“Roger, are you eating my decorations again?”
The tabby mewed his innocence…not that Rick believed him.
“Hey, crazy cat guy,” Diego called from the living room. “Did you pick up milk?”
Dammit. Rick knew he’d forgotten something.
Draped across the same side of the same living room couch he’d been sitting on for years, Diego still managed not to look sure of his place there. Like Roger, Diego had tawny eyes and a bad attitude. But since they were the only family Rick had, he figured he was lucky. Sure beat coming home to an empty room.
“You didn’t get the milk.” Diego rolled his eyes.
Knowing he was busted, Rick countered, “When did I become the crazy cat guy?”
“When you decided to stop dating and showering and started talking to the cat instead.” Diego didn’t smile very much, but he was really good at smirking. And that was definitely a smirk on the kid’s face.
“I still shower.” Rick raised an arm to give himself a sniff. Did he smell? If he did, had Lana noticed? They’d been standing awfully close…
“I fed Darla.” Diego managed to sound like that was somehow Rick’s problem. “She’s mad at you.”
“She’s not mad at me. She loves me.”
“Go ask her about it. She seems mad.”
Well, that was never good. So off to the “study” Rick went to apologize to a hedgehog. The study was actually a third bedroom that Rick had arranged with bookshelves and an old desk. And also Darla.
Tucked in the Roger-proof cage he’d built her, the tiny hedgehog was sleeping deeply. Complete with a little house, furniture, and even a hedgehog-sized potted plant, Darla had the good life. When Rick adjusted Roger on his arm, visually checking Darla’s water bottle—because opening the cage with Roger present was a bad idea—the movement woke her up, earning him a sniff and then her quills fluffing up as she turned her head.
Yep. That was a disgruntled hedgehog.
“Sorry, Darla. I had to work late.”
She refused to look at him.
“It’s how we eat, honey,” he reminded her. Darla was not willing to be convinced.
When he returned from the study, Diego followed Rick into the kitchen. While Rick rubbed an upside-down tabby belly, Diego pulled two large bowls out of the dishwasher, still steaming and beaded with moisture from a freshly run load.
“All you had to do was buy the milk.” Holding up a nearly empty gallon of milk, Diego shook it pointedly.
Amused at the younger man’s grumbling, Rick grabbed two boxes of cereal from the cabinet with his right hand, knowing better than to set Roger down to use his left. Roger required a solid ten minutes of upside-down reflection before consenting to be uprighted. Any less than ten minutes would result in a meow, flattened ears, and a scratch. Any more than fifteen minutes would bring a bite and some fairly dramatic hissing.
Roger’s needs were complex and many.
This week, dinner was Raisin Bran and Cheerios. Next week, it would be Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes. Really, it depended on who did the shopping. There was a kitchen table, but they hadn’t eaten there since Jen had left. It had become Roger’s domain, where he draped himself, tail twitching, judging whatever Rick was up to that day.
“I went to the town hall. Jonah said the Santa Moose is back.”
“No shit. I’ll tell Quinn. She loves crap like that.”
And Diego loved Quinn, the curly-haired young woman he worked with up at the resort. Not that he’d ever told her. Rick supposed opposites could attract. Quinn was bright and sunny and happy, and Diego was…well…Diego.
But still…he’d waited dinner on Rick. And that was progress.
They’d been doing this for three years now. Cereal. Roger. Sitting on the couch to watch TV and eat in silence. Pissed-off cat on one side, pissed-off twenty-year-old on the other, Rick picked up his cereal bowl and took a bite.
Unbelievably grateful for them both.
Chapter 3
Every morning, Lana tried to put her own makeup on. Every morning, she failed.
This morning was like all the rest, but still, she was determined to try. As she stood in front of her bathroom mirror, makeup laid out on her vanity in front of her, Lana didn’t want someone else to take care of this for her. She wanted to pick up the eyeliner and put it on herself. She wanted to feel normal. She wanted to feel competent.
Except…when Lana lifted her hands, they would always shake.
Her hands had been this way for as long as Lana could remember. The best her doctors had come up with was that it was a low-grade stress reaction, starting in her childhood and settling into permanency by the time she had grown. Stressful situations made it worse. Yoga, meditation, and a lot of time in therapy made it better. The result was Lana could control the shaking…to a point. But it was her tell. And when one stepped into boardrooms for a living, it was never good to have a tell.
The hardest part to stomach was the fact that no one ever blinked an eye at her requests to have her makeup done at whatever hotel was home for the week or month. As if she were shallow—or spoiled—enough to insist on having even the smallest lines of liquid liner painted on her lids for her.
But the opposite was worse. When one was a Montgomery, eyes were always watching. And shaky hands didn’t let her achieve the required facade of having herself completely together at all times.
Maintaining the family reputation went hand in hand with maintaining the company’s reputation. Whether it was commercial, industrial, or residential real estate, the Montgomery Group had their hands in it. Hundreds of transactions, thousands of properties. From tiny studio apartments to skyscrapers. Lana had facilitated those acquisitions ever since taking her place at the head table of the family business. Working for her family might have given her premature stress lines, but it had also given her an important position at the top of a powerful company, with all the challenges and personal gratification that came in meeting those challenges. Her job had made her stronger, tougher, and more business savvy. She had seen the world one boardroom at a time, experiencing things most people only dreamed of.
But never once had the Montgomery Group given Lana the one thing she’d always wanted: a home.
Abandoning her makeup, Lana made herself a cup of tea. She liked to start her mornings this way, standing in front of the window, her robe wrapped around her, and her shaky fingers cradling a warm drink. She gazed out at the thick blanket of snow covering the mountainside, evergreens thrusting vertically into the sky, strong and straight trunked even in the harshest of Alaska’s weather.
No matter what was thrown at them, those trees stayed tall and true, refusing to bend and break.