Chapter 5 The Best Candidate
The Best Candidate
JAMIE
Iwoke up Monday morning to see my bungalow’s window streaked with rain. I grimaced, rubbing a hand over my face. My beard audibly scraped against the rough of my palm.
Good. Let the weather be shit. It was fitting.
My tortoiseshell, Stu, meowed acidly at me from the floor.
“I’m up,” I grumbled at him. I headed for the kitchen, where I refilled Stu’s bowl as he snaked around my legs impatiently. I gave him a good scratch behind the ears before standing up again and glowering out the rain-streaked window.
It wasn’t the rain causing my foul mood, though it didn’t help. It was the weekend, which had been fucking painful.
On Friday, after dropping Roger off, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I took a breath I smelled sunscreen and cherries. Every time I closed my eyes I felt her hair passing through my fingers. The next two days were more of the same, and I woke up Monday morning feeling like ten miles of rough road.
I was a damned fool. I’d gotten smitten by a damned tourist. One who probably got her kicks teasing an older man.
But that didn’t fit. None of it fit.
It didn’t matter—she was there and she was gone, and she’d only served to remind me why I kept things casual and guarded.
Why my life was better as it was. I liked my life: my house, with its clean gutters and regularly painted trim; my truck, which was ten years old and fully paid off, just like my home.
My company, which was exhausting the shit out of me lately, but in a few years, would be Seamus’s concern.
I liked things as they were, and I didn’t like breaking up my routines.
Routines kept me from wanting things I couldn’t have, like beautiful, complex women, who flashed in and out of my life like a meteor.
After my workout and shower, I headed outside to grab my morning paper. Every day was the same: I’d skim the local news and business sections, then whip through the crossword puzzle with my coffee.
See? Routines.
But when I picked up the paper that morning, it drooped in my hand, fully soaked.
I scowled and chucked the pulpy roll straight into the recycling bin. Which of course, pinged my back.
“Fuck!” I gritted out as I twisted my torso to crack it back into place. My back had been bothering me too; a reminder of the shitty folding chairs from Friday night, and the aggressive yard work I’d done all weekend trying to forget how badly I wished I was still sitting in mine. With her.
Half an hour later, I was still cursing as I got out of my truck and jogged across the street toward Reilly Contracting Group, the construction firm I ran with Seamus.
“Morning, Jamie!” Cora, our receptionist, sang out as I stamped my feet on the welcome mat.
“Morning,” I grumbled.
Cora frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“The rain’s good for your garden though, right?”
Guilt at my crabbiness had me pausing. For the briefest moment, I missed our long time receptionist, Joyce, who’d been with me since Seamus was in diapers. Joyce would have asked me who pissed in my Cheerios.
“It is, Cora. I appreciate your positivity.”
Cora beamed. She was a sweet kid. Young and green, but totally competent.
She was right about the rain, of course.
But I couldn’t help thinking if the rain had come earlier, all the digging I did in the garden this weekend would have been a helluva lot easier.
If it had come on Friday, I wouldn’t have been up at the lookout, that night never would have happened, and I’d be the better for it.
I tried to walk by her to the back, where my office was. But as I passed her desk, she held a folder up at me. “Resumes for this morning’s interviews.”
My stomach churned. Not that this was a surprise.
On top of everything, Seamus was leaving me.
He was doing a secondment at a construction firm in New York State with an indefinite return date.
And this right after he’d convinced me to expand the business.
Backfilling Seamus’s position was going to be next to impossible, at least not with someone as good as he was.
We were a well-oiled machine. Plus, I was going to miss him like a phantom limb.
I grabbed the file from Cora. “Thank you.”
“My absolute pleasure, Jamie.”
I scowled, shouldering my way through the door, but at least waited until she couldn’t see my face.
It smelled blessedly like fresh coffee. Feeling a little better, I followed my nose to the kitchenette, where I found Seamus wolfing down a bowl of cereal as he flipped through the same set of papers I had tucked under my arm.
He glanced up, then down to the papers again. “Morning, Dad.”
My chest pinched. Seamus looked, in this moment, like the teenaged boy he’d once been.
Seamus hadn’t been the pain in the ass Roger warned me teens could be.
He’d been my saving grace. The only thing that kept me going.
I blinked back the wallop to my stomach thinking about those bleak days, and the gratitude for my son and our relationship on its heels.
“You okay?” Seamus asked, spoon paused midway to his mouth. “Fine.” I poured myself a cup of coffee, keeping my back to my son.
I wasn’t fine. I was a sentimental old fool.
I swallowed the coffee, willing the rich heat to cook some sense into me.
That must have been why I acted so out of character on Friday.
I was lonely, that was all. The thought put relief in reach.
I didn’t normally care about being on my own.
In fact, I preferred it. But with Seamus moving out of state, I would be truly on my own, and that was hitting me hard.
“So, this one looks great,” Seamus said finally. He always knew when not to press. We were good like that.
“Who is it?” I asked, taking another swig.
“Sarah Cooper. Hot shot from Cincinnati. She’s by far our best candidate.”
I’d looked these over last week, and again last night, and I concurred. But I knew better than to get my hopes up.
“She’s overqualified,” I said, turning and leaning on the counter. “Might have been let go.”
“Or might be looking for a change.”
My son, the optimist.
“She wasn’t let go,” Seamus said, leaning back in his chair.
He was the one who did the legwork on each candidate.
He was better at digging things up on the internet than me.
“I’ve got a friend of a friend who knows someone who works at that firm; he said there were tears at her going away party. From management.”
Interesting. I took another sip of coffee. Still, I remained skeptical. “This is a big demotion for her. In a small town seven hundred miles away.” I pictured a shark in a BMW, all hard lines and non-negotiables.
“Well, that’s what interviews are for.”
He was right, of course. And I should be glad someone so perfectly qualified had applied.
I’d always been of a mind that you hired the best of the best no matter what.
Plus, when Seamus came back, we were going to keep both roles.
Still, I wouldn’t go easy on the questions.
Seamus and I had a good cop, bad cop routine that worked well.
I was the bad cop, obviously. Interviewing for our next vacancy was going to be shit when he left.
I eyed my son. “You sure you want to go?”
Seamus leveled me with a glare. “Dad.”
I ran my hand over my eyes as if I might scrape my foul mood out of my head.
“Sorry,” I grumbled.
I was supportive of my son’s decision, which was partly professional, partly personal. I always supported him, even if it felt shitty for me personally. “Big shoes to fill.”
Seamus stretched. “You need fresh blood in here. Non-Reilly blood.”
I wrinkled my nose at his weird metaphor. “Maybe it is time for you to go.”
Seamus grinned, pushing up out of his chair. “Soon enough, Dad.” He opened the dishwasher to put his dishes inside. “But right now, you should go and do whatever you need to before Sarah gets here. She’s up first.”