Rattling Around: The Baxter Boys #5 (The Baxter Boys ~ Rattled)

by Charles, Jane

  “How are you doing otherwise? Is Kaden getting better now that the trial is over?”

  She only knows because I messaged her. Paris is five hours ahead of New York and sometimes when I’m free to talk she’s asleep. “It’s going to take some time, but we’re both going to be okay.” For the first time, I think I really believe that. “Why are you coming back now?” She was going to stay at least another year.

  “It’s time and it’s not the same without you.”

  She has friends. Lots of them, but I’m glad she misses me too.

  “Homesick, I guess, and I miss my family.”

  Moira comes home at least once a year and nobody ever talked her out of visiting. She even brought a boyfriend home once. That did not go well and that relationship ended before they ever flew back to Paris.

  “I’ll start planning and see what I can learn.”

  “Catering. The best in the city.”

  I laugh. It’s what we always intended, but the best in New York is some of the best in the world.

  “Got to go. Early day tomorrow. I’ll let you know as soon as my plans are set but expect boxes to start showing up.”

  Boxes in a house already filled from basement to attic with stuff my grandparents collected over the almost fifty years they’ve lived here. I don’t even know what they are taking with them and what they are leaving behind. It’s going to take forever to get the place cleaned out before Sean can fix anything that’s broken.

  “Can’t wait for you to be home, Moira.”

  She hangs up and I set my phone aside and sigh.

  “She’s moving back I take it?” Sean asks.

  “And is ready to move on to the next phase of our plans. It’s not going to be as easy as she hopes.”

  “Tell me about them. Your plans.”

  “Pipe dreams.”

  “You have a dream. I have a dream. What are we without them? Tell me yours.”

  “You don’t want to hear all of that.” He might think we are silly for dreaming so big.

  “Yes, I do. It can’t be any different than my plans of owning my own company and having control over the work I do.”

  “That’s different. Besides, you’ve just landed your first house.” I laugh.

  “I just hope the owner isn’t a pain in the ass.” He winks at me.

  “Demanding and particular. Your worst nightmare,” I assure him.

  He leans in close to my ear. “I have plans to soften her up,” he whispers in my ear.

  A delicious chill shimmers through my body.

  “Or maybe she has her own ideas of how to get what she wants.”

  “Oh, a battle of wills. I’m looking forward to it.” He rolls over me. “The negotiation process mostly though.”

  Then his mouth descends on mine. Damn, I could kiss Sean forever. The man could seduce with his lips, the way they are gentle, sweet, a flick of his tongue, more pressure until I’m opening and he’s mating his tongue with mine. Dizziness swirls in my head. His hands aren’t the only thing that are magical. I can’t imagine that we’d disagree on anything, especially if he uses his lips, tongue and hands to bring me around to his way of thinking.

  In a blink, he’s gone and rolling back onto his side.

  “Catering, right?”

  I blink, the mist of desire shifting and clearing.

  Now is not the time for sex. I get that he wants time before we move forward and I think I do too. Though when he kisses me like that, I’d pretty much go along with whatever he wanted.

  Except, my head and life need to get settled before I really get involved with anyone. Yesterday would have been a mistake, if he would have taken me up on my offer. Sean was right. I would have been using him as an escape from my pain and thoughts. I’ve been used and it sucks. He knew ahead of time. When it happened to me, I was blind-sided in the aftermath.

  “Catering?” he says again.

  Damn! He can really fuddle my brain. “We had it all mapped out. After completing a year of school here, Moira and I got serious about our plans and applied to schools in France. Mom encouraged us because we were young and we should live fully and do things most people don’t get a chance to do while we still could. Each time I finished one diploma, she encouraged me to get the next.”

  Mom wanted me to have the life she didn’t have. Not that she resented me or anything like that, but she was seventeen when she got pregnant with me and a baby really limits opportunities.

  “How many do you have?”

  I laugh. “Let me see. I’ve earned by Cuisine diploma and Pastry diploma, which combined is a Le Grand Diploma. I also obtained a Boulangerie diploma and a Wine and Management diploma.” I was in school for three years when one of those would have gotten me a job. “Moira was studying for the Bachelor of Business in Culinary Arts and since that program is about three and a half years, I stayed in school too.”

  “What is Boulangerie?”

  “Bread,” I answer. “Baguettes, brioches, croissants, beignets, puff pastry.”

  “There is a diploma for that?”

  “It’s a six-month program and very important, especially if you want to work in a bakery. Flour isn’t just flour, you know. Well it is, but there are different types, depending on what you want to bake. Plus, there are also different kneading methods, working with a fermented dough.” I sigh. “Bread is not as easy as one would think.”

  “I’m surprised a bakery hasn’t contacted you for an interview.”

  Maybe they will. I applied to a ton of places yesterday, but only one called. Others may and I’ll figure out what I’m going to do, if and when they do. It will all depend on how it works out for Rosetta’s. “We used to want to own a restaurant or bakery, with me in the kitchen and Moira running the whole thing, but then we decided on catering.”

  “Why?”

  “The variety, more for me than her. At a restaurant or bakery you’re tied to a menu for weeks, which is fine, but as a caterer, you can create a memorable meal for any one specific event, and choose the wines that will compliment it. Also, the overhead wouldn’t be as high, because we’d purchase food and wine for that specific event, and a kitchen and office to work from is cheaper and easier to manage than a full restaurant.”

  “I can see that.”

  “We stayed a year after we graduated so we could get experience. I was learning so much at the vineyard, and she’s been working her way up in management at a restaurant. When we thought we’d be ready, we were going to return to the states, work here for a while and then establish our own catering business.”

  “That’s not on the back burner anymore is it?”

  I give him a side-eye. “Pun intended?”

  He laughs. “Not really, but it works.”

  “No, it’s still on the back burner but only for a bit. I’ve got other things to take care of first.”

  Sean studies me. “What would you need to make that happen?” he asks after a little bit.

  “A kitchen and a place. You can’t really cater anything if you don’t have a means to prepare the food. Even if a location has a kitchen, a lot of prep work gets done off-site and sometimes a day ahead of time.” Our dreams are big. Or were and I’m not sure we’ll ever realize them. At least not anytime in the near future and I hope Moira realizes that once she’s back home. “Once we get to that point, we’ll start off small and hope that it grows. Right now, the stove doesn’t even work in Grams’ kitchen and, even if it did, it’s not set up for the type of meal preparation I’d be doing. I’ve got a long way to go.”

  Sean sits up and focuses on me. It’s almost like I can see the wheels turning in his brain, like he has an idea. Dreams are great and someday I will pursue them, but I don’t have time right now. Even if I could use the trust fund to find a place, I’m not sure I have the energy to venture into a business that might fail.

  “You do know that this area, this street at least, is zoned for small businesses.”

  This is reside
ntial. I’ve seen no businesses, other than the ones about four blocks down the road, toward the park and subway stop. “There are nothing but homes along here.”

  “Some of those homes also have businesses.” He starts grinning. “Two blocks down a woman has a salon on the first floor and lives above it. In the other direction, the first three floors takes up a bridal shop. She creates unique dresses. A bride brings in ideas, or pictures or things she wants, or sketches and the designer takes all of her ideas and creates a gown unique for that bride, and does the same for her bridesmaids. One floor is full of nothing but fabric for the bride to choose from.”

  “I had no idea.” Have they always been there?

  “Take a walk down the street sometime and you’ll see the different businesses advertised. They aren’t huge signs like you’d find on a main street with stores, but they are there. As long as the business stays with the aesthetic of the neighborhood, on the outside, any business can be done on the inside.”

  “Like a catering business.” Could I actually use the house I grew up in?

  “Yep.”

  The dream I set aside starts to churn, but I tamp it down. “It’s a wonderful idea and a wonderful dream, but with absolutely no capital, or money, it won’t happen anytime soon. Besides, I don’t even have a stove that works,” I remind him.

  “Ah, but I can fix that, now, or in a few days at the latest.” He squeezes my hand. “And, you do have the capital, or have a way to get it.”

  “I’m not sure that it’s meant for me to open a business. Plus, I won’t get anything for two years, and don’t even know how much that is.” My mind is still reeling that my family actually has money.

  “Let it churn for a bit. I’m not saying that you open your business tomorrow, but when you are looking at the house with what you want done with it, keep that in mind. The only stipulation on your trust fund is that a third goes for philanthropy.”

  He’s right. Why can’t I just think about it?

  20

  It must be later than I thought. When Noelle and I head back downstairs, after we’d taken a two-hour nap that wasn’t anticipated, everybody is there. All the guys and the girls who went to high school with me.

  “Is it true?” Mia asks.

  Zach must have told them of Noelle’s connection to Baxter. I hope they aren’t going to get weird around her because it will put me in a really sucky position. They are my family and Noelle is the girl I’d like to have a relationship with.

  She shrugs, like there isn’t much she can do about it. It is what it is and she can’t change her relationship with her family any more than I would change mine with the people in the living room.

  “At least your board makes sense now.”

  I glance at it. Baxter is written right at the top. Tink got it immediately.

  “I noticed it yesterday but didn’t think much about it.”

  She has been distanced from the school and that side of her family. Plus, she’s had other things on her mind.

  “If it makes you uncomfortable, I can go.”

  I tighten my grip on her hand. She isn’t just going to walk out like that. Haven’t enough people abandoned her already? I’m not going to be another one.

  “We were wondering if you’d be uncomfortable around us,” Alyssa finally says. “You know things. Things we don’t talk about or share outside of us.” She gestures around.

  “First, the only thing I know is that you went to school there,” she reminds them. “And, Sean has told me about his past, but that’s it. The rest is none of my business.”

  They are still eyeing her suspiciously and I hate it. Since when did they get all judgmental?

  “Aren’t you at least concerned, worried, and curious?” Ryan asks.

  “No,” Noelle insists. “Why? The past is the past. I think it sucks that all of you had experiences in your life that lead you to Baxter, but that’s pretty much my thoughts on it.” She’s looking at them and I can sense the tension coming off her body. “That was then, this is now. Your childhood only matters as much as you want it to.”

  “Don’t be a bunch of shits,” Zach stands. “You’re standing here judging her because of who her family is. Don’t you think that’s a bit hypocritical?”

  A voice of reason. I’m just kind of surprised it was Zach and not Dylan, I chuckle to myself.

  “I guess we just wanted to know. Make sure, and all,” Kate says. “You know, the whole moving forward.”

  “Not backwards,” Noelle finishes. “I get it. I was raised on it.”

  They slowly nod and I think we’ve moved past whatever the hell was bugging them.

  No, I know what was on their minds. They were afraid Noelle would dredge up what we don’t want to think or talk about.

  “So, can you tell us who Theo is?” Zach asks. “Your grams said the school was for him.”

  Noelle relaxes against me. “Were you guys ever told how Baxter even got started?”

  We all shake our heads. That information was never given to us. All that mattered was that it was there.

  “Baxter used to be a camp, not a school. In the summer, my great-grandparents and then grandparents invited kids up from the city, inner city, the poorest of the poor, so they could escape and enjoy for a bit. Its focus was always arts and the kids stayed for a week or two and then another group would come in. The kids were handpicked because of an artistic talent. Theo changed all of that. He was a second cousin to Uncle Tink, third cousin to me…My grandmothers’ brother stayed on at the plantation.”

  “I told you that it used to be a planation,” Joy pipes up.

  “The family always did well. Even during the depression, they made money, and the more they made the more they gave. They also loved the arts, which is how the camp was started. Even after my grandmother married, she’d go back to the camp each summer and work. Gramps didn’t mind because he knew it was her passion. Then in about 2002 things changed.”

  “How so?” Mia asks with curiosity.

  “Grams’ brother and his wife had eight children and those children had eighteen more kids. Jackie, Tyler and Theo were the kids of the oldest, Michael. He and his wife were killed years before and Grams’ brother took them in and raised them. When he died, his wife kept the camp going, along with their children. It had been running for so long that they did fine as long as they had the right counselors.”

  I wait patiently to find out how the school came to be, fascinated because I had no clue that it had been a summer camp.

  “Anyway, Theo suffered a bad head injury when he was like fourteen. He was plagued with headaches; they were mild on good days but any kind of reading ruined him for days, so his education suffered. His older sister, Jackie, had just graduated from school to be a teacher and decided to homeschool him for his senior year. This was the summer right before his senior year,” she explains. “Theo was angry, and I get it. They said his mood could change on a dime, and he constantly struggled to not lash out, that kind of thing. He was also in constant pain and I can’t imagine trying to live like that.” She lets out a sigh and sinks down on a step and I sit next to her.

  “He loved the camp though, and the art. He was a photographer too. He could get lost behind the lens and it wasn’t painful. And, he loved the campers. In a way, he got them and they got him. They all struggled. Maybe not the way he did, but life wasn’t pleasant where they lived, whether it was the neighborhood, family life, a combination. Theo wished there was a school for kids like him. Kids who didn’t do well in school, kids who were artists, not academics. Kids who struggled. Kids who, without intervention, would be in jail, on the streets, in gangs, or dead…the type of kids who came up every summer. Kids who needed help emotionally and mentally. Mental health was at the very top of Theo’s list.”

  “Why?” I asks.

  “After he was injured, Theo saw a number of therapists to help him cope--psychiatrists, psychologists, anyone they could find, but it was an art therapist who
tapped into some of Theo’s struggles. Besides reading, he enjoyed drawing but even that took a toll on him, so the therapist suggested photography.” She smiles. “Did you know that most of the photos around the school were taken by Theo?”

  “Damn!” Ryan says. “I used to study that work as inspiration.”

  Noelle smiles. “He wanted a place for kids who had shit lives and needed a place to go, to be safe, and get help so they could have a decent shot at life, and have friends who wouldn’t judge him anymore than he’d judge them.” She looks around. “Theo lost his friends after the accident. The kids at the camp became his real friends because they weren’t caught up in the normal high school bullshit.” She shakes her head. “The school was Theo’s dream. A place for the talented and troubled. It was his idea to have psychologists and art therapists at the school. He wanted a place to belong.”

  “He really lost his friends?” Sean asks.

  “The kids who had been his best friends turned into his bullies. He down-played it and Jackie didn’t realize how bad it was for Theo until it was too late.”

  My stomach tightens and Mia gasps.

  Too late, as in…I don’t even want to finish that thought. “What happened to Theo?” Joy asks slowly.

  “At the end of that summer, he suffered a seizure while driving. He had an accident and didn’t recover.”

  I blow out a sigh.

  “I was afraid…well, that….” Christian starts to say.

  “That he committed suicide?” Noelle asks. “He would have. Jackie had kept it a secret for a really long time but finally showed the Foundation his letter. In fact, that was his plan that weekend but he had to take his grandmother somewhere. He was going to go up in the mountains and end it, if he hadn’t had the accident.”

  “Oh, God.” So, I was right.