Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)(112)

“No, dear, she wasn’t headhunting me.” Phyllis grinned. “She’s headhunting you.”

“What?” I must have misunderstood.

“Or more specifically, WEI has been watching PCE for the last year.”

“They have?”

“Yes. And they would like to bring PCE in as a charter.”

“No way.”

“I absolutely would not joke about this.”

“Omigod, omigod, omigod!” I pushed my chair back and jumped up and down a couple of times. I might’ve screamed.

Phyllis was laughing at me. “I knew you’d react this way! Isn’t it just unbelievable?”

“Yes! This is huge. WEI doesn’t have any charters in Arizona. And the cities that do have a WEI charter? The members have access to the WEI database, their speaker’s bureau, their conferences, not to mention the whole financial side and the worldwide networking.”

“I know. I’m in shock. This is beyond anything I could’ve ever hoped for, Sierra.”

“Me too.” I lowered into my chair. “But why us? Isn’t the vetting process done by the CIA or something?”

She laughed. “No. But it is very thorough and like I said, they’ve tested PCE a few times.”

“Tested. Like how?”

“From what Pashma told me, WEI sends a new potential member to PCE for guidance with a marketable product. How things are handled at each stage earns a rating. If the first test is failed, there are no others. If the first test is passed, then two more tests are conducted, a product with limited marketability and one that isn’t viable at all. Evidently honesty earns the highest value points. PCE passed all three tests. We passed the requirements for a well-run, well-organized meeting that is welcoming to new members yet continues to be relevant to existing members. We show continued membership growth. We have a variety of mentors across age, race, cultural and educational backgrounds. In fact, PCE had the highest test values of any charter in the past four years.”

I could scarcely wrap my head around all of this.

“And that is what brings me here, Sierra. If you accept the directorship of PCE, you will in effect also be the chair of the WEI charter.”

“Holy f*ck.”

“Not a bad thing to have on your resume at age twenty-three.”

All of a sudden I felt like I was suffocating. This was too much. This was the big leagues. The big, big leagues.

“Sierra,” Phyllis said sharply, “look at me.”

I raised my gaze to hers.

“You can do this. I never would’ve agreed to mentor you or offered you the directorship if I didn’t believe that you’re more than capable.”

“Can I be brutally honest?”

She nodded.

“I don’t feel like I’ve earned your confidence. I don’t have that confidence in myself.” I briefly closed my eyes. “I poured everything I’d become into PCE because of my early success. I wanted to make sure it’d been more than just a fluke. Or luck.”

“Sierra McKay. Flipping six pieces of real estate and netting over a million dollars in profit is not a fluke. You invested in your friend’s business and put her innovation into production. Yet you understood the finite timespan for ROI and adjusted accordingly. You still personally netted a quarter of a million dollars—which was thirty percent of the gross receipts—and then you turned around and leased the patent. That wasn’t luck. You created a business model that worked.”

“It worked from inherited capital,” I reminded her.

Phyllis narrowed her eyes at me. “Because you inherited the money that somehow lessens the success you had increasing the principle? Because you didn’t earn that cash waiting tables you’re not allowed to put the money your family earned…to work for you?”

“God. I hate that you’re so f*cking logical.”

She laughed. “Never discount your successes. Trust me; there are plenty of other people who are more than happy to do it for you.”

“True. I’m just a little…torn.”

“I suspected that. Can you be specific?”

“How can I hope to foster a productive work environment at PCE when I can’t manage it here?” My cheeks burned with embarrassment. “If I can’t achieve results here at DPM, why do you have faith that it’d be different for me at PCE?”

“Maybe you’re stymied here by a number of factors that you aren’t even aware of.”

I’d heard that before. From Rory.

“But the reason I’ll put all of my faith in you, Sierra McKay? You fostered the work environment at PCE. You didn’t inherit it and all its problems from other managers. You built it, you nurtured it, you created it from the ground up. Maybe that’s easier to do than stepping into someone else’s vision, figuring out what’s wrong and having to right it. I truly feel you cannot compare the two entities. That means you’ll have different levels of success—one for each of them by default.”

I burst into tears.

Phyllis let me cry. She tracked me down a tissue. She gave me the there-there pats I needed.

After I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, I looked at her. “It’s overwhelming. In a good way. I’ve been beating myself up about this for a month and now I feel like a weight has been lifted. Thank you. You have influenced me more than any person besides my father. If I’m ever half as good of a mentor as you, I’ll consider myself blessed.”