Alaina seemed surprised by the question. “I kicked him out.”
“Why would you do that? He was paying your bills.” Eleni bit her lip and forced herself to stop talking. That wasn’t the way to encourage her mother to be financially independent. The leather-wrapped steering wheel beneath her hands squealed with the force of her grip. “I thought you loved him. You were talking about getting married. Right?”
Alaina only shrugged. “He wasn’t what I wanted.”
Okay. Eleni kept driving. They were close to her mother’s home. The rain was still coming down hard. The windshield wipers were swishing back and forth at a furious rate in order to allow Eleni to see where she was going. Soon enough she realized that her mother’s house was oddly the only one on the block that did not have lights on.
“Mom, why didn’t you leave a porch light on for yourself?” There was a growing pit of dread in Eleni’s belly as she realized the answer to that question was probably not a good one.
“Oh, I must have forgotten.” Alaina sounded airy as they pulled into the driveway.
The garage door was up. There was nothing in the garage. As in the four-car space was absolutely empty. Not a car, not even a bicycle. There was no lawn mower, no tools, and even the workbench that Eleni’s father had left behind when he died was gone. This was not good. Not good at all.
“Mom, what happened to the stuff in the garage?” Eleni went ahead and pulled her tiny car into the garage so that they didn’t have to get out in the pouring rain.
Alaina pushed the door open and got out of the vehicle. She turned and gave it a disdainful look. Of course, the only light to see by was the reflected glow of the dash lights and the headlamps bouncing back at them off the garage wall. So it was possible that Alaina did not look as though she had swallowed something sour.
“You need a new car,” Alaina sniffed.
Nope. Disdain was pretty accurate in this case. Fortunately, Eleni could easily ignore those digs. She’d been hearing them almost all her life. “I cannot imagine why. This one gets incredible gas mileage, it’s inexpensive to insure, and has a low amount of maintenance necessary to keep it roadworthy. Plus it’s almost paid for.”
“It’s ugly.”
“Uh huh.” Eleni shut off her lights and plunged them into darkness. “Turn on the lights.”
“I can’t.”
Alaina turned on her heels and walked toward the door that led from the garage to the kitchen. Eleni heard her mother fumbling around before she finally got the door open. Inside there was the flicker of candlelight on the walls. What in the hell was going on?
“Mom!” Eleni ran after her mother. “You left candles burning when you were out of the house? Are you out of your mind? You’ll burn the place down!”
“Like I could get that lucky,” Alaina scoffed. “I don’t like walking into a dark house.”
“Dark house,” Eleni whispered. It took a second to sink in. By that time her mother had plopped her shopping bags down on the countertop and was fumbling around in the liquor cabinet. “Mom, are you telling me that there’s no electricity?”
Alaina didn’t answer so Eleni felt compelled to reach for the switch on her own. She flipped it a few times because for some reason she could not believe it the first or second time nothing happened when she turned on the light.
“Yeah, I think they shut it off last week. Candles are cheaper than electricity.”
“What about the fridge?” It was the first thing that Eleni thought of for some reason. No electricity. No refrigerator. No lights. No heat.
Alaina only shrugged her head. “It’s not like Bernardina is coming to work anymore anyway. The woman quit. Can you believe it?”
“When was the last time you paid her?”
“I don’t know. I think Michael gave her money before he left.”
“Wait. How long ago was that?” Eleni was confused. They had been attending these ridiculous dinner parties at the house of Tisha Olivares-King about a month ago and everything had seemed fine. How could it have gone to hell this quickly and over seemingly nothing?
“A few weeks ago. A month. I don’t know.” Her mother actually seemed annoyed that Eleni was asking these questions. “Would you please call the Chinese place and order some food. I’m starving.”
“You do it,” Eleni didn’t have money to pay for her mother’s standard Chinese order. She generally ordered at least fifty bucks worth of food. Eleni was on a tight budget. She was saving up for something special and she wasn’t about to let her mother screw that up no matter how poor she apparently was.
“No. You do it.” Alaina put her hands on her hips and glared at her daughter. The flickering light on the walls was eerie. The blinds were drawn and the huge house looked absolutely horror-film-like in this lighting. Then Alaina’s expression turned sly. “You made Orion King pay for my computer. The least you can do is buy me dinner.”
“Oh, don’t you pull that crap on me!” Eleni shook her head at her mother and curled her lip in distaste. “I don’t appreciate you trying to manipulate me. It’s rude. Not only that, but I have absolutely no reason to owe you squat. You’re the one who put yourself in this position. Do you have any money left from Daddy?”
“No.”
The answer was so simple and so final that for a moment Eleni was sure that she hadn’t heard right. But that would make sense. It was probably why Michael left. He realized that Alaina was never going to get a job and that she would simply expect to mooch off of whomever was silly enough to stick around.
“So your plan is what?” Eleni wanted to shake her mother. They were standing in the center of a huge house in expensive Highland Park. “Can’t you sell the house? If you live carefully you could get a nice little apartment in a less expensive part of Dallas and still have money to take care of yourself.”
Alaina waited for a moment as though she were waiting for Eleni to say that she was just kidding. Then she shook her head and snorted, which was Alaina’s version of saying whatever. “You must be joking. Are you hearing yourself? Move to an inexpensive part of Dallas? I’m Alaina Ariosa! I can’t do that! What would people say?”
“I don’t know,” Eleni said irritably. “What do they say when they see that your electricity is off and that you’re getting picked up for shoplifting because the people you’ve been stealing from are done dealing with your freeloading? You’re an embarrassment to the family and to yourself already. At least if you showed some kind of effort to retrench and live within your means it would maybe earn you back some respect!”
“Respect,” Alaina scoffed. “I never expected my older daughter to turn out to be such a comedian! You’re ridiculous! It’s like you’ve completely missed the point. Respect? Honestly? You have to be out of your mind. Respect doesn’t make other people impressed. It doesn’t make them feel like you’re better than they are.”
“Nope, you’re right about that.” Eleni pursed her lips and tried not to be too disgusted.
It was pretty much like dealing with a twelve year old. That was why Eleni taught second grade. Once kids got to about middle school age she got tired of their shallow obsession with image and social status.
“Besides,” Alaina walked to the refrigerator and opened the door. It was dark inside. That was a rather strange sight to behold. Then her mother drew out a bottle of some kind of alcohol and Eleni realized that she was using the fridge as an unusual wine casket or something similar. Great. That was a fantastic thing. Alaina reached for a glass she had discarded beside the sink at one point and poured herself a drink. “I just need enough money to get to Italy. Once I’m there I’ll be able to stay with Embry.”
“No. You won’t.”
“Yes. I will.”
It was like arguing with one of her students. The kind of thing where the kid was refusing to see logic. The difference between a second grader and her mother was that the second grader was actually capable of exercising some kind of logic after a few minutes.
“Mom,” Eleni began patiently. “Embry is living with her husband’s family. You caused her and Joseph no end of financial distress. She doesn’t have anything to give you. I promise. She’s there with her family and you’re not going to mess that up for her. Nobody is going to give you the money for a plane ticket to Italy. Do you have any idea how much that costs?
“I don’t know.” Alaina waved it off as though it were nothing more than a paltry few pennies. “A few thousand dollars. Who cares? My daughter is over there. I need to be there for her.”
“You need to be there because you don’t have anyone to pay your bills for you here.” Eleni was starting to feel a desperate kind of fear. “Mom, you’re going to have to do something to support yourself. Did you ever have a job or something?”
“A job?”
It was almost as though Eleni had suggested that her mother had been a prostitute. Except that probably would have been a less reprehensible thought in Alaina’s mind. There was probably nothing lower than the possibility of being part of the working class.
“Fine. Don’t support yourself. But you need to realize that you can’t just depend on people to pay your bills for you.” Eleni could not even imagine, and yet wasn’t this why she had been so insistent on getting her own degree and her own job despite her mother’s request that she just hurry up and marry a man who could pay for all of them?
“Then I guess I’ll have to get a sugar daddy.” The careless shrug suggested that her mother thought this was an easy task.
Eleni was feeling ill. “Mom, you have to be willing to put out if you want to have a sugar daddy. That’s usually what the men are paying for. They take care of your bills because you’re providing them with some sort of physical compensation.”
“Ew!” Alaina looked as though she had just eaten something sour. “That’s horrible! I’ve never heard that before. I guess I would need to get a guy who was so old that he couldn’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
“So then you’d be keeping him company and taking care of him into his old age?” Eleni almost couldn’t keep a straight face. “You know, changing his diapers and helping him back and forth to the bathroom to shower? I had no idea you wanted to be a caregiver like that!”
Of course, that was slightly exaggerated, but Eleni was sick and tired of her mother thinking that the whole world was peppered with options for getting someone to pay for your life that did not require work of some kind.
“Oh, stop!” Alaina held up her hands and waved them as though she could not even handle the thought of such a thing. “That is horrible. Just disgusting!”
It was time for Eleni to go in so many ways. She shook her head at her mother and turned back toward the garage. It felt odd to just leave her mother here in this dark house as though there was nothing unusual about not having electricity in the middle of the winter. Fortunately for Alaina, Dallas wasn’t all that cold. Just wet and rainy.
“Where are you going?” The note of panic was a bit strange. But then Alaina Ariosa was used to having an audience. It must be awfully lonely in this dark house with Christmas coming up.
Eleni didn’t turn around. “I’m going home, Mom.”
“You can’t just leave me.”
“Watch me.”
“That’s so cruel! You’re a horrible daughter!”
Eleni snorted as she reached for the knob to the garage door. “Yes, so you’ve been telling me ever since I was about twelve. I think that’s when I told you that I wanted to be a teacher. After that you pretty much decided that I was bringing shame on the family with all of my wanting to work for a living.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Alaina called out the words, but Eleni had already left.
It was too late for that mother-daughter relationship. It was too late for a lot of things.
Chapter Six
“Where have you been?”
Orion did not turn around. Ignoring his mother seemed like a perfectly acceptable decision to make right now. He was busy in the storage closet near the utility room searching for wrapping paper. He felt like there had to be some somewhere. He was trying to make an effort to make Christmas a family affair this year. It seemed unlike him. Yes. Actually it was unlike him. But his brothers had gotten married. They had wives and lives and homes of their own and Orion was the only one still living with their mother. So perhaps his motives were entirely selfish.
Spotting red and gold striped paper, Orion reached high onto a shelf to drag it down. He made a noise of satisfaction right before he thought about tape and scissors. He needed both. Unfortunately, this was not his office at the King building. He knew exactly where those things were at his office. Here at home, not so much.
Tisha appeared in the storage closet doorway right behind him. “What are you doing? You’re making a mess! You know most decent stores have a service for that sort of thing.”
Orion grunted. He didn’t want to talk about this right now. He had suggested a family Christmas to Zane’s bride, Landry. It had only taken a tiny suggestion for kind-hearted Landry to agree that they should all get together on Christmas Day at the King family home. The idea was to be together regardless of how Tisha might act about it. Orion had sold his brothers on the idea because he insisted that it was a way to maintain a united front in spite of their mother’s plans to take over the company and squeeze them all out.
As Orion carefully sized the paper around the purchase he had made for his brother Jason, he tried not to think about his real reasoning for wanting them all together on Christmas. He finally found scissors in a drawer. Using them to cut the paper to the right dimensions, Orion focused on his task and tried not to think about the fact that Tisha was watching with obvious consternation and a good dose of irritation.
“Who is that for?” Tisha smirked and folded her arms over her chest. “Some stupid gift exchange at work?”
“No. It’s for the family Christmas celebration I’m having for my brothers and their wives here at this house on Christmas Day.”
It was almost amusing to see just how fast that smug smirk fell off Tisha’s face. “Excuse me?”
“I’m pretty sure you heard me.” He let that sit for a second before continuing. “You might want to buy a few gifts of your own unless you want to look like Scrooge on Christmas Day.”
Actually the idea of the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future visiting his mother was a rather pleasant one. Orion rather enjoyed the mental image of Tisha Olivares-King in a nightcap and gown hiding beneath the covers to avoid the fear of what was around the corner.
“What am I supposed to get them?” Tisha snorted. “Rawhide chews?”
Ah yes. The ever-present mocking that happened because of Orion and his brothers’ heritage. They weren’t one hundred percent human. And it did not matter to Tisha that this made her sons more handsome, more muscular, more athletic, healthier, and absolutely resistant to disease. The fact that the King brothers were wolf shifters was a source of constant embarrassment to Tisha. She hadn’t signed on for that. At least that was what she always maintained. She claimed that Big Mac King—her late husband—had blindsided her with this information once they were already wed.
Lately though, Orion had started to be a bit suspicious about the truth of that statement.
“What?” Tisha reached out and poked Orion’s arm. “You’re not going to say anything about my comment? No rebuke? No high and mighty declaration that I need to be nicer to my sons?”
“I think you probably know that already.” Orion did not look at her. He just kept wrapping his package. What was really throwing him was the need to purchase gifts for his sisters-in-law. He didn’t know women very well and it wasn’t like he could ask his mother for ideas. Although Orion did know a certain woman with a flair for being genuine. “I cannot imagine why anything I have to say now would suddenly have an effect.”
“Aren’t you snippy tonight!”
Orion turned suddenly. He gazed at his
mother and wondered if she knew what was happening to her old friend Alaina Ariosa. “Mother, did you know that Alaina Ariosa broke up with her boyfriend?”
Tisha tossed her head and sent her short blonde hair flying. “You mean that loser Michael? I can’t say I’m exactly surprised. The guy couldn’t begin to support her. I think he was in construction or something. He was nothing more than a boy toy.”
“Have you spoken with Alaina since the two of you fought?” Orion carefully placed the final swatch of tape on the package and flipped it over. Not bad really. He could put a card on top of it just as soon as he managed to get one. “She was your best friend, Mother. Don’t you still have contact with her?”
“Oh, hell no!” Tisha actually laughed. The cruelty lacing that sound was horrible to hear. “You must be joking. I cannot imagine what would possess me to waste a single second on that woman. She was my friend. But then I found out that she was making plans to dip into my money. Mine!”
“It isn’t yours.” Orion issued the quiet reminder and wondered if his mother realized that Orion and his brother Devon had already unraveled what was happening in probate court. It was a convoluted process, but executing a will like the one Mac King had left behind was never an easy task. “The money is held in trust. It belongs to the company. You have a salary just like the rest of us. At some point you’re going to have to realize that when Dad died, he left you some pretty stringent limits.”
“I don’t do limits!” Tisha snarled at Orion. She waved her finger emphatically in his face. “And I sure as hell don’t want to share anything with that selfish bitch Alaina!”
“Yeah, because she’s so different from you.” Orion could not understand why his mother refused to see herself as a woman who had been taken care of her entire life even though she had never done one damn thing to deserve it.
“She is!” Tisha argued quickly. “Her husband died years ago. He left her nothing. There was no company. He had a job and not a business! There was still tons of money and she squandered every single cent! It was ridiculous. She just kept pretending that she could keep up with the Joneses. So sad.”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 99