by Eden O'Neill
He crossed his leg at the knee. “I suppose I just wanted to chat with you about the boardroom incident. I really meant no offense. I merely noticed your attention had drifted off and wanted to make sure everything was clear for you that we were discussing. Make sure you were comfortable and still with us.”
Subtlety had never been this man’s strong suit in all the years I’d known him. Even still, how he’d gone about it had been inappropriate and definitely hadn’t been necessary. I followed along just fine. I leaned forward. “Your only job when it comes to me, Duncan, is to advise—as needed. I don’t need you calling me out, and I don’t need you babysitting.”
Both of which he’d done since I’d gotten here. I was about to change the locks on the goddamn door, this office his after my father’s, and I’d allowed him to keep a key as a courtesy.
A nod in understanding on Duncan’s end. “I apologize, truly. I didn’t mean to overstep.”
“So don’t.”
He frowned, sighing. “But I do want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
He kept saying that, comfortable, and lounging back, I laced my fingers across my chest. “Are you getting at something, Duncan? Because if you are, you’re going to have to break it down for me.”
He was going to have to say what was obviously on his mind, his fingers pulling through snow white hair. He placed a hand on his knee. “We’re so very happy to have you here, Ramses. Been waiting for you, to have a Mallick at the helm again.”
“But?”
His head tilted. “But we understand if you’re not quite ready. If you need time to finish school or even take a break if that’s what you want. We’d completely understand that, expect it.”
Expect it.
And so my age was an issue again, my hands opened. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t feel I was ready. And I assure you, neither my age nor my commitments to my education will affect my ability to run this company. So if that’s your, and I’m assuming the rest of the board’s, issue as well—”
“We know you’re brilliant, Ramses.” His sigh was incredibly heavy this time. “We’ve seen how you’ve come up and grown. We know you’ve got what it takes, but you are young, and after that incident at Brown…”
Which had nothing to do with this or this conversation. I put a finger down. “Careful, Duncan. You might be crossing a line.”
He’d fucking leaped the hell over it. I was aware of how he felt about the issue. The company’s lawyers, my lawyers, had to get involved. So yeah, I was aware of how he felt regarding my personal life. He thought I was reckless.
He thought I was young, like he said.
He, along with anyone else on the outside looking in, saw a snapshot of a situation, and since I’d been forced to save face, yes, the “incident at Brown” definitely had looked a certain way. But that was the outside perception, not the truth, and he should know that since he had known me for so long.
“We just don’t want you overwhelmed.” He passed a look to me. “There’s a concern about that, that all this is too much.”
“Well, it’s not.” I wet my lips. “So, if we’re done, I’d like to get back to work.”
Maybe actually do some work this time and though he did get up, his shoulders sagged.
“Please let me know if you need anything,” he urged. “No one will fault you for waiting one, two, or even five years if you’re not ready for all this yet. Don’t make me or any of the rest of the board the enemy. We are here to advise, to help you.”
I said nothing, and he took that as the sign it was. He left the office, and I would be changing the locks. Too many people had a say in this office besides me.
*
“So, I had a rather interesting call with Duncan Salsbury this afternoon.”
I bet she had.
Snitch.
My mom’s voice had drifted from her place across the kitchen, cutting away at bell peppers and onions with the precision of a sous chef in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen. No sooner had she sliced and diced than she grabbed for the mushrooms, doing the same for our weekly taco night. I tried to come over weekly to have dinner with my mother now that I was back in town, and we both made time for it.
To my dismay, considering I was currently being probed.
Obviously, good ole Duncan had been running his mouth after our little tiff this morning. I grumbled.
“And how is everyone over at the country club?” I asked, knowing that was where she’d run into him, talked to him. They were still very much friends, and I was sure the entire town knew about my struggles at the office, thanks to a certain board member. These people spouted gossip like a TMZ Kardashian spotting at a club. I growled. “Still being complete busybodies?”
My mom’s serrated knife paused on a portobello. My mother was a blond woman, tall and who’d been about half the reason I ended up reaching six-foot-eight. My mom was just shy of six-foot-one, which was basically fucking awesome when I’d been a kid and needed to find her in the store. I passed her in height around seventh grade, and the woman looked like Daryl Hannah walking off the set of Splash. This basically made my life hell my entire middle school career. The whole MILF thing and all that, but seeing as how I attended boarding school on the other side of the country for most of high school, I hadn’t had to deal with the ridicule there. For my boarding school days, I could thank, once again, my father. He’d shipped me off back then, easier to do that than actually deal with me.
My father had a tendency of sweeping things under the rug when he didn’t want to deal with them, and how ironic as he had gone off to prison. There wasn’t sweeping away anything there, and this family had to deal with it, the busybodies over at the country club completely in our business.
Mom grumbled now. “How is it that I raised such a complete and ridiculously smart aleck of a son?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” I stated, being extra bold when I winked at her.
She tossed a piece of mushroom at me, as she should for being smart, but that was our dynamic. In fact, I got most of my sense of humor from her. Hell, if I could ever crack a smile across Ibrahim Mallick’s lips, former mayor and who had more scowls to his name than Royal Prinze. He’d cashed in quite a few in my direction as well, for being smart-mouthed and all that.
Mom frowned. “Ramses, don’t be mean. Those ‘busybodies’ as you put them were there for me. There for this family when we were going through the most difficult time period. They would have been there for you too had you let them, had you stayed.”
My gaze lifted from the romaine I was cutting, hesitating but only for a second. I angled the knife into leaves. “Are we talking about that now, too?”
She’d shared her opinion about Brown as well. Everyone basically had, so why not just give this thing another go?
A sigh fell from my mother’s lips. “I just worry about you. Duncan said you’re being resistant to his help, and I think we all were surprised to see you so ready to just jump in and get started working after you came back.”
“Why?” I’d been born into this, bred for it. This was my legacy, the plan, and she knew that.
Mom eyed me like it was obvious. “I don’t know, because you expressed zero interest every time your father actually tried to get you involved with the business. You basically went kicking and screaming every time he tried, and eventually, he just gave up. Gave up on you.”
“He was really good at that, wasn’t he?”
Another frown in my direction, and had she’d been close to me, she probably would have shoved that entire cutting board of pre-cut vegetables into my face. She lay the knife down. “I’m just saying you never wanted to get involved before, but that’s the first thing you did when you came back.”
“So, I’m trying to get my shit together,” I said. “Obviously.”
“Or you’re trying to prove a point,” she countered. “Prove a point to yourself, or him for that matter. Your dad?”
I smirked. “Ma, no offense.
But I don’t give a fuck about that man.”
“Ramses,” she gritted.
“What? I don’t.” And why would I care about proving a goddamn point to him? I hated him. I growled. “I don’t care about trying to please Dad.”
“All right then,” she said, like she didn’t believe me at all, which frustrated me. She placed her hands on the counter. “You’re obviously struggling with something, and it’s been known that your father has loomed over your life for a very long time. So long and in so many ways.”
Since she was right about that, I said nothing, my knife rocking back into romaine. I cut a little while more before I had a healthy stack, which I deposited quickly into a bowl. I looked up to find my mother’s gaze on me, her hands cuffing her blouse and her wristwatch blinging. Mom was successful in her own right, a hotel heiress actually, before she met and married my father. Her passions mostly surrounded her love for history, though, which was why she’d become a professor and later a dean at Pembroke-U.
“It’s made you irritable with the world—clearly,” she ventured on, raising her hand. “Cop a continued attitude with me over the years and is probably responsible for some of your—I’m sorry, Ramses—piss-poor decisions you’ve been making as of late.”
Piss-poor decisions. I couldn’t help but smirk again. “So we’re back to the Brown thing again. If I knew this was going to be such an issue, I would have just stayed.”
I could have. The school hadn’t been involved with what happened or anything. Hell, they hadn’t even known about what went down.
Our family’s people had taken care of that.
In the end, I’d chosen to leave, easier and apparently my MO. I was an all-star at avoidance, and our family’s attorneys had advised me to cut all ties anyway. Mom had also secured me a place back at Pembroke, so there was no reason to stare my “piss-poor” decisions in the face anyway.
I never would have come back knowing I’d be poked and prodded, though. I’d gotten quite a few texts from December as well. She and Prinze had come back from their shortened honeymoon in Aruba to be back for the start of senior year, and the first thing she’d done was text me to meetup. To talk and I’d been avoiding her like this talk with my mom.
“You know that what happened at Brown wasn’t the real issue. You’re channeling, son.” She squeezed her arm. “Acting out? This is how you’re dealing with your crap with your dad. You’ve never talked about anything. Never dealt with anything. Brown is the end result, not the issue.”
“The issue being Dad?”
“I think so.”
“So, what do you advise, doctor?” I asked, my mom not that kind of a doctor. She had her doctorate, but definitely not anything medically related.
Her brows narrowed. “To start, how about someone to help with the attitude?”
“Therapy?” I’d seen enough therapists for a lifetime. Especially after Dad had gotten his ass locked up. “I’m not seeing a therapist.”
“I’m just saying you should talk to someone. You know, maybe give you closure? Help you deal with some of these changes in your life.”
Someone who could bill me hundreds of dollars an hour just to nod their head and pacify me. I’d done the song and dance before and no thanks.
Mom dropped her shoulders. “Or maybe you should just talk to the source. You know your father asks about you. He asks about you all the time.”
Because she was what? Talking to him? My gaze jerked in her direction. “You’re talking to him?”
She nodded like that was normal, like that was okay. She shrugged. “It’s how I’m getting my own closure.”
“I don’t believe this.” Enraged now, livid. I shoved the food away. “So, what does that mean? You talking to him?”
“It means just as I said.” She lifted her chin. “I’ve been seeing him. It was advised by my therapist, and it’s been helping.”
Well, then maybe she should get a new goddamn therapist because no one in their right mind would ever advise her to see that man. He was cold, poison, and I didn’t want her anywhere near him. “I don’t want you going to see him.”
Her laughter touched the air as she pushed the veggies into their separate containers for the tacos. “You don’t have a say in that.”
“Well, I should.” I growled. “What the hell, Mom?”
“You won’t talk to me like that,” she stated and shot me such a hard eye I thought she’d send me to my old bedroom, simply one room of many in this mansion she’d kept after the divorce. Located in central Maywood Heights, the place was my childhood home, and I used to resent the place, so big and expansive. My friends loved it, of course. It had a game room and a movie theater, but all the toys had been nothing but virtual babysitters, a place to get lost in and a way to keep me quiet and out of my dad’s things. He’d never dealt with me, leaving Mom to that but she’d had her life too. She couldn’t be with me every hour of the day. She had her own goals, her own passions, and I never resented her for that.
I just resented this place, him. I came around to her. “Nothing good can come out of talking to him.”
The doorbell rang, and both our gazes flashed up.
“Christ in heaven,” Mom said, rarely cursing which let me know the tone of the conversation had been heated. She looked at me. “I invited a colleague over for dinner with us, an old friend. She’s new to town and doesn’t know anyone yet.”
And what a perfect time for a stranger to come in.
“Please set an extra place setting on the table,” she said, completely avoiding the rest of our conversation and going into Mom mode. She pressed down her blouse. “You’re going to act like the son I raised and not make us look entirely and completely dysfunctional.”
I smiled. “So only partially or…”
She shoved me, like actually shoved me like a linebacker, and she would have gotten me under her arm if I didn’t have her on the height. Instead, she slapped at my head, and I dodged.
“Just get the table together,” she said, rolling her eyes before scurrying away. She pointed at me from the door. “And put on a different shirt. Something nice since we have company?”
I gazed down to my band tee, my eyes lifting. I didn’t mind walking around in suits and dress pants all day for the office, but when I came over for weekly dinner, I thought I was safe to, I don’t know, be myself.
I still did have a few things here to wear, so after getting the table set up in the dining room, I took the grand staircase two by two up to my old bedroom. I heard voices drifting from somewhere in the house as I did, and I assumed Mom was showing whoever her friend was around the house. She’d be doing that for a while since the place was so big, so I took my time to find a decent shirt before coming back downstairs.
I had cuffed my teal dress shirt at my forearms, but I didn’t tuck it into my jeans like a nerdy asshole. Mom just wanted me to look presentable, so I did that coming back downstairs. Since Mom was entertaining tonight, I was surprised she’d asked the staff to leave for the evening. She’d cut down on people since the divorce but usually asked them to be around if she was having people over to help serve and everything. I suppose, with our weekly more intimate dinners, she never did that, though.
I followed my mom’s voice and another female’s into the dining room to find them both already sitting there. Her friend had her back turned, facing in my mother’s direction, but the long flow of inky silk waves struck me as familiar.
And that raspy voice.
No. Fucking. Way.
But then, I circulated the room to find the woman’s face. Brielle’s head tossed back with smoky laughter. She had her hands pressed together, lightly chuckling at something my mother had said to her, her dress equally black and exposing her honeyed arms. She hugged them with her perfect manicured hands, her lips always that hard shade of red. If I didn’t know any better, this woman was an assassin in another life, a femme fatale who never failed to slay and lasso me.
Jers
ey girl, what the hell?
But then thoughts of my mother being the dean of the history department surfaced, and I totally got it. I got it, but that didn’t mean this all made sense.
“Oh, there’s my son.”
Oh, fuck.
“Ramses, honey.” A wave in my direction, my mom clearly not aware of the colossal shit show she was about to display in high definition right in the middle of her dining room.
But I did. I watched those curtains draw back and the screen illuminate as a goddess in raven black tossed those chocolate brown eyes in my direction. Watched them twitch wide as her mouth parted and her friend, i.e. my mother, introduced me back into her life. All of which Brielle was forced to sit back and endure.
Brielle’s lashes fanned in quick succession, my mother waving me in like a plane coming in for a goddamn landing. I came, of course. What the fuck else could I do?
“Sweetheart, this is Bri,” Mom said, smiling through this shit. I mean, she had no idea, so why not smile, right? “She’s teaching at the university. Just moved here.”
She sure had, hadn’t she? The pair of us well acquainted.
I swallowed with a dry mouth. Shit was about to hit the fan. I had no idea how my mother would react to the news that I’d screwed one of her colleagues, but considering she said Brielle was her friend, probably not great.
Oh, shit was Ma the friend? The one who’d gotten Brielle the job at Pembroke?
The stars friggin’ aligned right in front of me, all this shit really making sense now. Mom had been the reason she’d been at Royal and December’s wedding, Ma had been the reason Bri was in town and now had the job at my university. Mom had, of course, been invited to the Prinze wedding—everyone who’s who in town had—but Mom also was head of the history department and worked a lot. Especially surrounding the weeks getting closer to a new semester. I was lucky to get her on the phone at all right before term started.
Fucking fuck.
This really did all make sense now and maybe for Bri as well, the way she looked at me. Her lips pursed, and I thought maybe she’d be the one to come clean first.