Shopping for a CEO's Fiancée
Among other things.
“I know your idea of work and my idea of work are in different columns,” she says seriously. “Work is what you do to get ahead. To pay the bills. To find meaning.”
“Work isn’t some separate category,” I add. “It’s integrated into who I am. I am Anterdec now. I am not just the face of the company, Amanda. Being a CEO is different than having any other job on the planet.”
“I know.”
“I’m not saying that to be arrogant, or brag.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me, Andrew. I understand.”
“Do you? Really?”
“I’m trying to. Your reality is different from most people’s. Your family lives a life very removed from most of us.”
“You make me feel like I’m exiled,” I say, half joking.
Half.
“In a way, you are. Sometimes I feel sorry for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not in a poor-little-rich-boy kind of way. But fame and fortune have costs I never realized before.”
“Like what?” I settle in, setting aside my work mind. I’m intrigued.
“It’s not just the busyness. Not just the demands on your time, or the fact that, like you said—you are Anterdec. All of you except Terry. I’m seeing that better now. Your company isn’t some institution your father created to make money. It’s like giving birth to a child and raising it. And you’re being handed your father’s baby.”
“Is this part of the whole ‘you’re bad at analogies’ problem? Because I am my father’s baby.” Sounds weird to say it that way, but truth is truth.
She laughs. “So is the company. And you’re struggling with the transfer of power. You’re in massive transition right now.”
“In more ways than one.” I take her hand and watch as she reacts, changing before my eyes. “We’re in transition, too.”
“Yes.”
“Each of us, separately, and both of us, together.”
“Mmm hmmm.” Her mouth is full of coffee.
“What about you?” I ask. “Did you always want to be a mystery shopper manager? Work in marketing?”
As the words come out of my mouth, her eyes change from purely curious to suspiciously confused. “What?”
“Was this your career goal?”
“You’re joking, right?”
“No. Why would I joke?”
She sighs. “Exhibit #1, Your Honor.”
“I’m on trial? For what crime?”
“Being exiled.” She frowns. “I went into marketing because it was a job. With a paycheck, and the holy grail of full benefits. I didn’t set out to be in this field, Andrew. I found it out of necessity.”
“What did you want to do? When you were younger?”
“You mean, what’s my heart’s work? Follow your bliss and all that?”
I groan. “God, no. I hate that phrase.”
“You do? Why?”
“Because no one actually finds meaning and money in their bliss. You can’t. It’s like…” I fumble for the right words.
“Trying to orgasm and pee at the same time?” she offers.
“Exactly like that.”
“Maybe I don’t suck at analogies after all.”
I kiss the top of her mussed head. “No. You do.”
We chuckle as the wind whips the rain against my closed balcony slider. It sounds like a phalanx of kids with BB guns shooting at us.
Amanda looks at the rainstorm. “Glad I don’t have to go anywhere immediately.”
“I can just have Gerald or Lance take you wherever, anyhow. You never need to set foot outside.”
She gives me a funny look.
I drink my coffee and shut up.
“I assumed you’d have your pick of careers. You were raised with wealth. Access. The finest educations and all that. I’d assume kids raised the way you were raised could major in basket weaving and not worry about money.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Illuminate me.”
“Maybe it works that way for some of the kids I went to Milton with. But if it did, I didn’t know any of them. The rest of us had the pressure put on us in preschool. Like a fire hose aimed at your permanent record nonstop.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why did our parents hold us to high standards?”
“Yeah.”
“For Dad, it was about making sure we could take over the company. Keep the McCormick name in stellar shape. Grow Anterdec and turn it into an international giant.”
“So far, so good.”
I shake my head. “It’s been Dad, mostly. Dec’s done some good deals for the hospitality branch, but it’s all on me as we move forward.” A rush of responsibility fills me, like the crush of a crowd trying to make it to the front of a stage at a huge rock concert. Thousands of work details, big and small, shove at me.
“You’ll do well. James wouldn’t have picked you if he didn’t believe in you.”
“You really think that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I think Dad picked me to punish Declan.” There. I said it. Amanda’s the first person I’ve ever confided in.
“Really? He’s still mad? After all these years?”
“It’s never going away. Never.”
“I don’t understand that kind of anger. Why keep it inside? Why let it eat away at you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know any different.” Amanda finishes her cup and plucks my empty one from my hands, turning away, walking through the door.