Page 5 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire
“Sorry.” I take one step toward the door, then turn back. “Actually, would you happen to know the best place to buy workwear around here?”
CHAPTER TWO
FRANKIE
My best friend gazes back at me from my laptop screen with an expression like an executioner who’s sorry she has to lead me to the gallows.
“Well, if you’ve only got your two-month sabbatical to make that place solvent,” Paige says, “I’d forget it, cut your losses, and take one of these two offers.” She waves her finger at me, or rather at her screen, where she presumably has both offers to buy the property positioned next to my face.
She also has the last three years of accounts that I sent her when I realized yesterday, the day after I got here, that the donkey sanctuary is in deep, deep shit. Whether Grandpa doesn’t realize it or he didn’t want me to know, I have no idea.
But within twenty-four hours of arriving here it was obvious that something wasn’t right. The hay stocks are dangerously low, some of the barns are in such disrepair that one looks like the back wall might collapse at anymoment, and I’m pretty sure the fence on the east side is only still standing out of a sense of nostalgia.
The guilt is almost paralyzing. This is all my fault. I haven’t paid close enough attention these last few years while I’ve been all about building my own career and just visiting Grandpa occasionally to help with big annual events like the Christmas festival, where we do donkey sleigh rides.
I’m pretty good with numbers, but Paige, who’s an accountant at the home furnishings company we both work for in Chicago, is even better. So once I’d looked over the spreadsheets, I sent them straight to her.
“You look tired,” she says.
I wrap both hands around my mug of lemon and honey tea. “Well, this isn’t quite what I was expecting. I thought I’d show up, keep things ticking over while Grandpa’s safely ensconced in the rehab unit where he can’t overdo it, maybe have a bit of fun larking around with the donkeys, then come back to my desk in Chicago and everything would be fine. Kind of like going on one of those volunteer vacations where you help to clean up a dirty beach, or protect endangered breeding turtles from predators, or something.”
“There are vacations where you protect turtles?” Paige is skeptical.
“No idea, but you know what I mean. Just thought it would be a little worry-free break from work. Not that this is the best time for me to take a break.”
“Frankie, you’re thirty-one years old and your nose has been nowhere other than pressed firmly to the grindstone since you graduated from college. A few weeks in the country is exactly what your life needs.”
“Not when I’ve just applied for the VP of digitalmarketing job. And Dickish Darren thinks he should get it.” I rub my eyebrows. “If I were there, working on the launch of the new mirror collab with that cool British designer, they’d be more likely to see that I’m the one they should give it to.”
“You’ve been proving yourself right for that job for two years. Do you really think the next few weeks will change their minds about you?” Paige always pushes me to look at the other side of things, no matter how hard it is.
The day I was fuming that Dickish Darren ate the lunch that I’d left in the staff kitchen fridge, she asked me to consider that maybe he’d mistaken it for his own, even though she knew very well my food was in the Rugrats lunchbox that she’d given me for my birthday, so there was no plausible way he could have thought it was his. Not least because his is always wrapped in a paper bag that disintegrates a little more each day.
“At least I’ll get to see you when you come back for a quick visit for the job interview,” Paige says.
“I was hoping to do it remotely,” I say. “Because there’s no one else to take care of this place if I’m gone for even twenty-four hours.”
“When will it be?” Paige asks.
“All they’ve said is early December.”
“Ooh, who’s that?” she asks as the black and brown furry face of Grandpa’s cat replaces mine in front of the camera.
“Moody old Thelma.” I peer over her back. “She’s been grumpy ever since her sister, Louise, passed away about three years ago.”
“Aw, she’s cute,” Paige says.
“Looks can be deceiving. She’ll take my eye out if I so much as breathe on her. She hates everyoneexcept Grandpa.” There’s no way I’m going to take my life in my hands and attempt to move her out of the way. “One of many reasons that being here isn’t exactly the away-from-it-all, restful luxury spa experience you might think it is.”
I look around the worse-for-wear kitchen, from the scuffed cabinets that have been there my whole life, to the fridge with its handle swinging loose, and the dripping tap that seems to be ticking away the time I have left to get this place sorted out and sustainable again before Grandpa comes home.
“Would your grandpa be okay with selling?” Paige asks.
“Is one of the donkeys going to cook me dinner? You know why this means so much to him. And to me for that matter.” I take a sip of tea as Thelma wends her way between me and the laptop camera, then hops off the table onto a chair and curls up, looking like the friendliest, least-likely-to-kill-me-once-my-back-is-turnedkitty imaginable.
“If he refuses to sell, I’m not going to make him,” I tell Paige. “The opposite, in fact. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure he keeps it.”
I lean back in the chair and cradle my tea. “Grandma always told me to choose my own adventure.” A heavy sigh has fallen from me before I notice it’s happening. “But I would never have chosen this financial nightmare.”
