Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,101

if we ever really had one.”

“You still talk to them?”

“Yeah. My siblings think I shouldn’t, but…” I shrugged. “I just want us to have a happy Christmas, you know, all together again.”

“Sometimes,” Morticia said, “family is the people you choose, not who you’re related to.”

“I’m just not ready to give up,” I said, tipping my head back, tangling my fingers in her hair. “And what about you? I can’t believe you hate Christmas so much. No big happy Italian Christmases in your childhood?”

She huffed a laugh. “Except for the food, we’re pretty bad Italians,” she replied, staring out the window. “More the fighting-and-eating kind of Italians rather than eating-and-loving Italians.” She drifted off, not seeming willing to tell me more.

I held her close to me. “You stick with me for the holidays. I’ll make you fall in love with Christmas and give you a holiday season to remember.”

Morticia was scarce the next few days, and I barely got so much as a one-word text back whenever I messaged her. I was worried. What if she had heard my brothers talking about how I was pulling a fast one to secure the property? I would be ruined.

I paced around my condo at night, working myself up, trying to decipher from her texts whether she had figured out what I was up to.

The reality was that all the ideas she kept spouting to me about the property were not going to happen. Greg would never allow it. He might allow a small event space but not enough for artists’ retreats. He would want to rent it out for conventions and weddings and other big moneymakers. Tacky little art retreats for naked yoga and nude painting were not going to generate revenue.

The whole idea of small studio spaces to rent out to artists was a nonstarter. Those types of uses never drew tourists, and the artists were so messy and territorial that they didn’t want anyone in their studios anyway.

No, it wasn’t going to happen.

When Morticia finds out, she’s going to hate you.

55

Morticia

Though it had originally begun as a ruse to keep Jonathan from discovering the painting, now that I was generating ideas for the development of the Hamilton Yards property, I was starting to become excited about it. A part of me was sad that I was going to be leaving for the Getty internship.

You may not even get the internship.

Was it weird that that didn’t make me all that sad? I could stay in Manhattan and help make the development cool and artistic. Jonathan seemed to like my ideas, and Dorothy was very excited about them.

She was also excited about my project. “Oh yes!” she said as I added some red and green highlights then pasted on watercolor holly sprigs, gingerbread people fucking like rabbits, and hand-drawn baked goods.

“Oh, oh!” Dorothy said, pushing my shoulder lightly. She had been drinking all afternoon and watching me work. “Put a candy cane there, not a Santa hat.”

I swapped out the strategically placed Christmas fig leaf on the deep V at the base of Jonathan’s abs.

“Perfection!” Dorothy kissed her fingers like a chef then poured me a glass of cranberry-flavored vodka. “Shots!” she called in celebration.

“That’s more than a shot,” I said. “That’s like a fifth of the bottle.”

She sloshed the clear bottle. “It’s almost empty anyways. We might as well finish it off.”

I was pretty woozy as I stumbled outside to hand the package to the FedEx guy for the scheduled pickup.

“Don’t worry,” Dorothy told me confidently as we headed back inside the building. “I’ve been singing my praises of you to Zarah and the Getty folks. You’re a shoo-in.” Then she turned to me, suddenly serious, as if she hadn’t been drinking for the last few hours. “What do you think of Jonathan?”

“He’s hot.” I was too drunk for this conversation.

“Yes, he is, and I bet you’re going over there right after this to get some, what with staring at his naked body all day.” She looked out over the property. “When I bought this in the sixties, it was a steal. I always wanted to make it into a big artists’ retreat, but life happened. I never had the capital. You seem convinced that Jonathan is going to do good things with this property.”

“He seems to want to build something unique and special. But I’m not going to stand here and convince you to sell. Maybe just have a meeting?” I suggested, trying to sound competent and not stupid drunk. “See