Page 70 of Savannah Sweethearts

With a chuckle, I replied, “Talk to me now.”

“In person.”

“Come over now.” I laughed fully. She was good at getting her way and though she was my baby sister, she was also a built-in best friend.

“Really?”

“Really. We’ll order Thai food and I have ice cream.”

“I’ll be there in thirty.” The excitement in her voice made me smile. I loved nothing more than making my sister happy, and if she needed an in-person chat session, she had something going on.

I put my phone down and opened my emails. A dozen new inquiries appeared before me. Ever since I had been interviewed for Action News there had been a definite uptick in requests. And while not everyone wanted to book, many did. Unfortunately, many who asked couldn’t afford my rates, but that’s what being in demand did. It was exciting and humbling at the same time.

How would that change if I were to work for the Daniels family? What about the clientele I had already booked? I hoped Linaya would know what to do, because I sure didn’t. She always brought a fresh outlook to everything.

Over bowls of pad thai and tom kha kai, we chatted on my couch, our legs intertwined between us. Linaya wore a cropped shirt and running shorts while I had on sweats. We both wore our hair in wild messy buns. A pair of glasses sat forgotten on my sister’s head as she squinted at her phone.

I told her about the potential job at The Promenade and she nearly jumped from her place on the couch. “That is so exciting! When would you start?”

I shrugged. “No idea. I don’t know how these things work. I have clients booked out eighteen months.” I slurped on my soup. Yai, our Thai grandmother, would have given me a shocked expression at the faux pas. Slurping was considered rude. But our father, her son, thought she was so outdated, he had taught us to slurp and slurp loudly. Linaya and I still enjoyed seeing who could be the loudest.

“Quit slurping,” she scolded. “Can you still work with those brides even if they’re not married there?”

I wish I knew. It wasn’t something Orlando and I had discussed at length. My immediate thought has been to turn him down, but it could be beneficial in the long run. One day I would be too old to be a universal bridesmaid, and having event planning on my resume would be great.

“I guess I need to talk to him more about it. There’s a lot to consider.”

Crinkling her nose, Linaya grabbed my hand. “Does this mean a shopping trip?”

“Let me talk with this guy first. Then, we shop.” We settled into silence for a few minutes, both of us eating and occasionally making a very loud slurp. Yai would be tanning our hides by now if she heard us. Thankfully she lives several hours away.

“So I dumped Josiah,” Linaya finally said, a sad expression crossing her face.

There was no surprise there, but I tilted my head and tried to look sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Linny. But truthfully, he didn’t seem well suited to you.”

“I guess not,” she muttered with a pout. “I’m ready to find the right person, you know?”

I sat up straighter. I did not know, and I told her as much. “You want to go to New York, you want to design for runways. Why do you feel the need to settle down now?”

Linaya chewed on her nail while she thought. “Well, Mom married Daddy when she was twenty-one. Yai was nineteen when she married Pop. Gran was twenty-two when she married Granddad. I think my biological clock is ticking.”

I put my hand to my stomach, feeling for an imaginary biological clock. At twenty-six, I did not feel like mine was ticking away like a time bomb. I rarely dated, being a perpetual bridesmaid pretty much killed my dating life outside of creepy groomsmen. My mind went to Orlando. He was the closest thing I’d had to a date in the six months since Kyle. I figured he was a little older than me and wondered if men had biological clocks that began ticking at a certain age.

My gaze came to rest on my sister’s big doe eyes. “Your biological clock hasn’t even begun yet, let alone be counting down the time you have left. You’re young. And people don’t get married as young as they used to. I mean, Gran and Yai got married in the seventies – do you know how long ago that was? That’s just how it was done then. You have all the time in the world now.”

Even though she heaved a sigh, Linaya smiled. “I guess you’re right. Maybe I need to be looking for a guy after I graduate and go to New York.”

I stood and put my bowls in the sink. Opening the freezer, I called back to her, “That’s right. And until then, I have mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

Orlando

Trying to show The Promenade to a potential buyer without alerting my mother was harder than I thought it would be. She said she was retiring, so I thought she would be drastically cutting down her hours. That turned out to be a bald-faced lie. She was there every day with her tailored clothes and her pearls, chatting up every person who walked through. I managed to send her to lunch with her friends for the first potential buyer, but now I had one coming in an hour and my mother was walking around with the head gardener, chatting about what new things to plant.

If things went as planned and she transferred ownership to me, I would be selling it and didn’t care one lick about what flowers were blooming when. I needed to sit down with her and make sure she was going to turn things over to me, so I could then sell and set her up for a luxurious retirement and I could get back to my own company.

Though I did enjoy the more relaxed pace set here in Savannah. It was much more casual than in Atlanta. Suits were not everyday wear, I had learned. Polos and khakis passed as business-wear here and I liked that. I liked taking things slower and not feeling rushed. But it wasn’t the life I was used to. And I had plans to sell. At least, I think I did.

I paused though, thinking about Amaya coming to work for us. I could see her every day. If I sold The Promenade, I might not ever see her again. Selling as quickly as possible had always been my plan, so actually looking over the books to see just how lucrative a business it was had never entered my mind. It did now. If my mother wanted to hire Amaya, there must be enough revenue to do so easily.

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