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That was the moment when the flame ran out of wick and hit the dynamite.
It sucks that we came to the peak of our brewing argument while Dad was in the Bahamas signing a deal to design the interiors of a new resort. Dad would have intervened, and things wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand between the two of us. And now he’s going to hear the whole story first-hand, in person, from her, and I won’t be there to defend myself.
The worst thing is that she can talk me out of Dad’s good graces too by twisting our argument around to show that she was right, I was wrong, and good riddance.
It’s all too late for that now. Tough love.
I take the interstate off-ramp that will eventually lead me to Ashleigh Lake, and soon the GPS tells me to turn left onto another main road and I’m grateful that I need to focus on getting to my meeting on time. I hardly slept last night because of our fight, and I’ve been rehashing every argument the whole day, wondering where and how I could have stopped the detonation, but it was futile. Frankly, that bomb has been ticking away patiently all my life.
As a little girl, I learned early on that if I wanted to see my parents, I needed to sit silently where they were working. In quiet corners, I soaked up everything that was part of their trade, at first not to get scolded, or worse, get a spanking. Later on, I picked up a hand drill only to impress them. Initially, it was only renovations, but over time my parents became interior design and decorating specialists. By the time I was twelve, I ‘worked’ on jobs when I wasn’t in school, since playdates and other activities weren’t in the cards—one thing was for sure, Georgiana Wess wasn’t going to be chauffeured around to ballet lessons. At seventeen, it dawned on me that I might just be cheap labor to them. It took me another seven years to realize that there’s no love lost here. As a pair of hands, I’m interchangeable with any other loser they pay by the hour.
My departure could have gone down with more grace, but that bridge is ablaze, and the rest is water under it. The time has come for me to part ways with Wess & Rover Interiors. My mom didn’t want me to come north to Vermont to build a fucking stupid tiny house. She had billionaire Thomas Blake’s twenty-thousand-square-foot beach house to wrap up before August, and God knows, she could do with an extra pair of hands, with someone who knew what they were doing since all the other summer interns were a bunch of useless little shit-wits.
Mom is always a bit more pirate in private than in her celestial social media persona or in public.
I sigh and blink at a sudden swell of tears but manage to sniff it away. If anyone’s in need of new scenery, it’s me. I wind down the window and draw in a deep, earthy breath. The air is so different here from Miami’s salty, sultry haze. Fresh and so clean from the beautiful forests that hug the road that I might pass out from lack of pollution as my body gets too much oxygen. This place has got to be breathtaking in the fall, and I wish I could be here for that season too. But all I’m getting is one sweet summer.
I’d hoped to drive through the small town of Ashleigh Lake first, but my meeting is at five and I won’t have time. Plus, the GPS guides me to take another left after a covered bridge and before a sign that reads Welcome to Ashleigh Lake. The Most Romantic Town in Vermont. The small sign is pretty and quaint, and later I’ll take a photo of it for my Instagram.
After the turn, it’s only a few hundred yards to the entrance of the Ashleigh Lake Dairy and I blink when I take in the size of the place. The new factory is smaller than I’d thought, given the amount of exposure the brand has over the internet. Google has hundreds of reviews and notably zero bad ones for this place’s ice cream—the best organic ice cream ever, totally addictive, hoard this for the apocalypse were some I glanced over. The dairy’s website didn’t reveal much about the executive team, except that the Logan and Brodie dairy farm is involved, and that the CEO is Hunter Logan. I’ll be working with Raiden Logan, who doesn’t seem to have any connection to the dairy or ice cream factory.
I aborted my snooping around the internet for Hunter Logan when my initial search spat out too many Hunter Logans. I had better things to do than to figure out which one works here. Raiden Logan turns out to be the ultimate mystery man. I couldn’t track him down at all. They’re probably geriatric and maybe not comfortable with the internet or on social media. The advertisement for the internship did stress that the position needed someone with experience in bookkeeping, design software and anything vaguely technological. Reading the ad was like slipping back to the previous century and I was simply charmed. I’ve come armed with my laptop and every design and accounting package my parents have the licenses for and use in their business. What Mom doesn’t know, can’t kill her.
I resolutely put Mom and everything that’s happened over the past two days aside and turn my focus to the job at hand. I’m here and ready to rock the Logan world.
I park in the visitors’ parking, find my way to the entrance, and take the stairs that lead to the factory’s administration offices. As I ascend, a satisfying churn from the neighboring factory hums through the walls.
The receptionist sits at her desk, stifling a yawn, but she perks up as I open the glass door. “Georgiana Wess to see Raiden and Hunter Logan?”
Her eyes widen. “George Wess?”
“That’s me.” I reach my hand out to her and she stands. “Georgiana is a bit of a mouthful.”
“Ah, I see. Brittany. Nice to meet you. I go by Britt.” She smiles as we shake. She brushes her hands over her red wavy hair and parks them on her hips, head tilting to the side as she studies me with a mischievous twitch to her lips. “Raiden walked in a minute ago. They’re waiting for you in Hunter’s office.”
“Thank you. I’m glad I made it on time.”
Brittany rounds her desk. “Is this a prank? Hunter and Raiden have always been little shits. As kids they pranked their aunt and uncle all the time, but this might be taking it too far.” She blinks, taking me in. “Even for Raiden, it’s raising the bar and he literally got booted out of town for all the crap he got into.”
“Sorry, what’s that?” I’m not following and I’m not sure I want to.
“Oh, dear. I’m sure it’s nothing. I just can’t help feeling that some people are in for a surprise.”
Brittany has a smile plastered on her face that I don’t exactly know how to interpret. Little shits and pranks don’t sit well with me. I did travel all the way from Miami to be here and after a sleepless night, my batteries won’t take well to anyone pissing on them. Plus, tomorrow is the first day on the job and I don’t want to mess that up.
“I think this is going to be one of those moments where I call Hunter with a fake emergency to extract him from a difficult situation,” Brittany says as she widens her eyes. “Imagine, I’ve never had to do that before.”
The excitement in her voice and the total overshare make a blush rise to my cheeks. “What exactly is the problem?”
“Oh, there might not be a problem at all. Maybe I’m the slow one to catch on. Won’t be the first time.” With a deprecating chuckle, Brittany nudges me down a short stretch of corridor in the direction of a door. “This way.”
I follow Brittany, clutching my purse tighter. This can’t be bad. Nope, all’s good. The contract is signed, my accommodation booked and it’s part of the deal. It’s all going to be perfectly fine.
Brittany leans into an open office doorway through which I can’t see anything yet, but two male voices still.
“George is here for you, boss.” She steps to the side and with a wave indicates that I should go in. As I attempt to go past, she gives me an encouraging squeeze on my forearm that makes me pause.
“Just think, there’re four Logan brothers,” Brittany whispers, a minty breath flowing in my direction. “I can hardly handle two at a time and I’ve known them all my life…good luck, honey. Let’s catch up at Sharky’s later this week.”
