all this, Mr. Wright.”
He smiled approvingly. “There’s nothing I appreciate more than modesty, Miss Hardy,” he replied. “You’ll do fine. Ready to get started?” “Yes, sir!” she replied.
It was a short day, mainly because she was so busy trying to learn the basics of Duke Wright’s agricultural programs. She liked him. He might have a bad reputation, and she knew he could be hard to get along with, but he had saving graces.
She managed not to think about Mr. Kemp all afternoon, until she got home.
Her mother smiled at her from the sofa, where she was watching her daily soap operas. “Well, how did it go?” she asked.
“I like it!” Violet told her with a big smile. “I really do. I think I’m going to work out just fine. And, besides that, I’m going to be making a lot more money. Mama, we might even be able to afford a dishwasher!”
Mrs. Hardy sighed. “That would be lovely, wouldn’t it?”
Violet kicked off her shoes and sat down in the recliner next to the sofa. “I’m so tired! I’m just going to rest for a minute and then I’ll see about supper.”
“We could have chili and hot dogs.”
Violet chuckled. “We could have a nice salad and bread sticks,” she said, thinking of the calories.
“Whatever you like, dear. Oh, by the way, Mr. Kemp came by a few minutes ago.”
Violet’s world came crashing down around her ears. She’d hoped to not even hear his name, at least for another few days.
“What did he want?” she asked her mother.
The older woman picked up a white envelope. “To give you this.” She handed it to Violet, who sat staring at it.
“Well,” she murmured. “I guess it’s my final pay.”
Mrs. Hardy muted the television set. “Why not open it and see?”
Violet didn’t want to, but her mother looked expectant. She tore open the envelope and extracted a check and a letter. With her breath in her throat, she slowly unfolded it.
“What does it say?” her mother prompted.
Violet just stared at it, unbelieving.
“Violet, what is it?”
Violet drew in a breath. “It’s a letter of recommendation,” she said huskily.
Chapter Two
“I can’t believe he actually gave me one,” Violet said huskily, her heart racing from just the thought that he’d backed down that far. “I didn’t ask for it.”
“He told me that,” her mother replied. “He said that he felt really bad about the way you left, Violet, and that he hoped you’d be happy in your new job.”
Violet looked up at her parent, hating herself for being so happy with these crumbs of Kemp’s regard. “He did?” She caught herself. “Did you tell him where I was working?”
Mrs. Hardy shifted on the sofa. “Well, dear, he looked so pleasant and we had such a nice conversation. I thought, why upset the man?”
Violet laughed helplessly. “What did you tell him, Mother?” she asked gently.
“I said you were working in a local office for a very nice man, doing statistics,” she said with a chuckle. “He didn’t actually ask where. He started to, and I changed the subject. He said Libby and Mabel were splitting your work for the time being. He’s going to advertise for a new secretary,” she added.
Violet sighed. “I hope he’s happy with whichever poor soul gets the job,” she said.
“No, you don’t. I know you hated to leave. But, dear, if he doesn’t feel the same way, it’s a blessing in the long run,” her mother said wisely. “No sense eating your heart out.”
“That’s what I thought when I quit,” Violet admitted. She got to her feet, putting the letter and check back in the envelope. “I’ll go fix something to eat.”
“You could make a pot of coffee,” her mother suggested.
Violet gave her a glare. “You don’t need to be drinking caffeine.”
“Don’t we have any decaf?”
It reminded Violet too much of her ex-boss, and she wasn’t enthusiastic. But her mother loved coffee, and missed being able to drink it. She didn’t know about the coffee wars in Kemp’s office, either. Violet forced a smile. “I’ll see,” she said, and left her mother to the soap opera.
The first few days out of Kemp’s office were the hardest. She couldn’t forget how she’d looked forward to every new day, to each morning’s first glimpse of her handsome boss. Her heart had jumped at the sound of his voice. She tingled all over when, rarely, he smiled at her when she finished a difficult task for him. Even the scent of a certain masculine cologne could trigger memories, because he always smelled of it. She felt deprived because her life would no longer contain even a casual glimpse of him. She was working for his worst enemy. Not much likelihood that Kemp would turn up on Duke Wright’s ranch in the near or distant future.
But as time passed, Violet slowly fell into a routine at Duke’s ranch. The spreadsheet programs were easy to use once she learned what the various terms meant, like weight gain ratio and birth weight. She learned that Duke used artificial insemination to improve the genetics of his cattle, selecting for low birth weight, good weight gain ratios for offspring and lean cuts of meat in the beef cattle offspring that would eventually be generated by his purebred herd sires and dams.
She was fascinated to find that science was used to predict leanness and tenderness of beef cuts, that genetics could manipulate those factors to produce a more marketable product for consumers.
She was fascinated by the various pedigrees and the amount of history contained in his breeding programs. It was like an organic history of Texas just to look back over the first herds that had contributed to Duke’s formidable beef concern. He kept photographic records as well as statistical ones, and she found the early beef sires short, stocky and woolly compared to modern ones. It graphically showed the progression of genetic breeding.
Her duties were routine and hardly exciting, but she made good wages and she liked the people she worked with. Duke had full-time and part-time cowboys, as well as a veterinary student who worked one semester and went to school one semester. He had three people who did nothing but work with his Internet Web site that sold his premium organic ham and bacon products.
But Violet’s job was separate from that of the other workers. There was a new storefront that Duke had just opened in Jacobsville to market his organic pork. There was also a modern office complex adjacent to the enormous barn, where the production and lab staff were located. The barn, in addition to containing the pride of his purebred cattle herd, his expensive seed bulls, there was also a climate controlled room where the frozen sperm and embryos were kept for artificial insemination. The procedure itself was conducted in the barn. Purebred embryos from superior herd sires, as well as straws of semen
