Page 4 of Bargain With the Boss

I nodded to Judy, her assistant, before sailing through the arched threshold into my mother’s domain. The focal wall behind her desk was made of the shiplap that made her famous. Floating shelves in a rich cherry wood held all her awards fromArchitectural Digest, the multiple American Society ofMagazine Editors, and her much adoredForbesList crystal with its strategically placed spotlight to make sure it sparkled.

My mother was seated behind her glass desk, a pristine raspberry colored blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt with her four inch heels in the exact raspberry shade to match. Her spine was ruler straight as she wrote on her white legal pad with the gold fountain pen the board of directors had gifted to her when the company officially passed a five hundred million dollar milestone. She was gunning for one billion thanks to whispers of a merger.

She wouldn’t be happy until there was A Home You Love in every major city of the United States and Canada.

It used to excite me just as much, but lately I was exhausted thinking about it.

She held up one perfectly manicured finger—always a sheer pink—and kept writing in her exacting cursive. No rushing for Michelle Keller.

I folded my hands around my leather folio in front of me. Unease had followed me all morning since the text had landed in my phone.

We were already ramping up for the holidays. I’d spent the last week in meetings to nail down the perfect pattern for this Christmas holiday. Not my idea, of course. The decree had come down from my mother.

Last year had been farmhouse chic, and this year she wanted silver and blue with a French country cottage core. It was my responsibility to make it work. My mother was very good at the overall idea, and I was expected to make it come to life.

With very little of my own personal input.

I was cross-eyed from researching the history of the French country traditions to create A Home You Love’s spin on it. Not to mention making sure the pieces could be manufactured at thelowest cost for maximum return. The family company wasn’t a discount brand.

We marketed to the mid-level wealthy who wanted elegance and couldn’t quite afford a designer, but lived to show off how well they were doing.

It had been the cornerstone of A Home You Love’s brand since I’d been a teen. The business may have been on par with TJ Maxx and HomeGoods when it started, but my mother’s eye had been on the elites. And what she wanted, she got.

Finally, she put her pen down and sat back in her cream leather executive chair. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I know you’ve been focused on buttoning up the Charlotte Christmas line.”

“Yes, we’re getting close to the end. I’ve been working with the manufacturers in?—”

She cut in. “Yes, yes. I received your report this morning.”

And you read it?

The words were on the tip of my tongue. I always sent my reports and findings to her, but she rarely replied or even noticed them. More like she noted when they weremissingmore than worrying about what was in my spreadsheets.

“You’ve done a good job.”

The praise dug out a kernel of need inside me that I hated.

It was such a rare occurrence, I’d trained myself not to require it. “Thank you, Mother. My team has been working long hours on it, but I think the end is in sight.”

“Yes, which is why I called you up here. Leah, your assistant, can take over from here.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

I worked my ass off since January to perfect this line, even if the mere sight of French blue toile made me want to hurl. I was seeing it to the end.

“Yes. I’ve been looking over your proposal for A Garden You Love, and I think with a few tweaks this could be a solid arm of the company.”

My heart kicked—hard.

“Really?”

She gave me a small smile. “Yes. There’s a lot of work to be done with the specifics of the proposal, but I think you have a good seed of an idea.”

I swallowed against the bile that rose up in my throat. I’d spent five years researching, doing cost analysis, ROI, and finding every weakness in that proposal. There was no seed. It was ready for implementation, but my mother couldn’t handle anyone having a better idea without her input.

I’d worked for the family company since earning my master’s in business from UC Berkeley and knew the ins and outs of every department of this business just like my brother. And still he’d walked away without looking back. Another pang hit me at the thought of him.

Jude escaped, leaving me behind.