My Wanderlust Bites the Dust
Page 17
Chapter Twenty-One
I sat on the black leather chair in Flanagan’s waiting room, silently practicing my pitch, pretending to read a magazine featuring an article with the brewery’s CEO, Matthew McHugh. He was fiftyish, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair. He had on a suit jacket and tie with dark jeans. His relaxed stance and kind smile made him look approachable, unlike his assistant, Gemma, who sat at a black steel-framed desk outside his door. The young woman who’d screwed up Rachel’s meetings.
Her blue eyes kept shooting me curious, and suspicious, glances. Did she know Rachel and I were sisters? How hadn’t I realized she was the CEO’s admin? So if I landed the job, I’d have an enemy right off the bat. She’d be my new Gretchen. Everyone’s workplace had a Gretchen. However, now that I’d likely never work with Gretchen again, I was growing to tolerate her.
Gemma answered a ringing phone and scribbled on a pad of paper. She hung up and was typing away on her computer when the phone rang again. She put the call on hold while she checked the CEO’s schedule on her computer. Maybe she’d be happy to not have to go on-site for meetings. Maybe she constantly screwed up because she didn’t have time for it and was trying to do her regular admin duties while working a meeting.
I checked my phone for the dozenth time. Still no text from Rachel. At least her contacting Declan to come here was a step in the right direction. But I still wished that she’d be happier if I got the position than if I didn’t.
A photographic history of the brewery lined the wall, including the Brecker integration meeting I’d worked in Dublin last fall. My heart stopped. There was a shot of me dressed in a sausage costume standing between Flanagan’s CEO and Brecker’s. My blue eyes were visible through the costume’s mouth. What if Gemma recognized my eyes? Was that why she kept looking at me? She was trying to place where she’d seen me before? Or maybe she’d already known it was me. Maybe the small type under the photo mentioned my name. When I started working for Flanagan’s and took over Gemma’s meeting planning duties, she’d tell everyone about me having been a Kildare Sausage.
My breathing quickened. I felt like I was once again suffocating inside the sausage costume!
I peered out the glass doors at employees passing by in the hallway. The elevator just fifty feet away.
“Mr. McHugh will now see you,” Gemma said.
I slowly stood. “Thank you.”
My gaze darted between the glass doors and the CEO’s wooden door—unsure what waited on the other side. I took a deep, encouraging breath and walked past her desk, feeling her gaze follow me toward the CEO’s office. I had the feeling she knew who I was but didn’t know why I was there. The sausage picture shouldn’t make me feel embarrassed or ashamed. It should make me proud of how far I’d come. A lot of people started out dressed as a sausage. Well, probably not. But maybe the CEO had started out peddling beers in the stands at rugby games. Everyone started somewhere. In only four months, I’d gone from a sausage to a meeting with the CEO.
I could do this.
* * *
I headed down the sidewalk toward Coffey’s pub, my hand trembling as I disconnected my call with Rachel. She needed to be the first to know how my meeting had gone with Matthew McHugh. I didn’t want her to hear about it from the CEO or Gemma. She hadn’t reacted quite as I’d expected. I was still trying to process exactly how she felt about it.
Heart pounding, I entered the pub. The place had just opened, so the scent of freshly polished wood overpowered that of beer and whiskey. Two people sat at the bar. Declan and Gerry. Declan and I locked gazes, and the nervous feeling in my chest intensified. None of us said a word as I walked the length of the bar.
Declan slipped off his stool, wearing a hesitant smile, a cautious look in his blue eyes. “Well?”
I slowly smiled. “I’m going to be a Dubliner.”
I left out that the job would be a contract position without benefits, yet the CEO had insisted I live in Dublin to be available to go on-site for all meetings, including an upcoming one in Scotland.
I’d worry about that later.
“Brilliant!” Declan wrapped me in a hug and kissed me, filling my mouth with the faint coffee taste of Guinness.
“Fair play to ya.” Gerry handed me a pint of cider ale in a logoed Flanagan’s glass.
We all raised glasses of my new employer’s beer. “Sláinte.”
I’d never dreamed that tracing Grandma’s ancestry roots would give me the roots I needed to plant myself in Ireland.
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading My Wanderlust Bites the Dust. If you enjoyed Caity’s adventures, I would greatly appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. Reviews encourage potential readers to give my stories a try, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks a mil!
About Eliza Watson
When Eliza isn’t traveling for her job as an event planner, or tracing her ancestry roots through Ireland, she is at home in Wisconsin working on her next novel. She enjoys bouncing ideas off her husband, Mark, and her cats Frankie and Sammy.
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