Holding the Dream Page 0,65

my accounts. Because you don't know me at all."

Bittle leaned back in his chair. He steepled his hands, considered. "It's taken you some time to come around to this position, Kate."

"Yes, it has. This job meant everything to me. I'm starting to believe that everything is just too much. I couldn't have stolen from you, Mr. Bittle. You of all people know me well enough to be sure of that."

She waited a moment, wanting him to remember her, personally. "If you want a question to ponder," she continued, "ask yourselves this: Why would I have pilfered a measly seventy-five thousand when if I had needed or wanted money, I would only have had to go to my family? Why would I have worked my butt off for this firm all these years when I could have taken a top position in the Templeton organization at any time?"

"We have asked ourselves those questions, Kate," Bittle told her. "And those questions are the very reason this matter hasn't been resolved."

She rose, slowly. "Then I'll give you the answer. I'm not sure it's an attractive one, but I know the answer is pride. I'm too goddamn proud to have taken a dollar from this firm that wasn't mine. And I'm too proud to do nothing when I'm accused of embezzlement. Ms. Devin, gentlemen, thank you for your time." She shifted her gaze, smiled. "Thanks, Marty."

Not a single murmur followed her out the door.

She stopped shaking when she hit Highway 1 and realized where her instincts were taking her. Even before she pulled her car to the shoulder, got out to walk toward the cliffs, she was calm again.

There were fences to mend, work to do, responsibilities to handle. But for a moment, there was just Kate and the soothing roar of the sea. Today it was sapphire, that perfect blue that called to lovers and poets and pirates. The foam, far below the lapped shale and rock was like the froth of lace on the hem of a woman's velvet skirt.

She climbed down a ways, enjoying the swirl of wind, the taste of salt and sea that flavored it. Wild grasses and flowers defied the elements and grew, fighting their way out of thin soil and cracks in stone. Gulls wheeled overhead, their breasts as white as moonlight, the golden sun flashing off their spread wings.

Diamonds glittered on the water, and further out, whitecaps rode the sea like fine horses. The music never stopped, she thought. The ebb and flow, the crash and thunder, the eerily female screams of the gulls. How often had she come here to sit, to watch, to think? She couldn't count the number of hours.

Sometimes she was pulled here simply to be, other times to sit in solitude and work out some thorny problem. In her early years at Templeton House she had come here, to these cliffs, above this sea, under this sky, to quietly grieve for what she had lost. And to struggle with guilt over being happy in her new life.

She didn't dream here, had always told herself to wait for that until next year, or the next. The present had always taken priority. What to do now.

She stood on the comfortably wide ledge and asked herself what to do now.

Should she call Josh and tell him to go ahead with preparation for a suit against Bittle? She thought she had to. As difficult and potentially dangerous as such an action was, she could no longer ignore - or pretend to ignore - what had been done to her life. She hadn't been born a coward, nor had she been raised as one. It was time she dealt with that part of herself that was constantly in fear of failure.

In a way, she supposed, she had acted like Seraphina, metaphorically tossing her life over a cliff rather than working with the hand she'd been dealt.

That was over now. A little late, she admitted, but she had done the right thing. The Templeton thing, she thought with a smile as she picked her way down a rough and crooked incline. Uncle Tommy had always said that you couldn't be stabbed in the back if you faced your attackers.

The first step she needed to take was to face her aunt. Somehow she had to make things right there again. Kate looked back, and though she was too far down the slope to see the house, she could picture it.

Always there, she mused, tall and strong and waiting.