The Job Offer - By Eleanor Webb Page 0,37

with tourists and took off. A few sail boats with their sails hoisted drifted around the lower point of the Deer Harbor peninsula. He recognized one belonging to a businessman from Seattle that would dock up in Eastsound’s harbor. Several families with children and a couple of college age students walked down the dock shaking the deck boards that Ben and Anne sat upon.

After they were finished eating, Anne picked up their garbage and carried it to the trash container by the shack while he readied the kayaks for the return trip up the coast. It was while he was doing that that he saw Anne talking to a twenty something year old woman with two small children at the shack order-pickup window. They appeared to know each other. Then the woman handed Anne the several months old baby she had been holding while she ran after the little boy who started to wander away. Anne secured the baby naturally against her hip and held the little girl's hand while she swayed. Both Anne and the baby were smiling as Anne talked to the small child. The woman returned with her wayward son and took the baby back right before their order was ready. Then Anne carried the tray for the woman over to a newly vacated table before she said goodbye and walked back to Ben with a smile on her face.

The whole scene caused the catch in his gut again, the one he was beginning to recognize far too often when he was with Anne. But instead of fear, he felt the level of his desire for her increase. He asked her if the woman was a friend when she was next to him again, and she told him the woman's name and that they had graduated from high school together. Then they set out on their return trip and arrived back at the inn a few minutes ago. He excused himself when they returned so that he could get some work done while she decided to grab a book and read. That brought him to now, standing on his balcony looking down at Anne reading in the shade of an umbrella on the patio by the pool. She looked up and saw him standing on the balcony and waved at him before going back to her book.

He smiled at her and finished his water before going back into the sitting room to turn on his computer. While he waited for it to warm up, he listened to his phone messages and returned the first one, a call to a Japanese customer about a new product released last month. The product was a new chemical designed to separate the metals more effectively and efficiently from the water used to clean computer boards in the manufacturing process. It had already garnered praise and had earned his company an award which was to be given out the first Friday of August. He saw the article about it in the Times and remembered the interview he gave on Monday morning to the business news reporter who came to talk about the award.

Sitting down on the couch, he looked over at the neatly stacked newspaper the maid straightened when she went through the room earlier in the day. Ending his phone call, he then returned a call to his administrative assistant, Gail, who told him that the trip he had planned to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo in two weeks was being moved up to next Monday because of an issue with the permit paperwork he needed signed by the Chinese minister in the Huangpu District of Shanghai. The official would not approve the paperwork without first meeting with Ben personally to discuss the proposed research partnership between Stanford Enterprises and Shanghai University's School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering. This meant that Ben would need to cancel his plans to interview final applicants next week and extend his visit to China and Japan from one month to six weeks.

Sighing in reluctant acceptance over the change in plans, he ran his eyes over the front page of the newspaper's lifestyle section at the top of the stack as he talked to Gail about what she would need to do in his absence. Andrew Conner had found himself another wife, Ben thought absently when she stopped talking to look for something on her computer. He had met the man on a couple of occasions and did not think much of him. Conner was the