Chapter 6
What the fuck? I was prepared to face some hard-hitting questions about my double degree or the tiny hole in my resume that Pen wanted me to answer as delicately as possible.
I was not prepared to face a firing squad that asked why I wanted so desperately to be the paid whore of a man sitting a meter away from me across a meeting table.
Short answer: I don’t want to; I fucking need to.
Both men were clothed in tailored suits, shirts, and ties that were classic, beautiful and, I’m guessing, overpriced as hell.
Trystan, with his sandy blond hair and eyes that danced with a humor I found comforting until he loaded a new clip and began firing.
To have me sweating rivulets of perspiration under the inappropriate blouse, because amethyst and a layer of salty sheen are not friends.
Then everything leveled up when Mason Mercer, CEO, entered the equation and the conversation.
He’s not the austere prick who stared through me from the article I dug up on the way here.
No, that would be his father. This guy is a much younger, much better-looking version of masculine perfection that had me clenching my thighs whenever he opened his mouth, which was a lot.
I didn’t think he would sit in on the first round of interviews, but he did, for the entire hour.
He had his own way of asking questions I found difficult to answer, leaning forward in the chair as if my answers were the key to some world problem only he and I could figure out together.
As his focus seemed to hang on every word, I had to remind myself that he was doing the same process with many applicants.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that Wanda had been the applicant prior to my arrival, and the realization bottomed out my stomach.
She’d be the better fit, for sure, and she’d probably do it for free, or the publicity would garner her sagging career.
Is she, or anyone in her family, facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses?
Of course not! If so, they would have the funds to cover them, or be adequately insured so they could focus their efforts on treatment, support, and well-wishes.
I wanted to break down in the elevator. Fuck, I wanted the marble to fissure and swallow me into the depths of the earth when I shook hands prior to leaving.
Both Trystan and Mason, with their buttery soft, manicured hands, grasped my sweaty one.
I know I messed up more than one interview question.
The entire hour was a hot mess of polite responses and my persistent internal dialogue of whether to stick with the prearranged script or go rogue.
I was expecting his father, not some handsome legacy tycoon who needed a corporate fuck buddy.
So, I held it together enough to thank them both for their time, farewell Helen and Sean at their respective desks, and hotfoot it out of there.
Trystan had promised to be in touch, a line I vaguely remember over the blood whooshing in my ears.
Once down to the foyer level again, I stride over to Sapphire and return the badge and winning smile.
“You too,” I all but vomit when she tells me to have a great day. Only once I’m back in the sedan and heading for home, do the tears fall from lashes unable to contain them any longer. Hands that won’t dry out still stretch over the charcoal skirt in repetitive movements.
“Glorious day, innit?” the driver says, surveying the expanse of cobalt sky on either side of the bridge as we cross.
“Sure is,” I stammer out, blinking as my head continues to stare out of the side window.
If I make eye contact with the driver in the mirror, I will have no chance of holding back the threatening dam any further.
The overwhelming sense of helplessness requires a wall for me to slide down and rock in the fetal position, not banter about the glorious fucking weather in a town car.
My streamlined palm cuts a knife edge through the water as I propel myself forward with alternating arms and a four-beat kick.
Each stroke is a seamless, rhythmic motion designed for peak fluidity and efficiency, and to minimize drag.
Thankfully, it’s all muscle memory, or I’d be screwed, my head lost to a vortex of swirling answers to the questions asked of me earlier.
Smart, sassy answers, not the rubbish I provided.
Why do you want this job? I don’t want this job; I need this job.
Way to go, Bri, you couldn’t have sounded more desperate if you tried.
A CEO and his very experienced, dapper assistant bore witness to you practically throwing yourself onto the mahogany and begging with clasped hands.
Wait, you did beg. Oh, for fuck’s sake, could this get any worse?
My feet mesh into a messy blur of unsophisticated five beats per stroke until I feel like I’m actually having one—a stroke, that is.
I crash into the edge of the pool and rip the goggles and cap from my face and head, my breathing more gasping and as messy as my feet were in that last lap.
Inhale the chlorine-addled air; exhale the pain.
My lungs heave as I float there, chin resting on crossed arms until my respiration returns to normal.
This act seems to take a ridiculous amount of time.
Water beads on my goose-pimpled skin, each puffy exhale an attempt to assuage the feeling of hopelessness.
If I can’t watch it dissolve into the pool drain, hopefully I can breathe the rest away under the rippling water near the lane ropes.
Get out of my lane and into another. I admonish all the negative thoughts and ways I’d completely and utterly fucked up today’s meeting.
Pen will be disappointed and has every right to be.
The lost agency commission alone is more than I earned in acquisitions.
Mom and Cait will be devastated; another layer of tortured emotion piled onto their already heaping plates.
By the time I heave myself out of the pool and drip-walk over to my towel, I can just see the barest hint of sky beginning to welcome the twilight.
The brilliant blue of the day dissolved into violets and gold, announcing early evening, and I still have to shower, dry my hair, and go to my parent’s house for dinner for Liam’s twenty-seventh birthday.
My brother, Liam, is the comedian of the family, and I’ll plant myself next to him for a huge dose of his unbridled positivity and quick wit.
His partner, Geoffrey, at thirty-five, is softly spoken and the polar opposite to Liam’s court jester role.
Together, somehow they just work. Now, if only Geoffrey had a proposal planned before dessert, then the family focus could move off Caitlin and her woes, off me and the inevitable questions about a job I no longer have, and onto something perfect, positive, and long overdue. Love.
The house thrums with its own pulse of chatter as I push through the unlocked door and into the passageway crowded with family pictures, before an eight-month-old is placed into my arms.
“Here’s your aunty Sab to save the day, Niamh,” my sister-in-law coos, off to the kitchen to receive a glass of wine held out to her by her husband, and my oldest brother, Connor. He plants a wet kiss on his wife’s cheek with a mwah, as I circle the table still clutching a wriggling niece.
“She sure smells better now, hey,” my dad says, chuckling at his own joke before downing a hefty gulp from his pint.
He sends a wink across the table at Ryaa, Kynan’s girlfriend who is heavily pregnant and due any day now; a sure sign that this is all in store for her soon. The good, the bad, and the smelly.
“She was stinky,” my nephew says, looking up from his toy cars zooming along the worn timber floor.
Niamh blinks up at me while I’m still holding her like a sack of groceries and breaks into a huge gummy grin.
The goos and ers of baby babble is what I needed tonight, and I drink in her baby scent as those chubby hands wave around before clutching and refusing to release a lock of hair.
Mom’s sister, our aunt Maeve, works in tandem with her to serve dish after dish of braised beef and roast vegetables, mashed potatoes and buttered green beans, fried chicken and corn casserole.
Somehow, both women have a knack for turning a couple of bags of groceries into a spread fit for an army.
If the Bible has the story of fishes and loaves, the Broes do the same with meat and potatoes.
Making food go further was a divine skill when fourteen or more could be huddled around our dining table at any one meal.
Glasses are replenished with liquor of choice while Dad bickers with Connor about football and world politics. Caitlin sits next to Geoffrey, his quiet calm mirroring her own.
“I said no phones at the table, boys. Turn ‘em off or fucking leave without food,” my mother groans, rolling her eyes at her sister to show she’s raised a cave full of savages.
“Glyndon Seamus, my ageing eyes must be deceiving me because I swear I see a cell phone in that meaty palm of yours.” Dad looks up, wide-eyed in protest, before sliding the phone across the seersucker tablecloth and into his back pocket.
“Aye, no phone here, woman.” Dad takes another swig from his drink.
He glares at Connor before rolling his eyes with a smirk.
“And Bub, don’t think I’m not disappointed that you came in alone and not with that handsome Ben.” Molly Broe has an uncanny ability to converse with multiple people at once. Dad can’t save me any more than I can him.
“We broke up, I told you that.”