Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor (top fiction books of all time txt) 📗

it—but she dismissed that, too. It actually belonged to the company. They would name it when they marketed it. She’d be lucky if she even got credit for it.

The thought brought Miles Cavendish into her mind and she felt a flicker of resentment knowing he would be profiting from her work. True, she’d been well paid.

She couldn’t quibble over that, but she hated the thought of what his profits would buy.

There was nothing she could do about it—not now. If she’d known …. But she hadn’t and she was legally obligated to turn it over to the company he owned to do whatever they wanted. They could file it in the trash, for that matter, and she couldn’t do a thing about it.

Not that she could think of any reason why they would. It might not be a gold mine, but it could be profitable and that was the name of the game.

She couldn’t understand why the new crop wasn’t doing better, though. That puzzled her and disturbed her. It wasn’t any good if she couldn’t make it happen twice in a row!

She managed to stave off all thoughts about the incident the night before by focusing with grim determination on her project and her financial concerns. It would work, she told herself. It had worked after her mother had died. She’d been devastated, but she’d focused and she’d managed to get through it.

Not that this was even close to being that catastrophic! It was silly, really, to be so upset about nothing. So, she’d been embarrassed! It wasn’t as if it was something that never happened.

She didn’t understand why he hated her, but what did it matter, really, even if he did? It wasn’t as if she had to see him again. They wouldn’t have to watch out for her once she found a new place and hopefully that wouldn’t take too long.

She woke in the middle of the night gasping for breath and trying to force a sob from her throat. It unsettled her, but she was groggy enough that whatever had upset her had faded by the time she tried to capture it.

She worked harder to put all the recent emotional upheaval from her mind the next day, but the effort took a downturn when she discovered that every single one of the damned companies she’d checked out were affiliated with another company that her father was connected with in some way.

“Damn it!” she exclaimed in frustration. “Does the bastard own everything?”

After glaring at her screen for a few minutes, she got up and headed out to her greenhouse. The new sprouts didn’t look any better than they had the day before. She studied them in disgust and headed back in to check her notes from the first crop.

Reciting the settings she’d used before, she returned to the greenhouse to check them and reset them again when she saw that she’d had the settings right to begin with.

Despite every effort, her second day after her disastrous meeting with Simon ended worse than the day before. She finally broke down and filled out an application for a federal grant, knowing the likelihood of getting one was just about zero. She tried looking for another job possibility in her field, but it was just so depressing she gave it up after a couple of hours.

Restlessness had been slowly building in her and she discovered a desire to escape the house that she’d never felt before. It felt as if the walls were closing in on her, though, and pacing the house in search of something to occupy her didn’t relieve the feeling.

She couldn’t avoid thinking about the incident, she realized. It wasn’t going to magically vanish if she could put it off long enough like so many things did that disturbed her.

Lighting finally on her couch, she turned her media center on, found a TV broadcasting network, and stared at the screen. She wasn’t upset because she was embarrassed, she finally concluded. At least, that was only a small part of it. She wasn’t even particularly upset because she felt like Simon had goaded her into making a fool out of herself, although that was certainly the source of a good bit of the pain.

She was upset because he hated her and she didn’t know why. Well, she did, because it wasn’t hate so much as it was distrust and she supposed that was understandable.

She would’ve liked to think it upset her because she just wasn’t used to people taking such a dislike of her when she hadn’t personally done anything to warrant it, but she didn’t think that was all of it.

Covering her face with her hands, she tried to block the thoughts when she realized she wasn’t really getting anywhere. She wasn’t ‘working it out of her system’ because she still didn’t understand why it had hurt so much. It made her feel like crying all over again.

Swallowing the urge with an effort, she dropped her hands and stared at the broadcast for a few minutes and finally began flipping from one station to another, searching for something to distract her. Eventually, she hit a news channel. She was about to flip to the next when the newscaster announced that there had been another tsunami. Pictures flashed on the screen of the devastation. It had been triggered by an earthquake at sea and although the warning had been immediately broadcast to everyone likely to be affected, the islanders hadn’t had time to evacuate. The tsunami had formed only a few miles from the island and swept over it within minutes of the shockwaves from the quake itself.

Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest the moment he mentioned that the earthquake had been