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I rolled my eyes. She always said that. Like somehow I wouldn’t recognize her voice or the shrill sound of the old fashioned record player behind her. She loved to pretend she was from another time and could just shut out the world because her husband was the man of the house and therefore made all the decisions. She was even pretending that everything was normal and I wasn’t currently embarrassing the entire family by refusing to fall in line.
“Hi Mom. Do you need something?”
She sighed, like she was somehow already exasperated with me. “Your sister’s wedding is coming up. We need your dress size.”
Grimacing, I resisted the urge to feign a bad connection. My siblings and I weren’t on good terms. My brother was always on Dad’s side and my sister was like all the other women in our world. Determined to be the best housewife and mother. She didn’t care that her marriage was arranged to benefit my father. She didn’t get me like I didn’t get her. I wanted nothing to do with her wedding either.
“Mom… I’m not sure I’m going to be there. I have work…”
She made a tsk sound. “Nonsense. You’re sisters. You’re coming. Are you bringing a date? You know Gavin is still single. I bet if you just talked to him–”
“Mom. We’ve been over this. I’m not going to talk to Gavin. I don't know why you’re so hung up on this. He cheated on me.”
“He made one little mistake, Rebecca, and he’s been absolutely heartbroken ever since. He’s a good man! He can give you such a good life!”
Even if I was willing to ignore a slip, which I firmly believed was not just a one time thing, I wouldn’t be interested in calling Gavin. He’s reckless and misogynistic. He fully assumed I’d give up my career to be a housewife once I got married. If I ever got married. I honestly didn’t see the appeal, even if it was for love. Forcing myself into a puffy white dress to throw one of the most expensive and commercialized parties in society today. I’d rather spend that money on something practical.
“Mom, I’ve got work to do. Can I talk to you later?”
“Don’t dismiss me, Rebecca. There are things we need to discuss! And–”
Shaking my head, I pulled my phone away to check the time. When I put it back to my ear, she was still ranting.
“Mom. It’s almost six, you’re going to miss your show.”
That made her hesitate and slow her tirade. I heard her shuffling around and I knew she’d be checking the time and pouring herself a glass of wine so she could drown away her stresses and zone out on trashy TV.
“Oh goodness, you’re right. Fine. But I’m calling back tomorrow.”
“You have church tomorrow, Mom. And you and Maggie wanted to meet with Father Bruce about the ceremony. We’ll talk soon, I’m sure. Have a nice evening.”
I hung up before she could argue anymore. There was a reason I was good at my job. Growing up with my family, I had to learn to shift the narrative to my benefit. At this point, I excelled at it. I suppose I should thank them, but it’d be a cold day in hell before I let them paint themselves as the perfect parents who raised their daughter well.
* * *
After orderingpizza and feeding Samwise, I dove headfirst into the contract, taking notes on a notepad of things I wanted to clarify and things I wanted to change. I’ll admit that Liam O’Connor could write a decent contract, there were a lot less changes than I’d normally make in a client drawn contract. I was still considering actually taking the job and spent the rest of the night googling the three men I met with today.
Mateo was pretty easy to find. Being rich and good looking, he was popular in gossip magazines and charity newsletters. He’s a big spender and very generous. He told me some of his wealth came from family money and the rest came from smart investments. He’s a whiz with numbers, which you wouldn’t expect given how pretty he is. There was almost no mention of his wife online. I had to assume that was deliberate because it had to be hard to stay out of the limelight next to that man. I’ve had my picture taken with him a few times and a couple gossip magazines went nuts trying to say we were sleeping together. They got a strongly worded letter threatening legal action and pulled their article but the damage was done and I got an earful from my mother about it. At the time, I was still with Gavin and she thought I was cheating.
Liam was only slightly harder to find. With the recent media attention, there was a lot about him and his ties to the shooting downtown, but very little about his life before that. The internet said he owned an import business, which was funny to think about. Considering his title, I could take a guess at the types of things he was importing. I wasn’t going to outright ask him. It didn’t really pertain to our contract since most of my job would be about the building itself and honestly he was a little scary. I did not want to piss him off.
Dmitriy was a ghost. There was absolutely no mention of him. I even tried searching for Russian businessmen in Chicago and came up with nothing. Other than the fact that he likes to speak in another language to talk about people while they’re in the room, I didn’t know anything about him.
My contract was with Liam but Mateo said they were partners. I wanted more information before I was willing to tie myself to these men, even if it was only for a few months, especially with what was on the line. I know it’ll happen one day but I wasn’t sure I was ready to pull the trigger on cutting myself off from my family completely.
Maybe it was morbid curiosity but I looked up Jaime too. I didn’t find anything, which wasn’t surprising given that I couldn’t really google ‘Jaime with the dimples’ and come up with a real person. I did pop his name into Facebook but there were so many people named Jaime and I didn’t want to spend the entire evening cyberstalking a guy I had no business learning more about. We wouldn’t even see each other again.
Sighing heavily, I dropped back on the couch. I haven’t dated in over a year. After all the drama with Gavin, I didn’t trust myself to choose someone good. Obviously I have shit taste if I fell for someone that messed up. It only took a severe car crash and a stolen promotion to get my head on straight.
I fell asleep on the couch like I always do, Samwise purring on my chest putting me to sleep. I swear he did it on purpose to punish me for the one time I closed my door before bed and accidentally locked him out of the room. It didn't matter how many cat toys and treats I bought him, he still would lose his mind if I even shut the door to pee. I don’t know why I even bother having doors at all at this point.
I woke up with him meowing at me and a crick in my neck.
“Alright, alright. I’m up,” I mumbled, scrubbing at my face. He hopped off my chest and took off toward the kitchen while I tried to force my tired brain to function. I may not drink alcohol but I needed caffeine to live so I spent more than I should on a coffee maker that started automatically every morning. It was the smell of it brewing that finally got me moving.
ChapterSix
It tookthe entirety of the weekend to convince myself to at least meet with Liam and discuss the contract. It was the several phone calls from Gavin and a strongly worded email from my father demanding I return home that swayed me and I felt like I owed it to myself to at least show up and see if the job was worth it. I forced myself to leave the warmth of my apartment and headed outside, coming up short right in front.
