LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 6

       Treading on Toes, Financial Woes and Post-Divorce Goals

       Seth

      Seth Knightley stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, and automatically took a step back as he lifted the bathroom door gently to aid opening it.

      He’d only needed one close encounter with the ‘slicing zone’, the first morning he’d moved back into his childhood home, for his toes to remember the danger.

      Muscle memory was weird, he thought, remembering how at sixteen, after the family dog had sadly departed this world, it had taken him months to stop taking that extra-wide step every time he got up off the sofa so that he didn’t accidentally step on his old faithful friend, Digger.

      He eased a hand across the old familiar ache in his heart. He hadn’t thought about Digger in years.

      Probably something about this place because speaking of weird, a few months living back at Knightley Hall and all he’d done was think.

      About things.

      All the things.

      Okay, let’s get real. This place might provide the perfect ruminating ambiance but it was signing the divorce papers that had brought about that perfect trifecta of cogitation also known as: thinking about the past, present and future.

      A necessary but hard task since all the work he’d put in over the years to deliberately shut-down philosophising on life’s hard questions.

      Life was too short and at twenty Seth had learned the hard truth – that sometimes there were no reasons for what went down. You just had to look forward and get through, collecting as little shrapnel as possible.

      The approach had served him well until at twenty-eight, finding himself at the end of something that hadn’t worked right from the beginning … probably because of too little thinking on his part, he’d been forced to conclude that going forward it might help to find out where he stood on the really big things.

      Escaping the cloud of steam from the bathroom, he headed back to his room, bumping straight into his brother, Jake, in the hallway.

      ‘Going somewhere?’ Jake asked.

      Seth shoved hair that was not quite as long and was shades lighter than his brother’s raven-coloured-brooding-Poldark-look back from his face and considered his answer.

      Actually he had two places to be – the first place on account of now knowing where he stood on the really big things and the second place … yeah … there was no way it needed to get out how he made his living these days.

      He had time before he needed to be at either though and contributing free labour around the place was, for the time being, the only way Seth could help out.

      ‘You want me to drive that framework for the courtyard garden over to The Clock House?’ he asked. It had been hard, sweaty work loading the iron fret-work Jake had designed onto one of Oscar’s flat-bed trucks so that it could be installed in the courtyard garden of the clock house later that week. Seth knew Jake was miffed about the project being badly delayed but he really hoped his brother wasn’t heading down there this afternoon to get a head-start on the installation. He’d been counting on Jake working in the gardens here, so that he could go to the clock house himself. He had a desk booked at Hive @ The Clock House and it was going to be hard enough to avoid all the curious looks, without Jake wading in with blunt questions as to what he was doing.

      ‘No need, I’ll do it tomorrow,’ Jake answered. ‘So have you got a job interview or something, then?’

      Irritation wormed its way under Seth’s usual happy-go-lucky demeanour. That particular question came out of his brother’s mouth more often than the summer’s hit was played on the radio and played in his ear like the worst kind of ear-worm. If he had his way he’d be working here at Knightley Hall, not necessarily drawing a salary yet, but definitely recognised as part of the team.

      But in order to be part of the team what he really needed to do was nail the presentation he was working on.

      It was as simple and as difficult as that.

      Simple because selling, whether it be a country estate, or a trip to the dentist, was supposed to be right in his wheelhouse, and so who was he if he couldn’t sell Jake on the idea this place could work harder for him, rather than the other way around?

      Difficult because ever since he’d lost his job as a sales negotiator for an independent estate agency specialising in large manor house sales and got divorced, and ended up back at Knightley Hall sleeping in his old childhood room, he’d been somewhat off his game.

      Not that he’d let anyone notice enough to comment

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