Page 99 of Embracing the Change

“Calling her and informing her that my father is keeping her due to using credit that’s running out. Further, the bank that holds the note on his over-leveraged ranch is going to call it, considering I own controlling shares in that bank. And last, I don’t think she’ll like squeezing into the two-bedroom apartment she’ll be sharing with Pop and Jeff if she doesn’t cut her losses right now.”

This sounded like a good plan, though not a comprehensive one.

However, Jamie wasn’t done.

“I’ll then tell her, if she ever fucks with you, or anyone I love, I’ll make it so she longs for a two-bedroom apartment, because, if I can reduce AJ Oakley to that, which I can, and am, I can ruin her, which I can, and will do, if she doesn’t stand down.”

“Although this seems thorough, I still think whatever the G-Force would do would be more entertaining,” I murmured.

He chuckled.

Then he said, “Now, if you’re good with that, I’ll let you go.”

“I’m good with it, more than good. Text when you’re on your way home?”

“I will. Much love, sweetheart.”

What a divine way to end a call.

“Much love to you too.”

We rang off and I rose from the couch to go to the kitchen to make myself a Perrier with lemon and lime before I went to the study to take the call from the children.

Glass in one hand, phone in the other, I hit the study.

I’d redecorated it post-Roland to rid it of the cloying, dark masculinity he preferred, so now it was bright, elegant and feminine, decorated in creams, salmons and peaches.

But before I moved to the desk where the PC was, I walked to the inlaid bookshelves, which were covered in pictures.

The one that had pride of place (for now, I often rearranged them) was a photo of all the gang at Mika and Tom’s wedding last year.

I smiled at it and then looked next to it, where a formal portrait of Allegra and her husband Darryn sat.

My daughter had elected to wear her grandmother’s vintage tulle extravaganza of a Dior wedding gown. Darryn had elected to wear a white jacket for his tuxedo, which worked beautifully with Allegra’s dress and his midnight skin.

I hadn’t been certain about Darryn for Allegra because doctors, on the whole, could be arrogant, surgeons often thought they were gods, but neurosurgeons thought they were the god. And Darryn was a neurosurgeon. And frankly, no one wanted to be married to a man who thought he was god.

But he’d won me over because he loved my girl unreservedly, showed it openly, he had an acerbic sense of humor I adored, and he was, indeed, delightfully arrogant because he also happened to be frighteningly intelligent, he knew it, and he didn’t suffer fools.

My Allegra was a nurse practitioner. They worked at the same hospital and had a stunning, newly built apartment in Battery Park.

I moved along to the wedding photo of Nico and his Felice. My daughter-in-law had gotten married barefoot and with flowers in her hair. She also made her own jam and maintained an herb garden on the fire escape off their apartment in the East Village. Being the good mother I was, regardless of all of this, I loved her anyway.

(Not true, I tried to love her, however, she wasn’t very lovable, but I could pat myself on the back because I hadn’t given up—on the other hand, she also wasn’t my biggest fan, but sadly, she wasn’t as good at hiding it.)

Then there came the picture of Valentina and her Archie. He was a cameraman at sporting events, she was the assistant to a line producer of a network evening news program. He resembled a bear. She had my grandmother’s delicate, petite frame. He was rough and rowdy. She could make a party out of a funeral.

They’d had their own commitment ceremony in the Bahamas that no one was invited to, so in my Valentina’s “wedding” photo, she was wearing a bikini.

I still had not forgiven her for that, any of it.

I didn’t care they didn’t want to be married.

However.

A bikini?

And…

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