Page 18 of Love In The Spotlight

Phoenix, Paris, London, Dallas, Bronx, Siena, Rome, Memphis and Raleigh. Ages thirty-one to twenty.

She hadn’t seen her cousins in longer than she could remember either.

Didn’t even talk to them much but got updates from her mother at times.

She was on social media but didn’t bother to check on things.

Who had the time?

“What’s going on?” West asked.

“No clue,” her mother said. “Just that Carolina said he had all these ideas and dreams and maybe rushed into it.”

“That’s too bad,” West said and let it drop.

Her brother was good at helping anyone who needed it and put his siblings first. But outside of the siblings, if someone else wanted it, they had to come to West and present like any other investor would.

“How are Uncle Logan and Aunt Amber doing?” Laken asked of her father’s brother and his wife. She had four cousins on that side.

“They are well,” her mother said. “Got all the kids home for Thanksgiving. You know they are spread out some too. I can’t get over how no one is married, but at least some are dating. Kind of like my kids. Dating, but no one is married or has kids. Do you know how many kids I had at your age, Laken?”

“I believe it was five kids,” she said, doing the math in her head. “And yet you kept going. We weren’t enough for you?”

“I had a lot of love to give,” her mother said.

She moved over and put her arm around her mother. “You did and you do. Now Talia gets it all.”

“It’s suffocating,” Talia said and was looking at West.

“Don’t look at me,” West said. “I’m not paying for you to have your own place. You ultimately have your own apartment downstairs and come and go when you want.”

“That’s right, Talia,” his mother said. “Don’t leave me just yet.”

She decided it might be time to change the subject or her sister was going to be blowing her phone up whining that Laken only made it worse.

“West,” she said. “I’ve got an idea about Jamie’s business.”

“No work talk,” her mother said. “What did I tell you?”

“You know it happens when we are all together,” she said.

“It happens with you talking with Rowan, Elias and Nelson because you don’t see them as much. But you two see each other all the time. So, no.”

“You heard Mom,” West said.

But when their mother moved to the other end of the kitchen, she leaned in and whispered. “Think of Nelson. Maybe put him in there to oversee things. It’s close enough to you to be mentored and me to keep an eye on him. Braylon too. He wants that part of it. Learning from the ground up might open his eyes but help too.”

“I like where you’re going. I’ll think about it,” West said.

“I hear you two,” her mother said. “No more work.”

“I’ll bring the snacks into the other room,” she said, pouting.

Laken just couldn’t shut her job off.

She didn’t think it was the fact she wanted an edge and wanted to be thought of as powerful.

It was more the fact that she knew she had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.

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