The Job Offer Read Online Free PDF Page A

the
Customer Service Department.  The Accounting Department, the Information
Technology Department, and the Executive offices were located on the second
floor, Anne was told.
    "If we decide to call you back for
the final round of interviews, the final interviews will be held with Mr.
Winfield, Dr. Rudolph, Benjamin Stanford, our CEO, and I.  Final interviews will
begin on the eighteenth.  There are five applicants being interviewed this
week," Ms. Tomlinson informed her as they walked back into the HR Department.
 "I understand that you will be staying with family in the Seattle
area?"
    "Yes, I will," Anne said as
she walked beside Ms. Tomlinson into the HR lobby.
    "Good.  We have your cell phone
number in your file.  You will be called to return again to meet Mr. Stanford
if we decide to call you back.  Have a nice stay in Seattle, Dr. Conner.  It
was a pleasure meeting you."  She shook Anne's hand warmly before leaving
Anne to check herself out from the front reception desk.
    With the rest of the day free from
interviews, Anne walked out to the rental car, took off her jacket, and steered
her car north for the three hour drive to Orcas Island.  She stopped only once
to grab a burger and fries from a fast food restaurant along the interstate.
     

Chapter
3
     
    Anne arrived at the Eagle's Nest Inn
around three thirty that afternoon, dropped her suitcase on the bed of her old
room in the family's separate residence, changed into shorts and a tee shirt,
and went in search of her mother.  She found her mother in the inn's large
kitchen discussing the meal for the upcoming wedding that was scheduled for
Saturday afternoon, only six days away.  Not wanting to interrupt by drawing
attention to herself, she waited by the door and watched her mother and their
chef, William Becker, discuss the menu details and final head count.  It
sounded like the wedding would be a smallish affair with about eighty guests.  If
the menu was anything to go by, the wedding was also going to be an expensive
affair.
    Anne had learned a few weeks ago from
her mother that the inn was fully booked with the wedding party and guests,
most of them coming up from Seattle, and they were taking up the majority of
the main building's rooms.  Island vacationers took up the remaining rooms and
the cottages along the water's edge.  The bride, Lily Carlson, chose to have
her wedding reception at the Eagle's Nest because she used to come up to the
inn as a child and then returned last summer with her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend
proposed to her here at the inn.  It all sounded romantic.  Anne was happy for
the couple.  She was also happy for her parents who had, over the years, built
an inn that drew such loyalty from returning guests.
    Anne remembered the bride well.  Lily was
a sweet kid who came from a wealthy Seattle family, the kind with whom Anne's
father would have gone out of his way to cultivate a friendship.  The Carlson
family came for two weeks every summer since Anne was nine.  Being the same age
as Anne and Carla, Lily Carlson often hung out with Anne and Carla along with
her older brother, a cute boy named Ben.  Years later she began to come alone
with her parents when Ben finished college.  Anne had not seen Lily since the
summer before she and Carla moved to Seattle to attend the University of
Washington.
    It was even longer since she saw Ben.  The
last time she saw him was the summer she turned seventeen and wore braces on
her teeth.  She remembered that summer well because she developed the biggest
crush on Ben who just finished his junior year of college.  He came back at
other times over the years, she was told, and stayed at the inn either with his
family or with friends.  But she was not there during those other times.  She
wondered what he looked like now.  He was probably married with children.  Anne
thought about the number of things she did to draw his attention that last summer,
shuttered, and hoped that no one