Page 18 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“Good morning,” I say. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She nods once and begins.

She’s extraordinary.

I knew she would be. I’ve watched Sophia build this boutique from a side project in a dorm room into a functioning international brand with a real customer base and real revenue, and I’ve been proud of every step even when she refused to let me fund it. Especially when she refused to let me fund it, actually, because it meant she’d figured out something I’d spent years trying to teach her without saying it directly: that the thing you build with your own hands means something different than the thing someone hands you.

But knowing she’d be good and watching her be good are different experiences. She’s standing at the head of this table talking market demographics and luxury consumer trends and foot traffic conversion data like she was born to it, which I suppose she was, given that she grew up listening to me run a business from across the dinner table. She pulls up slides that are polished and well-sourced. She talks about the Thorne Estates brand alignment, the existing clientele overlap, the underutilized retail potential of the estate’s visitor footprint in a way that is genuinely analytically sound.

Asher is leaning forward with his elbows on the table and I can tell by the set of his shoulders that he’s not performing attention. He’s actually in it. Maddox has his arms crossed and the expression he gets when something is impressing him and he’s deciding how much to let that show.

Our goddaughter grew up.

I ask her about projected seasonal revenue variance. She answers cleanly. I ask about her supplier contracts and turnaround windows. She answers cleanly. I ask about insurance, liability, the physical footprint requirements, and she⁠—

She pauses.

I watch her go still in the particular way Sophia goes still when she’s hit something she hadn’t fully prepared for, the way she used to freeze on math problems at eleven years old, that same flicker of I know I know this somewhere crossing her face. She reaches for her portfolio and starts moving through it and I feel the specific guilt of a man who has pushed too hard on instinct.

Then Harper stands up.

She does it quietly, without announcement, stepping up beside Sophia and pulling something up on her tablet and setting it flat on the table so Sophia can see it. She says something low enough that it’s between the two of them, and I watch Sophia’s shoulders drop from her ears and her posture re-center and her hand stop moving through the portfolio.

Sophia looks up. Finds the question. Answers it.

Correctly. Completely. Like she’d known it all along and just needed a half second to locate it.

Harper sits back down.

I don’t look at her. I ask my next question.

The presentation finishes ten minutes later and Sophia is standing at the end of the table with both hands flat on it and the particular brightness in her expression that means she thinks it went well and is trying not to assume.

I let her wait approximately three seconds because I’m her father and some things are non-negotiable.

Then I lean back in my chair and say, “Sure. Let’s give it a shot.”

The sound Sophia makes is not a professional sound. It is the sound of a twenty-five year old woman who has wanted this specific thing for a long time and is not currently interested in composure about it. She rounds the table and I stand and she crashes into me and I catch her the way I always catch her, both arms, solid.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you⁠—”

“You earned it.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “That was a serious presentation, Soph. I’m proud of you.”

She pulls back beaming. Then she waves a hand at Harper. “It was all her. I would’ve been a duck without a pond in the middle of the ocean trying to convince sharks I was a soda can.”

I look at Harper.

She shakes her head, a small smile at the corner of her mouth. “Sophia was the star. I was just the nerd with the computer.”

The black-rimmed glasses are sitting on her nose and I noticed them when she walked in and I’ve been not noticing them for the last forty-five minutes with considerable effort.

I keep my eyes on the room.

Asher turns to Harper. “How did you know the insurance liability breakdown off the top of your head?”

“Luxury events and hospitality coordination,” she says. “I did it for four years in Manhattan. Vendor contracts, liability clauses, insurance riders, turnaround logistics. It’s basically muscle memory at this point.”

Maddox tilts his head. “How does someone with that kind of background end up between jobs?”