I shook my head. “She just had a baby. She won’t be back for at least two months.”
“Erin?”
“Too blonde, too skinny.”
“But unlike Camryn, Erin has a soul.”
I laughed because he was right. “Still.” I shook the idea away. “I can’t send her. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I’ve already waited this long. I need to focus on other things, which is what I want to talk to you about.”
“Okay.” He frowned and put a healthy portion of his Paratha—an Indian flatbread—in his mouth, chewing it slowly as he watched me.
“I’m buying the company and dissolving the board. I told the lawyer to draft the new contract so that it’s a fifty-fifty partnership.”
He stopped chewing, eyes wide. “Camryn?”
“Hell no.” I leaned forward, making sure I had his undivided attention. “You and me.”
“But . . . this company is your dream. You were the one who sold your soul to the devil, literally, to get it. I didn’t do anything.”
“You work just as hard as I do.” I smiled when he gave me an incredulous look. “Fine, almost as hard as I do.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t work his ass off. It was just completely different work. Where I had nearly four hundred people to oversee, Sam had twenty. It didn’t matter. I took advantage of his clearly speechless state to continue my explanation.
“I don’t want this to be a company that we hand down to your kids with contingencies. I want this to be a partnership, an equal partnership between two brothers. The creative team you’ve built has been doing incredible things for Hawthorne Industries. We can rebrand, make it what we want it to be.”
“Rebranding could take a while.”
“We have time.”
Our clientele had expanded from furniture to clothing and beyond. I wanted to continue expanding and rebranding may help us get there. Our main plates came and we dug into those.
“You said my kids,” Sam said suddenly.
I paused mid-chew. “What?”
“You said to hand down to my kids. What about yours?”
I smiled, shaking my head. “I’m not going to have kids.”
“And you think I am?”
“You have a heart of gold, Samson. Fuck yes, you’ll have kids.”
“I don’t even know if I’m fertile after all the shit they injected into me.”
I swallowed the agony that crawled into my throat as I thought about his treatments and everything they’d taken from him. Somehow, he’d made it out stronger and better while I crumbled with the weight of the worry.
“What do the doctors say?”
“That it’s possible, but not likely,” he said. “They’d have to check my sperm count again, but it isn’t like I’m jumping into fatherhood anytime soon. I bought my own place, and that’s enough adulting for me.”
I smiled. He’d made his first big purchase and moved into a building in Dumbo. I’d chosen a Brownstone a block over from him, but I wasn’t sold on it. Too many rooms, too many renovations to be done. Camryn hated Brooklyn, which was why I closed on the house. It was petty, I knew it was, but I had still done it.
“What’s going on with Chloe?” I asked. “Only you would end up in a long-distance relationship.”
“Yeah, well, long-distance no more. She’s moving here in a month.”
“What? You didn’t tell me. It’s that serious?”
He shrugged, still smiling. “Only time will tell. She’s working for Tessa.”
The name slammed into me like a ball to left field. “Tessa’s coming here?”
Freaking crickets. Nope. He wasn’t getting away with that crap.
“Sam. Is Tessa moving back?”
He chuckled, looking over. “You can’t let things go, can you?”
“You know I’m nosey.”
“Not that nosey.” I just waited. “Fine. Yes, she’s coming back to New York and running the Prim office here.”
I nodded, shoving my emotions so deep not even a molecule of light hit them.
When it came to Tessa, I was more than nosey. I had followed her career. I had paid attention to what her siblings were up to. I found out everything about the man she had a child with. Cody Maverick.
That was the blow that had almost dropped me. He worked with major department stores, buying clothes from fashion designers and stocking them. I’d met him when Tessa and I had gone to the city for meetings. Apparently, she had seen him as something more than a business contact because she hadn’t had an issue with jumping into bed with him. The memories still clawed at me, keeping me up at night until I remind myself that I had slept with Camryn the night we got married. I didn’t have a damn leg to stand on.
“Well, I’m happy for her.” I cleared my throat. “Let’s get back to the topic. Are you ready to make this a partnership? We’ll change the name, renew the brand to our liking. You’ve already taken the leadership role in the creative department. Your responsibilities don’t have to change unless you feel like you’re ready to take on more.”
Sam sat back and considered me. After a long pause, he said, “You know what? Let’s do it.”
“Let’s do it.”
Chapter Six
Tessa
The first reaction I had to my brand-spanking-new office was to squeal and jump like a lunatic. It was a corner office in a New York City sky-rise. Never in a billion trillion years had I dreamed I’d ever be able to call a place like this mine. Well, sort of mine. It was Prim’s, but as the new creative director of the U.S. offices, it was kind of mine. I squealed again, which had Chloe bursting into laughter.
“This place is heaven.”
“I know, right?” I was smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. “I have to bring Miles one of these days. Hell, I have to bring Celia, Freddie, and my grandma one of these days.”
Chloe was still laughing as she walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, but then she sighed dreamily. “My god, this view.”
“How am I supposed to get any work done here?” I asked. “I mean, real talk, how?”
“Hell, if I know.” She pressed the side of her face to the window and looked at me. “Is this weird? Because it feels so good and you can’t hear any noise.”
I ran to join her and pressed my own ear against the window. “Nope. Not weird at all.” We were definitely acting like children, but it didn’t matter. When Yamina gave me the news that I’d gotten the promotion and would be opening the position as the very first creative director in the New York office, I’d cried, and cried, and then begged to take Chloe with me. Not just because she and Sam had started this long-distance relationship that was making even me suffer from anxiety, but because she was a kick-ass assistant, and I knew one day she’d be so much more than that for this company. Chloe backed away from the window and held her phone up so she could take a selfie as she made a silly face before looking at me.
“Stand behind the desk. I need to send Sam a picture of this.”
I laughed and obliged, adopting the most boss-like poses I could summon—both my fists on the desk with a serious face and then my arms crossed with a smile on my face.
“I feel like I’m doing Glamour Shots,” I said between laughs. Chloe was laughing equally as hard as she fired away the texts.
“He’s going to flip out.”
“Miles is going to flip out.” My smile widened as I thought of him.
“When are you going to bring him?”
“I’m not sure.” I looked around the office again, taking note of the electrical outlets I’d have to plug before his visit. He wasn’t a tiny baby anymore, but he loved those outlets.
Chloe’s phone vibrated in her hand. She laughed as she answered. “Babe, did you see? No. No. That’s Tessa’s new office! Yes! Yes! Hold on.” She walked over and handed me her phone before telling me she would be right back.
I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello, peasant.”
Sam chuckled. “I ho
pe you know I’m moving into that office.”
“We’ll have to be roommates because I don’t ever want to leave.”
“When are you bringing Miles? I wanna be there when he sees it.”
“I was just saying that to Chlo. I don’t know. Maybe Friday after I pick him up from school?” Calling his daycare a school wasn’t a stretch of the imagination since he really was in a school-like environment.
“Text me and I’ll be there. Did you find babysitting for next Saturday?”
“For the bar opening? You know it.”
Sam’s friend was opening up a bar in Brooklyn and Sam had designed the entire concept. I was more than a little excited to see it come to fruition.
“Fantastic. I have to run, but your office is amazing. Tell Chloe to call me when she leaves.”
“I will. See you Saturday.”
We finished the call and I set the phone down, smiling at the picture of Sam and Chloe that she had saved as her backdrop. They were in front of the Eiffel Tower. Her pretty blonde hair was covering half his face as she kissed his cheek, her arms thrown over his shoulders.
The phone screen went to black right as Chloe walked back in with three white tubes tucked under one arm. I shrugged off the navy-blue blazer I had on and tossed it on the sleek gray couch beside my desk before turning back to Chloe, who was back to looking around with a goofy smile on her face.
“Show me what you got, mon cherie.”
“We have a few projects happening at once,” she said, opening the first tube and unrolling the blueprint on the table.
“What—” I blinked rapidly and looked at Chloe. “Are you sure this is the right thing?”
“It has your name on it.” She turned over the tube to show me.
“It’s a car.”
She chewed on the tip of her fingernail, looking at the blueprint. “I know. Yamina didn’t say anything about this to you?”
“No.”
I stared at it for a couple of beats longer before pulling the binder that accompanied it toward me and leafing through it. In my time working at Prim, I’d mostly focused on high fashion with the exception of a luxury jet I’d helped design last year, which was not in any way ordinary for me. The company had many branches, but high fashion and interior design for luxury spaces were the two we focused on most. Luxury spaces meaning homes for the rich and famous and sometimes boutique hotels. Cars weren’t something we saw often. I looked at the other binder on the desk and noticed that it was a hotel. The third binder was more my style—the spring line for a popular designer.
“A car and a hotel.” I let out a breath. “No pressure.”
Chloe let out a nervous laugh. “I know.”
I opened the fourth binder, which was much smaller and contained some amateur-looking sock designs. “I don’t get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whose designs are these?” I glanced at the bottom of the page and saw RHS Designs. “Never heard of them.”
“Me either,” Chloe mused, frowning. “Actually, they sound familiar. Maybe we worked with them in Paris? I have to check my notes.”
“Do they want us to pick their fabrics? Design more? I’m so confused.”
“I’ll get more details. What I have so far is that they want us using the same textiles company for all of the projects,” she said. “The car is for Fashion Week. They want to put it in the middle of a runway show.”
“Sounds . . . interesting?”
“Yeah. The hotel is a project we need to put a bid on. Best design for the lobby and downstairs bar wins and gets to design the entire hotel, rooms included. It’s a small boutique in BK.”
BK. She said it the way people spoke about the food chain.
“I’m glad one of us is hip enough to say BK when talking about Brooklyn.”
“You’re hip.” She smiled. “Besides, my college roommate was from BK, and that was all I heard for the four years I roomed with her. I’m going to finish pulling the information for the meeting with the textiles company. Do you want me to have Seth and Tommy work on some of these designs?”
“Send them the car and the boutique. Both companies know exactly what look they’re going for, so that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll keep the socks and the spring collection for now. I assume they want designs that match the two they sent us. I think I can come up with ten more.”
“Perfect,” she said before grabbing the paperwork for the two projects I was delegating and walking out of the office.
I pushed off the table and walked behind my desk, pushing the button on my phone that would speed dial the Paris office, specifically Yamina’s.
“Bonjour, Cristophe. Je dois parler à Yamina.”
* * *
“Cristophe, bonjour! May I please speak with Yamina if she’s available?”
“Of course,” he said, switching to his heavily accented English before he put me on hold. Three songs later, Yamina picked up the line.
“Tessa, are you calling to tell me how much you love the new office?”
I laughed. “Well, I don’t think the view is quite good enough, but it will do. I actually have a question about the upcoming projects.”
“Ask away.”
“I’m staring at a blueprint of a car and another of a hotel,” I said. “This isn’t my department.”
Yamina let out a throaty laugh. “Everything is your department now, dear. It’s creative, and you’re the director.”
“But it’s a car,” I said quietly. “And a hotel.”
“And I trust you’ll know how to delegate those tasks to others. What I will not allow is for you to sell yourself short. Do you remember why I put you in that position?”
“Because I’m the best.” She’d told me that so many times that I’d started to believe her along the way.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” I nodded to myself. She was right. I’d worked on different things that didn’t only include dresses. I could do this. “So, we’re working on a boutique hotel, a car, a spring collection for Vue, and socks?”
“We’re bidding to work on a boutique hotel, the car is a definite yes, they want Prim-level talent.”
“No pressure,” I said. “What about the socks?”
“The textiles company we’re using is giving us the biggest discount I’ve ever seen for the other projects as long as we help them design those socks.”
“That is—”
“Business,” Yamina said. “Just do the same thing you do when we work on handbags or couches or carpets for private jets.”
“This is insane.”
“It is. Go make me proud and send everyone my best. Call me if you need anything.”
For a few long seconds after she hung up, I stood there speechless. Then I set the phone back on the cradle and sighed. A boutique hotel, a car, spring dresses, and socks it was.
Chapter Seven
Miles hopped off his bed, climbed back on, and did it again. Thank god for small luxuries like toddler beds.
“Get your book,” I said. “Where is it?”
“I dunno.” He did a one-eighty turn and shrugged. “Let’s use the telescope.”
I loved it when he said that word. Tele-sh-scope. He hopped onto the bed again. I sighed, folding the last pair of socks I could find a match for and tossing them in the drawer. I picked up six lone socks and shook my head. I’d literally just purchased a new bag of socks for this very reason.
“Te-lesh-scope,” Miles said again, slowly this time.
“There are too many lights in the city, babe. I’ll have to take you upstate so you can see the stars. Maybe we can stay at Nana Joan’s house and set up the telescope there.”
He’d gotten a telescope for Christmas and hadn’t been able to really use it. Leave it to my son to even know what that was, let alone what it was used for. I blamed Freddie for Mile’s obsession with everything NASA. He’d even painted Miles’s room blue before putting stars on the ceiling and rockets on t
he walls. It looked like an astronaut’s dream. Or nightmare. I wasn’t entirely sure which.
“Nana Joan is coming tomorrow,” Miles said.
“She is.” I smiled up at him. “Are you excited?”
He nodded, wide smile on his face. Miles loved my mom, but Grandma Joan was his favorite. Probably because Mom tried to be authoritative and Grandma Joan let him do whatever his little heart desired. It wasn’t difficult. All he had to do was bat those pretty, incredibly long eyelashes and flash that smile. I couldn’t blame her for it. More often than not, I had to catch myself before I gave in to one of his unnecessary demands.
“Miles? Tess?” Celia called out.
“In Miles’s room,” I called back, but Miles was already rushing out of the room in search of his aunt.
In an effort to live together but still feel like we had our own spaces, we’d found this incredible place in Dumbo. The owners we were renting from had purchased three big apartments on the seventh floor of the building years before Dumbo became a popular place to live. They hoped that their children and their families would one day move into them. When that didn’t happen, they rented the space.
I was on the floor folding the rest of Miles’s clothes when Celia walked in with him in her arms.
“Miles says he wants to use the telescope Eddie bought him.” She stifled a laugh. I bit my lip to hold back my own. Miles used to call Freddie Eddie because he couldn’t pronounce his name properly. He’d moved past it and started saying it correctly, but Celia and I used it to torment Freddie all the time.
“Eddie’s gonna be so happy to hear that,” I said.
Miles sighed, shimmying out of Celia’s hold. “I said Freddie.”
We laughed lightly. I extended my arms and grabbed Miles as he tried to run past me, bringing him to my chest in a tight hug and kissing his chubby cheeks over and over. “I just love you so much.”
He giggled in my arms and broke free to walk back over to the telescope.
“You actually put it together for him?” Celia took a seat across from me and grabbed a shirt to fold.
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