I have rendered the mighty Blake Hudson speechless! I grab my tray and scurry off, coasting on a wave of triumph.
Still…so much pretty. I can almost hear the faint weeping of my lady-parts as I leave him behind.
Chapter Ten
Blake
The first inkling of trouble comes when I emerge from the shower.
It’s a text from my uncle. He sent it ten minutes ago.
Call me ASAP.
As I’m reading it, I get another text from him, bleeping with angry urgency.
I mean it. Call me NOW.
Yeah, whatever. Uncle Bill can wait. If his secretary runs out of coffee he thinks it’s an emergency. It goes along with his general sense of entitlement.
I try to be tolerant, because he did step in and help out after my parents died, and because I kind of understand where he’s coming from. He’s like my father in a lot of ways. He grew up with a certain kind of Hudson’s, catering to a certain clientele, selling in the traditional, old-fashioned style. When I took the helm of the store fourteen years ago at age twenty, it was a battle royale to get him and the board to let me update the website and fully embrace internet sales. It was a huge risk, but also a huge success. We tripled our profits in that very first year. Not our gross, our profits. You’d think that would convince him that I might know my shit, but we have to go to the mat over even the most minor of innovations.
Uncle Bill takes every single change as the end of an era. When we replaced the flooring in the home goods department, he practically wanted to hold a memorial service. He wants the store to stay the same as it was when he ran it with my father. I respect that, but I also know that in today’s retail environment, stasis is death. Since he’s the CFO and ultimately has to sign off on any new initiatives, we wrangle a lot.
Scrolling through my phone alerts, I see there are also eleven message attempts from Sloane. I have an app that blocks messages, so I don’t know what any of them say, just that she sent them.
I turn the volume off on the alerts and dress quickly. I’ve got my post-shower dressing routine down to five minutes. Henry goes through my closet and puts together my suits for the entire month – work attire, casual attire, and special occasions – coordinating them down to the socks, briefs, and cufflinks, which I find to be a time-saver.
I glance at my watch and see that I’ve finished in four and a half minutes. My anxiety eases a little.
Last night, I worked until midnight putting out last-minute fires, and missed dinner at Norfolk’s with Alice and Tamara. I’m making up for it by staying in and having a leisurely breakfast with them. I scheduled two whole hours for them. Alice and Tamara like to sleep in, so I arranged for breakfast at nine.
They’re waiting in the dining room when I walk in. Alice has a mischievous gleam in her eye.
“Morning, Blake.”
“What have you done, Alice?”
She blinks her eyes at me, all wounded innocence. “What do you mean, Blake?”
Tamara snickers, and her gaze flicks in the direction of the wall. I turn to look. Two massive framed oil paintings of my grandfather and father normally hang there. Alice complains about them every time she comes to visit. She hates the grim expressions on their faces; says it curdles the food in her stomach. She also thinks the portraits should be in the parlor or game room or library or office or the dumpsters behind Hudson’s. In other words, anywhere but the dining room.
So I keep them there just to annoy her. And today, she’s had her revenge. She’s replaced them with two huge posters of kittens with rainbow fur and hearts for eyes. Typical.
Alice is only four years older than me. When our parents died, she was eighteen and I was fourteen. Suddenly, she was raising me full time. For a little while, she tried to act all serious and motherly, and she called time out on our prank war, while I skulked around the house, mired in depression.
Then one day when I glumly plopped down in my seat to eat dinner, I heard a loud, juicy, flatulent sound. It went on and on. It was the Energizer Bunny of farts. Henry, the last servant we had left at the time, was so shocked he dropped the tray he’d been carrying and soup splattered all over the floor.
My darling sister had snuck a whoopie cushion under my seat. She looked at me, at the appalled expression on my face, and laughed so hard she started to choke on her bread roll. Henry had to Heimlich her.
She was red faced, tears of laughter dripping off her chin, gasping and wheezing from laughter and her near-death choking experience. “Oh my God! The look on your face!”
And ever since then, we’ve gone back to the way we were before our parents died. We torture each other. Lovingly.
“Nice posters,” I say to Alice, with a dangerous smile, as I take my seat.
“Thanks! Tamara picked them out. She’s so excited that they’ll be there every time we eat a meal here.” Damn. Using her own child as a weapon. I shake my head in admiration. Alice smirks at me. “And Granddad and Dad say they’re so much happier where they are now. They like the view better.”
“And the view that they are now enjoying is…?” The house is freaking huge. I don’t have time to look for them, and I’m not wasting my housekeeper’s time on it either. Where did she put them?
“…is a very nice view.” Alice stabs her fork into her omelet and takes a big bite.
“Mom!” Tamara shakes her head. “Pictures can’t talk.” She smiles at me. “I wonder about Mom sometimes.”
I wink at Tamara. “I wonder about her all the time.”
Alice is a very heavy sleeper. As soon as I find the portraits, I’m going to have them hung from the frame of her bed so that’s the first thing she sees when she wakes up in the morning. Dad and Granddad glaring right at her, accusingly.
“Your heart’s pretty healthy, right?” I say, stirring my coffee and trying to look menacing.
“Please,” she scoffs. “Bring it.”
“You shouldn’t say that to me,” I observe drily. Then I turn my attention to my niece.
“How are you this morning, pumpkin?”
The cook has made Tamara’s favorite, pancakes with smiley faces made of sliced berries.
“I’m the best ever. Thank you so much, Uncle Blake!” Tamara beams at me.
“You’re welcome, but the cook made those pancakes, not me.”
“No, I mean for my present!” She grins. “I know I’m not supposed to know about it, but Winona told me. Well, she gave me a hint.” Then her face puckers in concern. “She’s not going to get in trouble for hinting, is she? I like her.”
“Me too,” Alice chimes in.
I shoot her a reprovingly look. “Of course you do. She’s dedicated to making me lose my marbles.”
Alice claps her hand to her chest. “You wound me. It’s only partly because she’s the only person besides me who can get away with giving you a hard time.”
A hard time, ha. If only Alice knew the painful truth of that statement. And thank God she doesn’t.
“I think she’s good for you,” Alice continues. “I know she turned you down for lunch yesterday, but you’ve got to keep trying. You could be a little bit less of a jerk when you ask her. Like, make her feel like you actually want to eat lunch with her, rather than like you’re doing her a big favor.”