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Chapter 1
Jasmine
The little jingle of the bell tells me someone is here, and I slip out of my office and towards the showroom space. I have sections set up that honestly, makes it seem like we’re a home furnishing shop, but that is not my forte. It does happen to be my sister-in-law Serena’s though, so the space looks amazing even without the party additions I add and rotate through the spaces to give people an idea of what something might look like before they book me.
I love my job. Honestly, I can’t believe I get to do this as a job—get paid to do this because I’d seriously do it for free. Hell, I do do it for free for my family and a few charities that we love and support.
I have a few people that work for me just in the showroom, but one called in sick today and the other had to leave to pick up her kids from school, so it’s just me today. The rest of my staff are more part-time helpers for when we set up a space, or a few that work from home, to locate and order items, find new spaces that fit clients’ requests, or come up with new ideas to offer. Things that can be done on their timetable from anywhere rather than here in the office.
I’ve only been in business a little over two years. After graduating from college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Instead, I helped out some at Cartwrights, my family’s construction company. Well, it started out as just a construction company by our dad, but it’s now turned into a huge corporation. So much so that it takes four of my older siblings to run it.
My brother Jesse is the Chief Executive Officer of Operations while our oldest sister Julie is Chief Executive Officer of Construction Projects. Jude is the Chief Operating Officer and Johnnie is the Chief Financial Officer.
They’re not the only ones in the family that work there though. My older brother Joe is one of the in-house architects for that newer branch of services, while Jamison is now designing furnishings. He’s my twin so while the others might not like me to admit it, he’s my favorite brother.
He designs not only his own stuff but has also been working with Julie’s wife Serena to create models for some of her new furniture items. She’s started to incorporate more furniture into the company’s most popular home décor line under her name, in addition to creating interior designs for clients. So yeah, it’s for sure a family business.
It brings in more money than ever, so my siblings have no issues with raising their families. All of my older siblings are married except for Joe, and that’s saying something since there’s a total of thirteen of us. Seven are older than Jamison and me while the other four are younger. Jamison and I will be twenty-five in a few weeks but neither of us are married or even dating right now.
Our family was already big but add in all the babies that have been added to it over the years, and it’s grown massively. My first sibling got married just a few months after Mom had Jillian, on Dad’s sixtieth birthday. It wasn’t any surprise that Jackie and Ethan had their oldest Andra soon after. She’ll be seventeen just before Jillian turns eighteen in May.
The newest additions to the family are Jesse and Maddie’s little Tessa, along with Jude and Eden’s twins—Elsee and Everlee. They’ll all be turning one this summer.
I think it’s hilarious that out of all of my brothers, Jude currently has the biggest family. Okay, it might only be because he and Eden are raising her quadruplet brothers and sister as theirs. Her Mom died from complications due to a car accident which led to them being born that day. Eden was doing her best to support all of them with just the insurance money and met Jude when she went to the health club he secretly owned to find the babies father.
We were all shocked when Mom told us that the babies Eden was carrying were Jude’s when he found her back. She was staying in a house the company owned after saving Maddie from a scary fall outside the doctor’s office. Jesse found her being illegally evicted and moved her into the house and Mom instantly was there to help with the babies.
Jude stopped by one day to drop off diapers and Emma latched onto him, kind of like how Julie latched onto Mom when she first met Dad. I think it’s sweet that he already was bonding with the babies before Eden was even there, so the second he found her back, he tied her to him.
Even knowing they would soon have six babies with the twins on the way, he wouldn’t let her go. I think that’s what’s most shocking to everyone. Jude was adamant that he wasn’t getting married and having kids until Eden and the babies came into his life.
That’s what I want but haven’t found…not with any of the guys I’ve dated. There’s never been this just knowing that they’re meant for me feeling it seems the rest of my siblings, at least those that are married, have experienced.
Hell, even Jennie and Troy were pretty instant and she’s the least like the rest of us. I didn’t really deal with her during her apparent worst phase, Jackie and Julie had to deal with that. Mom said it was just because Jennie felt left out. Julie was her first baby, even though Jennie was the first one she carried, and so much like Dad that Jennie felt Mom loved her more out of the girls. Jackie is Mom’s mini-me entirely, so in Jennie’s mind, Dad doted on her and loved her more.
Then came the four oldest boys, but of course she was still the ‘middle’ child in her mind and ignored. I don’t get how she ever thought that because even with us younger ones, Mom’s never made us feel left out or ignored, or simply not special.
Jennie and I aren’t close. Not the way I am with Jackie and Julie. Part of it is the age difference. She was almost fourteen when we were born, out of the house in college when we were only in preschool, so I get it—somewhat. Julie was going on sixteen and Jackie was twelve when we were born and they’ve never made us feel like they didn’t love us, weren’t going to be there for us. They were my big sisters and I loved how they treated me since the others were all boys.
Hell, I was surrounded by boys until Jaime was born. I was six so it was like I had a baby doll at home to play with, and then a little over a year later, Jillian rounded out the family, so I had another one to help Mom with. And the next year Jackie had Andra, and the year after that Abby. I love my nieces, and nephews of course, but being young when they were born, made them extra special to me.
Now, I have two brothers-in-law, Ethan and Troy, and four sisters-in-law, and I love all of them. I also love their kids and helping to plan birthday parties for them.
I’m actually helping Julie and Serena come up with ideas for their, fingers crossed, adoption day of Grace and Matt. They’ve been fostering them for almost two years now and have the actual paperwork filed to make them Cartwrights as well. They’re just waiting on a court date at this point.
Anya, their adopted daughter, is four years younger than I am, she’s in college still, a lot like I was, unsure what she wants to do afterwards, but Julie and Serena aren’t pushing her to choose a major. They keep telling her if she needs to explore classes in different areas to find what speaks the most to her, then they’ll gladly pay for them, and that is a hundred percent, my family.
She helps me out when she has free time, or with family parties, such as the one we’re putting together for Serenity. She’ll be ten at the beginning of June and she’s been begging to have a spa day slumber party. We’re still coming up with ideas for it since it’s just over two months away still and have the time.
She of course wants her cousin Amelia to be there as well as friends from school, even if Amelia is a year younger than she is. They’re both extremely girly, something Julie doesn’t quite get so we love to tease her about it.
We throw a lot of parties, individual ones that may be more for just friends with the kids that are in school, along with others that are for family. If we did something for everyone’s birthday, we’d likely spend half our time at parties, so Mom suggested several years ago that we do one party a month to celebrate that month’s birthday people that’s just for family rather than a normal family dinner. That way, no one feels they have to change their schedules to make it to every single party.
It's worked well since in total there’s almost fifty of us. That’s not including our aunt and uncle plus their kids. Heck, we also would have to count Ethan’s sister Kathy if we counted them. They don’t have any other family to celebrate with after their aunt died unexpectedly, so of course Mom counts her as ours. Including Kathy’s husband and two kids. She met him through Ethan when she came to town for college, wanting to be closer.
Counting the fifteen of us, plus Ethan, Serena, Troy, Maddie, Carly, and Eden we’re already at twenty-one. Add in the twenty-six, soon to be twenty-seven grandkids with Carly pregnant again, and we’re nearly at fifty already. That doesn’t include any of the future grandkids that might come from me or the other unmarried siblings, let alone the married ones like Jude that have said they’re not finished just holding off for now.
Johnnie’s over the moon with having another baby. Their oldest will be almost four when the new baby’s here, twin boys that when together are little terrors, but in the best way.
