“I don’t know.” He scrubbed his fingers through his clean but unadorned hair—soon he’d be able to buy product! Not that he used it. He just loved knowing he had the option of buying it. Lord, let me never be bald. “I haven’t talked to Blake in—uh, what month is it?”
“May.” This with barely veiled amusement.
“Don’t you give me that look,” he ordered. “People forget what month it is all the time.”
“They don’t, though.”
“Anyway, Ms. Asks a Question Then Changes the Subject, it’s been several weeks. See, our mom…” He trailed off. “Aw, you don’t want to hear it.”
She’d closed her laptop by now, the one with the absurdly long password that was at least twenty characters, including I and H and Y, and was giving him her full attention. She even scooted the desk chair closer to him. “I do, though.”
Damned if she didn’t seem sincere. “It’s rich-people stuff,” he warned.
She took a deep breath and leveled her steady gray gaze at him. “I can take it.”
He snorted. “Okay, the thing is, my mom’s been on her own longer than I’ve been alive. But a few weeks ago, she heard from her hometown, Sweetheart, North Dakota. And…”
Twenty-seven
She knew part of the story, of course, from her employer. But she was dismayed to find that Rake didn’t know much more. How could he be raised by such a determined woman and not know anything about where he came from? Wasn’t he curious? Didn’t he want to know everything about those who came before him, made him?
Wow, maybe take it easy on the projecting? What’s important to you doesn’t have to be important to him.
Yes. Maybe.
Probably.
Fine, fine, probably. As a child of the American foster care program, Delaney had known for more than a decade all she would ever know about those who came before her. She had been named for her grandmother, Claire Maybell Snyder. Her mother had died when she was two. Father: unknown. For years she’d thought her father’s name had been Unk.
The entirety of her family was dead or unk. That wasn’t true for Rake, though. She reminded herself, again, that what was important to her didn’t have to be important to him. She had the feeling she’d have to do that a lot.
“… right? I mean, who does that? Cuts a kid out of their life because they want to move to the big city? Mom wasn’t even pregnant! Not then, anyway. So she left it all behind, thank God, and moved to Vegas, and she and my dad—she was his waitress, and he was some rando rich asshole—did the drunken pelvis two-step…”
And then she thought she should stop reminding herself. It was good to be annoyed with Rake, good to feel irritation and even dismay over his choices. Disliking him was much, much safer than liking him.
And she liked the entitled rich whiner.
A lot. Which had never, ever been part of the plan.
Why’d he have to try to rescue me? And why didn’t I meet him when I was a kid? I could have shown him … trained him. We could be doing hits together. Instead, he met Donna and set the current disaster in motion, and poor Lillith will have to pay for it. Literally.
“… so off she went to Sweetheart, and off I went to Gstaad, and then London, and Paris, and Lake Como, and now here, except I’m pretty sure the last leg of my trip was against my will, and off Blake went to wherever he goes when he’s not being reprogrammed by his robot overlords. And look!” Rake brandished his (new) phone at her. “Look at this text that goes on forever and won’t die! Just like Blake!”
The terms of my atonement are as follow: 1. No more selling people’s homes/farms to the bank. 2. The remaining farm, scheduled for closing next week, is off the market. 3. Said farm must be made profitable within six months. 4. By me. 5. Without my fortune, which she has pulled off the table. (You’ll recall that though she allowed access to our inheritance on our eighteenth birthday, we are not legally entitled to it until we are thirty, which is twenty-three months and seventeen days from today.) 6. I cannot terminate anyone or sell anything. 7. Resistance is futile. 8. If condition #7 is ignored, she’ll activate the nuclear option.
* * *
“What,” Delaney asked, terrified and trying to hide it, “is the nuclear option?”
“Never ask me about the nuclear option.” Rake stared at her, unblinking. “Not ever.”
“Okay.”
“Not ever.”
“O-kay!”
“We shouldn’t even be talking about not talking about the nuclear option. Thank God Lillith’s bunking with Sofia again.”
“Your brother knows when you’ll both turn thirty to the day?”
“See? This is what I’ve been dealing with. For just under thirty years, apparently.”
“And … your mom took away his money?”
“Naw. She’d never. He’s exaggerating. Blake’s always been the golden douche.”
“It doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like he’s”—in as much trouble as you are, she thought but didn’t say—“being serious. Like she really did cut him off from his funds.”
“Impossible.”
Sound nigh impossible? I quite agree, but our mother does not.
For this, in addition to many other crimes you have perpetuated upon me since our birth, you will be made to pay and pay. I warn you only as a courtesy, as dictated by the bonds of family.
Good night.
* * *
“Wow.”
“Right?”
“He sounds like he could be a handful.”
“A handful of priggish hypocritical crap. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” Rake was slashing his fingers through his longish dark blond strands; he was borderline shaggy and deliciously rumpled. “I was really looking forward to getting my phone, and the first thing that hits is a ton of Blake.”
“Which you weren’t expecting.”
“No!”
Why do I want to keep warning him? I’m not supposed to warn him. “Yes, well, the thing is, he sounds like he’s in tr—”
“I mean, look at this thing! Look at it!” He flailed his phone at her. “Who texts like this? This isn’t a text, this is a goddamned thesis!” He shook the thing like it was the author of his misery—maybe in his eyes, it was—and seamlessly continued the rant. “All this to tell me he’s nuts! Or playing the lamest practical joke ever! What is happening to my family, who were always weird but are now weirder?”
“Okay, okay.” She made soothing noises at him, plucked the phone from his hand, tossed it on the bed, then grabbed his hands and walked him backward until he was sitting on the bed beside her.
“I like your hands.” He sighed out of nowhere.
“Great. Now calm down. Let’s think about this. So, you think it’s a joke? In poor taste, but for some reason he’s—what? Lying about everything he’s doing in—what was it, Honey?”
Rake blinked at her. “Uh, no. Sweetheart.” He cut his keen blue gaze away. “Sorry, for a second I thought you were calling me honey.”