This Changes Everything by Jennifer Ashley Page 0,17
three brothers straightening our backs. Virginia McLaughlin, a.k.a. Mom, comes out of her office, a sparkle in her eyes. Her firstborn has been married off, and she’s ecstatic.
“Nothing,” I answer quickly.
“Zach and Abby Warren,” Austin supplies.
Mom turns to me. She’s going on sixty, and you’d never know it. She runs three times a week, gets up early to open the office, and works harder than anyone else here. Has since she and Dad started this business when they were newlyweds. Mom does all the accounting. Once she figured out that Dad was great with clients but seriously sucked with money, she dug in and never let go. We’re all very, very glad she did.
Austin shares a lot of Mom’s looks, her angular face and light blue eyes, hair so dark it’s almost black. Ben, me, and Ryan are more like Dad. Hard-faced, brown hair that ranges from dark to light, eyes that hide our smarts. Well, hide Ben’s and Dad’s smarts. Ryan and I are average. It’s hell living with geniuses.
“Zach and Abby Warren what?” Mom demands.
I pick up my mug and try to hide behind it. “You saw us. We danced.”
“I did see.” Mom sounds interested. “And …?”
I’m getting hot under the collar. Literally. I run my finger around my neckband. “And nothing.” I am not discussing my sex life with my mother.
“Are you going to ask her out?”
Austin huffs into his coffee. Ben looks innocent, but he lingers, as though there’s nothing in his closet of an office worth going back to.
Mom pins Austin with a severe gaze. “Something funny?”
“No, ma’am.” Austin’s still chuckling as he drinks his coffee.
“Well?” she asks me.
“Possibly. I have her number.” I glance at Austin and decide not to tell him who gave it to me.
“Good,” Mom says with conviction. “Abby’s nice. I remember her from when you were kids. She was your first kiss, right?”
Austin makes more noises of hilarity, and I want to crawl behind the high reception desk and not come out. “I didn’t know you knew that.”
Mom sends me the pitying glance mothers get when their kids think they’re so much smarter than their parents. “Ryan told me. A long time ago. I liked her. You should call her.”
“I might.”
Mom smiles at me, eyes warm. “It’s your business, honey. I promise, I won’t interfere. Much.” She sweeps her glance over us all. “I assume none of you have any work to do? Funny, I thought there’d be more while Ryan’s out and Sandra’s gone.”
“Lots.” I heft my mug. “Just getting some coffee.”
“I already miss Sandra,” Ben says mournfully.
“We all do.” I sketch a salute at the empty desk. “Champion handler of clients and the phone. But she needed to leave.”
“Yeah,” Austin says. “Deciding to help her single daughter raise her children. Where are people’s priorities?”
Ben turns on him, outraged, but I raise a placating hand. “He’s joking.” I leaf through the mail stacked on the counter, pulling out correspondence and catalogs addressed to me. “At least I hope so.”
“Of course I am.” Now Austin is annoyed. “I’m not a dick. Oh, sorry, Mom.”
“If you boys didn’t swear, I’d think something was wrong with you.” Mom sweeps in and takes the rest of the mail. “Now get the hell back to work.”
She leaves us staring at each other awkwardly. Then we disperse.
Our main office is a showroom with the middle of the floor filled with a few demo models of custom kitchens and bathrooms, lots of sample books, and tables and chairs where we can talk with clients or people we hire to do the installation.
Offices ring the floor—Mom’s is filled with computer printouts and books, Dad’s with photos of remodels we’ve done, going back thirty years. Austin’s is surprisingly pristine. Ben’s is a dark, mysterious cave filled with humming machinery.
Mine has piles of books about the latest in appliances and home-improvement gadgets, plus pictures of my brothers and me at the lakes or tubing down the Salt River or in Las Vegas. I glance at one of Ryan and me, arms around each other in front of the Golden Nugget with the Fremont Street Experience going off over our heads.
“Glad you’re happy,” I murmur to Ryan’s picture as I take my seat.
I shuffle through my mail and check my appointments for the day, but it isn’t long before I have my phone out, staring at it. Abby’s number is now at the top of my contacts. I’ve made it a favorite.
Will I ever use it? I push the phone