Caitríona Michaels snapped her pencil in two actually snapped it in two equal halves as she glared across the large expanse of her office at the two junior executives shuffling their feet and staring, in obvious dismay, at the floor in front of her large desk. They reminded her of her little nieces, but she didn’t find them half as endearing.
Flyaway tendrils of her fiery red hair fell into her large grey eyes and she impatiently blew it away as she barked, “Tell me again why you were at a presentation, unprepared, before none other than the Tyson Waller.”
“MMs. Michaels, we’re terribly sor”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Caitríona snapped, interrupting Gareth Davies as he tried to stammer out an apology. “I want an explanation for why you bungled a meeting it took me four months and two weeks to negotiate! I got our feet in the door, why did you fail to prepare properly for a simple meeting?”
“We thought” Tracey Whitman, the second junior executive began.
“No, I’m going to take a wild stab and say you didn’t think at all! You just hustled on over there with empty brains and a sense of entitlement. He doesn’t owe us anything; he’s as rich as freaking Croesus, so no, he doesn’t need our business, we need his; I made that abundantly clear. Your role was to support the senior executive with you, and instead, Waller catches Gareth flirting with his personal assistant, whom, by the way, is his favorite niece and catches little Goldilocks, here, fast asleep at the table in the middle of a presentation!” she finished with a glare at Tracey’s blond locks.
Tracey flushed to the roots of her hair and, for the first time, Caitríona felt a spurt of sympathy for the girl. Deliberately, she mentally back-tracked, taking a much-needed gulp of air as she strove for control. Her famous Irish temper would be the death of her one of these days if she didn’t learn to control it.
She had heard it was now something of a legend around CaiCia Corporations Inc.; when other senior executives wanted a junior chewed out, they sent the person and his or her mistake to the CEO, meaning her. She didn’t know if anyone had noticed, but lately, she was getting more antsy than usual. CaiCia was her baby; hers and her sisters’ and named for both of them, but she had originated the idea and run it until it became the global giant it was today; Ciara, her baby sister had gotten married four years ago and seemed content to be a housewife these days, leaving her to run the company.
Slowly, Caitríona massaged her temples. Her fiery red hair was done up in a knot atop her head in deference to her corporate image.
At thirty-three, she was fast losing patience with people who made mistakes on the job, she decided. She was losing patience with executives who couldn’t control their team-mates. She was losing patience with workers who watched the clock all day, waiting for the nine to five hours to end. She was losing patience with a lot of things these days. At the core of her, she knew exactly what the problem was, though she had never had the courage to say it out loud; she was really dissatisfied with her current lifestyle. She wanted more; she wanted someone to greet her after work each day, she wanted someone to cuddle with on cold, rainy days. Okay, maybe that sounded mushy and totally as though she were asking for trouble, but the more she saw her sister and how happy she was lately, the more she toyed with the idea of not being so single anymore. She could have a kid or two, she thought; she didn’t necessarily need a man for that in this century, did she?
She had ice grey eyes, that could cool to zero degrees when she was mad, which had earned her the not-so-secret title of Ice Goddess; she had fair, almost pore-less, porcelain skin bedeviled with a smattering of freckles around the nose, no thanks to her Irish heritage; her cheeks were round and chubby and she had a slight double chin that made her self-conscious on occasion when she thought about it. Her hips and buttocks were so curvy they drew more than a few male stares when she walked by, but she had never really learned to love her plus size figure. Her breasts were large, round and firm; the perfect size of ‘delectable, small, throw pillows’ as one over-zealous admirer had murmured against her neck one night as he kissed her goodnight after their first date. He hadn’t gotten another date after that. Heck, he had been lucky to walk away with all his teeth.
Caitríona’s phone rang just then and she flicked a glance at it, almost wilting with relief when she saw it was Mr. Waller’s assistant finally returning her call.
“Get out,” she barked at the incompetent pair and they both turned as one and slunk out of the room, their proverbial tails tucked firmly between their legs. She would have HR issue a query, she decided. Maybe it was time to start revolutionizing her workforce, she thought. “Hello?” she murmured into the receiver.
“Ms. Michaels?”
“Yes, speaking. Hello, Andrea.”
“Yes ma’am. I spoke to Mr. Waller like you wanted. He says he’s not interested in um, further um, meetings with CaiCia at the moment.”
Caitríona was willing to bet he had been a little more explicit than that, but she appreciated the girl’s restraint and tact; the emphasis on the word meetings, alone, told her she had been mentally searching for a kinder word. She could use people like Andrea on her staff, she thought absently.
“Well, we’ll try other channels then,” she murmured. “Thanks, Andrea.”
She had no intention of trying other channels, she thought with a determined snort as she replaced the receiver. She wanted to do these projects with Waller and she would. Her corporation ran a department store with interests in over thirty states and she wanted to take it international now, but she didn’t kid herself; as good as she was, she needed a major corporation to team up with her or they would go under from costs alone.
She stared at her wristwatch. It was almost time for dinner with her sister and her family. Ciara and Sam Donovan, her husband, were blessed with the cutest twin girls and they had just turned three today.
***
“Sorry I’m late,” Caitríona called two hours later as she strode into the diner where her sister and family were gathered to celebrate the twins’ birthday. Caitríona beamed around at the table, quickly taking stock. Ciara was there with her husband Sam, who happened to be a heart surgeon; Ciara’s best friend Cindy was also seated at the table and there were Enya and Nessa Donovan looking as alike as two peas in a pod, their eyes sparkling with mirth and childlike joy.
“Aunt Cait!” they exclaimed, their childish voices ringing with unrestrained joy as they erupted from their seats like twin canons and hurled themselves at her legs.
Caitríona laughed as she dropped to her haunches to offer kisses and receive some herself.
“What did you get us?” Nessa demanded in typical fashion.
Caitríona laughed. “Guess? Guess?”
“Come on, Aunt Cait!” Enya piped, almost jumping out of her skin in her excitement as she added her voice to her twin’s.
Caitríona grinned at them; they were the light and joy of her life, she thought. They had bright blue eyes with identical dimples on both cheeks that made them look so sweet when they grinned and they still had a lot of baby fat that just made them so adorable, she cuddled them to herself every chance she got like now, she thought, chuckling as she hugged them close and inhaled their sweet baby scent. A sense of longing swept through her again, so powerful that it brought unshed tears to her eyes. Resolutely, she squeezed her eyes tighter, forcing the tears back.
“Your gifts have already been delivered to your home, bunnies,” she told them as she rose, in an ungainly motion, to her feet. Drat her excess weight; she really needed to start working out more, she thought for the umpteenth time.
Nessa and Enya made identical crows of delight, their eyes sparkling like fireworks, before racing back to their seats to continue stuffing their faces with ice cream. It wasn’t every day their doctor dad or disciplinarian mum allowed them to have ice cream, chocolate, and enough cookies to stuff Fairyland all in one day, and the little dears were apparently determined to eat enough to last them a lifetime.
Worriedly, she stared at her fat thighs, visible even through the thick material of her tailored pants and wondered if she should warn them off junk now. Ciara caught her eyes as she pulled out her own chair and shook her head slightly. Caitríona got the message; they were still kids, way too early for her to start foisting her own weight issues on them.
“Hi Sam,” Caitríona said, placing a peck on her brother-in-law’s smooth shaven cheek. The man was so handsome he made her eyes hurt just looking at him; Ciara had really picked a winner there. He was one of the most respected heart surgeons in all of Boston and recently, she had seen a medical journal which pegged him as the fifth most respected heart surgeon nationwide.
She tossed Cindy a wan smile; she had never really cared much for the girl; she was rail-thin and so haughty she made one positively itch to slap her. Plus, she always went out of her way to announce, in as many different ways as possible, that she didn’t like fat people; and whether by accident or design, that announcement always happened when Caitríona was near.
“Caitríona, how’s work?” Sam asked almost immediately as he carried a glass of wine to his lips and sipped slowly, his electric blue eyes fastened on her face. She read the amusement in them and knew he was deliberately trying to get her to focus on someone else.
Sam was Irish, as were Caitríona and her sister, but he didn’t have the famous Irish temper nor did he have a love of spirits; the man was a surgeon who took his work very seriously and frankly, as far as she was concerned, he didn’t seem Irish in the least, probably because his mother had been French and he had been born and bred in France. She loved him dearly, she thought, grinning at him. He was so good to her, he never made her feel bad about her weight and best of all, he was a total jewel to her baby sister and her nieces. They were so happy, she thought, looking around with a pang of nostalgia sweeping through her.
“Work was infuriating,” she sighed, her eyes darkening with anger as she remembered Gareth and Tracey. It was a good thing she had been holding a pencil because she would have snapped their necks in two with her bare hands otherwise. And if she had, she wouldn’t be sitting here enjoying dinner with her family, she would probably be sitting in some dingy cell talking her head off and demanding an attorney.
“Ooh, one of those days, huh? Do tell,” Cindy invited, leaning forward.
Caitríona couldn’t help it, she rolled her eyes; actually rolled them.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she announced. She would talk about it, but only when Barbie Two-Wonder was gone, she decided.
“What a drag,” Cindy said airily, leaning back in her chair. “You know, obese people do tend to have more horrid days at work,” she said conversationally as she casually leaned forward and took a roll of muffin from the basket.
Ciara gasped, Sam groaned; it took Caitríona a minute to catch on and when she did, she tossed a basilisk-like glare across the table at the skinny bitch.
“What? They’ve done the studies,” Cindy said with a laugh that sounded like a horse neighing. “For some reason, they tend to be super sensitive and”
“Did you just call me obese?” Caitríona demanded, so angry, suddenly, it was a wonder actual smoke did not begin to erupt from her ears.
“I didn’t, actually. I was just making conversation,” Cindy assured her with a butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth expression. “But I find it interesting that you were so sensitive, exactly like the study”
That was how far she got before a well-aimed blow slammed into her nose, breaking it with a satisfying crunch. She emitted a high pitched wail that drew every last gaze in the restaurant as her hands flew to her now-bleeding nose.
The entire restaurant fell silent, with no one at any table so much as moving an eyelash as all eyes fastened onto Caitríona’s red, angry face. Cindy slowly staggered to her feet, grabbed her purse and raced toward the restroom.
Ciara was watching her sister with barely concealed concern, and no wonder because, for all that she had a temper, Caitríona had never been the violent sort. Heck, from childhood till now, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d hit anyone.
Slowly, she dropped her head in her hands, groaning as she recalled that she had hit the woman with her nieces watching. As though they had the exact same thought at the same time, Ciara surged to her feet and grabbed hold of her kids.
“I’ll take them home,” she said to her husband and headed for the exit without another glance at her sister. She was upset and with good reason; any form of violence reminded her of their father who had loved using his fists until the cops took him away.
Caitríona shut her eyes in dismay; she had betrayed and hurt her sister, she had probably marred her little nieces for life, and she would probably be brought up on criminal charges, but deep inside, she couldn’t really regret hitting the bitch.
“She had it coming,” she blurted out, half-ashamed to look up into Sam’s kind eyes. He was regarding her steadily now, as though she were a patient or something.
“You won’t get any argument from me on that, she was goading you,” he said softly.
Caitríona raised her eyes in surprise to his and his eyes twinkled as he grinned at her. “Well, hey, if you hadn’t hit her, I would have; in my mind, of course,” he added with a grin.
She chuckled wearily, “What you must think of me.”
“What do you think of yourself?” he asked gently.
What was he, a psychologist too? She looked up at him suspiciously. “You aren’t trying to psychoanalyze me, are you?” she demanded.
“And how would that make you feel if I were?” he asked with a straight face.
It was too much, Caitríona dissolved into laughter grateful to him for his equanimity. “Well, I would probably break your nose too,” she joked.
Silence.
“Kidding,” she said hastily.
Sam watched her steadily, then shook his head with a grin as he said. “Not on some level, you’re not. What’s going on with you, Caitríona? I sense you’re…dissatisfied with something. What is it?”
She shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Let’s hear it.”
“Sam”
“Doctor-patient privilege,” he said. “Your sister would never know,” he assured her.
“You’re not my doctor,” she pouted.
“Yes, I am. Now, go on,” he ordered.
Caitríona sighed. “I had a bad day at the office.”
She waited for him to say something smart-alecky like ‘Yeah we covered that’, but he didn’t and she relaxed further.
“I snapped a pencil in two,” she confessed.
“Why?”
In a slow halting voice, she recounted everything to him, apart from the part where she had finally admitted to herself that she wanted a baby. She was still dealing with that herself.
“If this meeting was so dashed important and took you so long to get a date, why didn’t you go yourself?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Come on, I know you. You are such a perfectionist you think the place would fall to pieces if you weren’t there holding up the pillars. What took you away from that meeting?”
“I just couldn’t work up any excitement for it,” she confessed. “Besides, I was busy.”
“Ah. Busy doing what?” Sam wanted to know.
“That’s the thing. I just filed my nails, and stared off into space for two whole hours,” she said in a low voice. “What’s wrong with me, Sam?”
“Two words; burn out. You need a vacation.”
“What?”
“It’s when people take time off from work to ” he began patiently.
“I know what it is,” she cut in.
“Good, because I’m recommending one. Get out of Boston for at least a week. Doctor’s orders!”