Excerpt: Second Best

“I don’t know how you stand it.”

“How I stand what? The view?”

“The view, I could get used to. No, I don’t understand how you can bear just doing this all day. Having to pretend you’re a grown-up.”

“I am a grown-up!” Kiarra protested. Pietero ignored her.

“How can you stand this much…” she waved her hands ineffectually as she searched for this word. “Relaxation?”

Kiarra roared with laughter, a good hearty laugh rather than the ladylike show put on by most of the women they’d encountered while shopping. “How do I stand the relaxation? You mean this life of leisure and luxury? Yeah, it’s terrible, isn’t it, not having a care in the world.”

Pietero smiled a little at her choice of words, but she pressed the point. “The thing is, though, there isn’t all that much to do. Yes, of course, it must be relaxing, but I think I’d go mad if all I had to do all day was to go shopping and make food and then sit around admiring the view.”

“No, you’d go running off into the view, spatter blood all over it by slaughtering an animal and then cook that for dinner.”