Key Of Knowledge by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

studied Sandi. “I bet you only had one friend in elementary school, and she was just as obnoxious as you are.” She slid off the stool.
    Speaking of elementary school, Dana thought as she crossed the main floor, started up the stairs to administration, she herself felt as if she’d just gotten hauled into the principal’s office. A lowering sensation for a grown woman. And one, she decided, she was sick of experiencing.
    Outside Joan’s door, Dana took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. She might feel like a guilty six-year-old, but she wasn’t going to look like one.
    She knocked, briskly, then opened the door without waiting for a response. “You wanted to see me?”
    At her desk, Joan leaned back. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled into in a no-nonsense bun that, oddly enough, flattered her.
    She wore a dark vest over a white blouse that was primly buttoned to her throat. The material hung flat, with barely a ripple to indicate there were breasts beneath it.
    Rimless half-glasses dangled from a gold chain around her neck. Dana knew her shoes would be low-heeled and sturdy and as no-nonsense as the hairstyle.
    She looked, Dana decided, scrawny and dull—and the very image of the cliché that kept children out of libraries in droves.
    Since Joan’s mouth was already set in disapproval, Dana didn’t expect the meeting to be a cheerful one.
    â€œShut the door, please. It appears, Dana, that you continue to have difficulty adjusting to the new policies and protocol I’ve implemented here.”
    â€œSo, Sandi raced right up to tattle that I was actually reading a book. Of all the horrors to commit in a public library.”
    â€œYour combative attitude is only one of the problems we have to deal with.”
    â€œI’m not going to stand here and defend myself for skimming a couple pages of a book while I was working in the stacks. Part of my function is to be informed about books, not just to point the patrons toward an area and wish them Godspeed. I do my job, Joan, and my evaluations from the previous director were never less than exemplary.”
    â€œI’m not the previous director.”
    â€œDamn straight. Less than six weeks after you took over, you cut my, and two other long-term employees’, hours and paychecks nearly in half. And your niece gets a promotion and a raise.”
    â€œI was hired to pull this institution out of financial decline, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m not required to explain my administrative decisions to you.”
    â€œNo, you don’t have to. I get it. You don’t like me, I don’t like you. But I don’t have to like everyone I work with or for. I can still do my job.”
    â€œIt’s your job to follow the rules.” Joan flipped open a file. “Not to make and receive personal phone calls. Not to use library equipment for personal business. Not to spend twenty minutes gossiping with a patron while your duties are neglected.”
    â€œHold it.” Baffled rage spewed into her throat like a geyser. “Just hold it one minute. What’s she doing, making daily reports on me?”
    Joan flipped the file shut. “You think too much of yourself.”
    â€œOh, I see. Not just on me. She’s your personal mole, burrowing around the place digging up infractions.”
    Oh, yes, Dana thought, when enough was enough you definitely finished it. “Maybe the budget here has had its ups and downs, but this was always a friendly place, familial. Now it’s just a drag run by the gestapo commandant and her personal weasel. So I’ll do us both a favor. I quit.I’ve got a week’s sick leave and a week’s vacation coming. We’ll just consider that my two weeks’ notice.”
    â€œVery well. You can have your resignation on my desk by the end of your shift.”
    â€œScrew that. This is my resignation.” She took a deep breath.