. And to be honest, I still did believe it. But that knowledge was hard to hold on to when I was suddenly struggling to pay for even a cup of coffee in the morning, and an off-brand version of macaroni and cheese had become the dinner menu almost every night. I was suddenly reliving all of my horrible college days, where I’d been scrounging around to be able to pay for classes and my crappy off campus apartment.