Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)(79)
Break out into a chorus of “I Am Woman” why don’t you?
That thought made me smile.
My smile faded when I remembered the whole debacle with Greg’s assistant Melissa this week and her refusal to stay on at DPM. It’d hit me… How could I, in good conscience, take a position at PCE advocating for all women in business when I couldn’t help even one woman in my own business?
I couldn’t.
I needed to fix things at DPM first. Figure out a way to effect change from within and earn the respect of the guys I worked with. That would be the best use of the skills I’d learned at PCE and there was no better proving ground for leadership.
Made up your mind, just like that? Would you stay in that position if it wasn’t a family business? If you weren’t worried about disappointing your father?
No, I wouldn’t stay at DPM. I would’ve taken the job at PCE the moment Phyllis offered it to me.
This wishy-washy back-and-forth stuff…no wonder I hadn’t talked to Boone. I changed my mind every five minutes.
Armed with the knowledge that nothing would get resolved today, I focused on the party, hanging back to watch my beautiful, blonde mother. She’d already claimed the spotlight. She looked stunning in a dark teal pantsuit that hit the mark between classy and trendy. For once she wasn’t trying to appear younger and hipper than anyone else in the room. But she’d always been a chameleon, changing her appearance and her personality to fit the social situation or the man she was with. Being Barnacle Bill’s babe motivated her to ditch the hair extensions, the skinny jeans, the bohemian jewelry and embrace the upper crust’s idea of respectability and act her age.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much she hated that. Or how long this phase would last.
I’d gone through phases of my own with her. In my childhood she’d used me as a pawn or a wedge against my dad—not that I’d known it at the time. Then in my preteen and early teen years, she’d morphed into being my friend more than a parent. We shopped. We did all the girlfriend things she should’ve been doing with her own friends and not her fourteen-year-old daughter. She attempted to turn me against my father with outright lies and manipulation. It still caused me a pang of shame to admit she had succeeded on a few occasions, convincing me to think the worst of my dad.
By the time I’d grown into my body and my looks—her words, not mine—she encouraged open defiance of my father’s rules. She’d let me skip school when she had custody of me. She’d let me throw parties on the weekends and provide booze for us. My friends were in awe of her; she was the coolest mom ever. So it was a blow to my fifteen-year-old pride that they preferred to hang out with her more than with me. She’d complain if I attempted to do homework, reminding me that men prized beauty and physical desirability over brains. Another shameful thing I’d actually believed for a time.
During those formative middle teen years when she claimed a girl “needed her mother” she took my dad to court, demanding full custody of me. I’d bought into her false flattery and her promise to always be there for me. Yet, when I’d ended up in jail for shoplifting, she hadn’t been around at all. My need for her approval had turned me into her mini-clone; an entitled brat with no thought to the future beyond next season’s fashion trends.
My father had put an end to it by pulling up roots and relocating us to Wyoming while my mom had flitted off to Paris with her man du jour.
To this day I wasn’t sure if living a totally different lifestyle in Wyoming was the best thing that’d ever happened to me or if my mother’s relocation to Paris and her having no influence on my decisions provided the catalyst I needed to change. The Sierra McKay who returned to Arizona to start college in no way resembled the Sierra Daniels who’d left Phoenix three years prior.
Thank god.
I’d come into my own during that time. I hadn’t done it alone; I could thank my dad, my new stepmom Rielle, my new sister Rory, the close connections I’d found with my new family and friends in Sundance, Wyoming. Even the heartbreak Boone West had brought about by leaving had helped transform me.
A transformation my mother hadn’t liked at all.
I’d grown self-confident enough in my years away from her that I’d hoped we could find common ground to reestablish a new, different mother-daughter relationship.
Then she’d f*cked my boyfriend and thereby f*cked any chance of being part of my life.
Four years later I was still good with that decision.
Which made me wonder why I was even here, waiting in line for the woman who’d given birth to me to acknowledge me.
She waited until she finished her conversation before signaling me to approach her.
“Mother. You look amazing.”
For that compliment I earned a somewhat sincere smile and the kiss-kiss cheek brush.
“Thank you, dear.” Before I could say anything else, she addressed the person in line behind me, with an effusive, “Joan! Darling, how are you?” dismissing me completely.
No surprise I practically skipped toward the bar.
I ordered Crown, but the snooty bartender informed me their top shelf whiskey was Jameson, so this event wasn’t starting out very promising.
“So kiddo, how long you think this phase will last?”
I faced Char, my mom’s best friend, the only other person who’d also suffered through years of the foibles of Ellen Bertrand Daniels. “I think she’s found the love of her life and her true identity.”