Excerpt

Heather rose to her feet, straightening the stack of slick Wells & Hancock PR folders on the conference table in front of her. “No,” she said in her quiet, firm voice. “That’s unacceptable. I can’t believe you want me to follow in my predecessor’s footsteps. I was told fixing Lester’s mess is the reason you brought me on. Moved me all the way here to Cork from New York.”

“You come highly recommended,” her new supervisor, Jeff, murmured.

“Not as a sledgehammer. My specialty is building long-term relationships with our clients. The shipping company executives you’ve been targeting are disgusted by Lester’s take-no-prisoners-attitude and his pitbull behavior. You have to understand each shipping executive sees their role in developing the port in Cork differently. They do want to participate, but at varying levels. Most of them already have ongoing obligations to their ancillary businesses in Dublin.”

“What makes you such an expert?” Jeff asked. When he raised his chin like that, he looked just like his namesake uncle and half owner of the Manhattan based firm, Mr. Jeffrey Wells. She’d also carefully considered that complication before accepting this assignment.

“You’ve only been here a few days,” Jeff pointed out the obvious.

I did all my homework before I accepted this promotion,” she said. “We need to—”

“Your first assignment,” Jeff-the-jerk spoke over her, “is to figure out which contracts with W&H are missing signatures and follow up immediately on those.”

She stayed calm. “There wasn’t much in Lester’s desk and his office PC was wiped clean. Do you have his business phone, or a diary or any of his call records?”

“No. But as I just said, we need to identify the unsigned contracts to know who to go after.”

The nephew was a nightmare. Instead of listening, he was mansplaining her job priorities to her? “Before we go after anyone, we need to figure out how badly Lester harassed these people already.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jeff insisted. “Most of the contracts are coming up on their due dates. The one that jumps out is with Muirdris Shipping.” Jeff waved a sheaf of legal-length papers in the air. ” Nothing has been signed by Mr. Rudraige and several are about to expire. You need to track him down. Get his signature now. Today.”

Not without a current assessment of Mr. Rudraige’s attitude toward W&H. “Do you know how the Muirdris manager feels—”

“Mr. Liam Rudraige doesn’t have feelings.” The way Jeff said the word made it sound dirty. “He’s a Director of Muirdris Shipping. And one of the very first and most vocal supporters of the Port of Cork expansion. Unless he recently had a complete change of heart, he should have signed all of these contracts with our company a year ago and be ready and willing to renew today.”

Trying to reason with Jeff was futile. The man wasn’t listening. His default response was to argue with her. Better appear to go along until she could figure out Rudraige’s state of mind toward their PR firm on her own. “I’ll do my best to contact the Muirdris director today and—”

“Your best? Like hell, just get his damn signature,” Jeff finished her sentence on his own terms.