Page 17 of The Business of Love Box Set 1: Books 1 - 4

RHYS

I ’d had a shitty day.

Sometimes, that was just how it went, but today was a special level of fuckery that tested every nerve in my body.

First, my receptionist, who’d been flaking on me for weeks, called to give me her resignation.

Correction. She called my assistant because she was afraid to tell me in person.

Apparently, the girl didn’t realize “in-person” meant in the flesh, not over the phone.

Clay delivered the news and spent the rest of the afternoon frantically covering the phone lines and seeing to her usual daily duties while also trying to throw together a job posting for her open position.

After that, I had an investor pull out. His abrupt departure caused unease in the other investors my moonshine company possessed, and I spent the latter half of the afternoon assuring them all that my company was not, and had never been, a business risk to them.

Money continued to flow inward, not outward, and the past four years showed serious growth margins unlike anything else in my industry.

I was a powerhouse, and they knew it, and their sudden doubt in my ability to manage my own company set my teeth on edge.

I fell into my office chair at quarter to seven in the evening.

My energy was spent. At the beginning of the day when things first started going sideways, I’d considered calling up Vanny and seeing if she wanted to grab a drink and get to know each other for this fake fiancé shtick we’d planned.

But as the day continued to worsen, I realized I wouldn’t make for the best company and she was probably better off avoiding my negative ass until I woke up refreshed and less bitter tomorrow morning.

But still, she was on my mind.

She had been since I left her outside Caprizee on the weekend. I could practically smell her perfume when I closed my eyes, coconut and vanilla and something a little spicy, maybe cinnamon. The image of her perfect red lips had been haunting me for days.

“Fuck it.” I should just call her. She’d turn my mood around in seconds.

I fished my cell phone out of my pocket just as there was a soft knock on my door. Surprised that someone else was still there other than me, I called for them to come in.

It was Clay. He poked his head into my office as he always did. “Um, Rhys?”

His tone suggested something else had gone wrong. I put my cell phone back in my pocket. “What is it?”

“Your mother is on the line.”

Clay stared at me and I stared back at him.

“What does she want?” I asked.

“She isn’t making much sense, man. I think you should take this one.”

If I wasn’t frustrated before, I was now. “Thanks, Clay. Close the door on your way out.”

He left without another word. Clay was one of the only people in the office privy to snippets of my relationship with my alcoholic mother.

Sometimes, she liked to call when she was opening her second bottle of whiskey for the evening, just to make small talk.

The booze made her forget that she and I no longer had a relationship, and I’d let her revel in her self-induced haze of fiction for as long as time permitted, which was usually about half an hour or so.

I stared at the light blinking on my office phone daring me to pick it up. This was probably going to be a rough one.

I picked up the phone. “Mom?”

The line filled with heavy breathing and hiccups. “Jasper. Where are you right now?”

“The office. Where you called me.”

“Come home.”

“Not tonight. I have a lot to do. You should run yourself a shower and go to bed, Mom.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Some of her words were slurred, while others were chopped short and abrupt. She spoke in a stuttering, broken cadence that suggested she’d had more to drink than a usual Tuesday evening.

“Is Dad home?”

“What does it matter?” She barked into the phone. “Even when he is home, he just ignores me. Come home, Jasper. I need to talk to you.” She hiccupped and burped into the line. “I need you.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger and massaged the pressure point between my eyes.

Of course, this had to happen today. She hadn’t had a bad night like this in months.

But life had a funny way of coalescing as much bullshit into twenty-four hours as possible. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She let out a relieved sob. “Thank you, Jasper. Thank you. I’ll make you a PB and J. They’re still you’re favorite, right?”

“Please don’t.”

The driveway up to the family estate was lined with ten-foot-high lamp posts. They’d been there as long as I could remember. Terribly poor efficiency bulbs burned orange in the glass, and of the forty, six were burnt out.

The groundskeepers were getting a little slack with their duties.

I parked in the wraparound driveway alongside the stone fountain that used to run year-round but now only ran in the spring and summer months. It was an intricate thing, all fluid lines and graceful slopes leading the water over the stone in rivulets.

I got out of the car and stared up at the house.

The wraparound porch was illuminated by the outdoor chandeliers my mother had installed when I was roughly ten years old for a fancy party my parents were hosting.

I couldn’t remember much of that particular event, only that my parents had fought over decor and liquor selection for weeks leading up to it and my mother had made an inevitable fool of herself two hours into the party when she went for a dip in the fountain to cool down.

Pictures had been plastered in the magazines for weeks afterward.

With a sigh, I walked up the porch steps to the front door. Sometimes, I had the urge to knock rather than let myself in. Even though I’d grown up here, the place never felt like my home.

I twisted the handle and stepped into the grand foyer. I shrugged out of my jacket and left it on the coatrack standing like a loyal servant to my right.

“Hello?”

My voice carried down the five hallways that broke off the main foyer and up the grand staircase lined in red carpet.

The floors, a rich cherry wood, looked freshly polished.

Turkish carpets in deep earth tones covered sections that were well tread upon and a little less pleasing upon the eyes down the hall to the kitchens and to the living and sitting areas.

A floorboard creaked up on the second level.

I tilted my head back and peered up the stairs as my grandmother appeared at the top of them with a hand resting on the ornate banister.

I could see her frowning as she descended slowly.

I moved up them to meet her in the middle and offer my arm to help her down.

“What are you doing here, Rhys?” she asked. She looked troubled. Her brow was furrowed. She was makeup-free. Her nightdress, an oversized bag of a thing that covered her from throat to toe, was thick and fleece and powder pink. She was ready for bed.

And yet she was up.

Probably courtesy of my mother.

“Mom called me.”

She gave me a sympathetic look. “You should have stayed away. You know how she gets when she has too much. It’s been a bit of a rough evening.”

We stopped at the bottom of the stairs. I patted her wrinkled, freckled hand where it rested in the groove of my elbow. “Well, I’m here now. Why don’t you retire to your quarters and avoid this mess? I can take care of it.”

“It is not a son’s job to take care of his mother.”

“Yes, it is.”

Gigi had always struggled with the truth of how I’d been brought up.

It had been hard on her. She hated how distant my father was and how incessant he was about making sure I knew exactly what the pecking order was in this house.

I was always at the bottom. He was selfish and greedy, and she’d apologized to me as a teenager, believing it was her fault because she raised him.

It had taken several years for me to convince her my father’s complete lack of empathy had nothing to do with her as a mother. She’d saved me. Plain and simple.

“Where is she?” I asked.

Gigi nodded down the hall that led to the grand sitting room—where most of the liquor in the house was kept, unless you counted the wine cellars down below. “She’s been in there for hours looking at old photos.”

“All right. Can I walk you back up to your room?”

Gigi shook her head. “I’m all right. I was coming down to get a cup of tea I left steeping. Let’s go see your mother. I’ll leave the two of you alone, but I just want to make sure she’s not going to try to play games with you.”

I chuckled softly. “You don’t have to protect me from her anymore.”

She gave me a smile of her own that chased the sadness out of her eyes. “Of course, I do. Without me, you’d still be in diapers.”

“Touché.”

We walked arm in arm down the hall toward the grand sitting room. We passed family portraits where nobody was smiling and paintings of the estate. As we got closer to our destination, I began to wonder why things were so quiet. My mother was definitely not a quiet drunk. My gut rolled anxiously.

We came around the corner.

The room looked as it always did. The fireplace, an obnoxious stone monstrosity, burned brightly.

It was the only light in the room, except for the table lamps beside each of the two sofas with emerald-green shades.

The sofas, big and plush with high backs, were the same ones I’d never been allowed to sit on as a kid.

The carpet was a massive gold and green and black piece littered with liquor bottles and empty glasses.

And my mother’s unconscious body.

“Shit.”

I pulled away from Gigi, who grabbed for my shirt. I met my mother on my knees on the carpet and put a hand on her back. Her graying hair was matted and sticky. She reeked of whiskey. I took hold of her shoulder and rolled her over.

She smiled up at me with her eyes closed. “Jasper, is that you?”

“It’s me. Did you drink all of this?” I looked around at all the bottles on the carpet. Five. There were five. “Jesus, Mom.” Suddenly overwhelmed with nerves and adrenaline, I pulled my phone out with shaking hands and dialed 911.

My mother tried to claw the phone out of my hands. I held her down with a hand on her shoulder.

“I need an ambulance to the Daniels Estate at 41100 Daniels Road. My mother has had a lot to drink. Alcohol poisoning.”

The dispatcher told me paramedics were on the way. As she told me how to take care of my mother, I tuned it out. I’d been here a dozen times over. I cast a glance over my shoulder at Gigi, who was gripping the frame of the archway to the sitting room. She was staring at my mother, shocked.

I didn’t know why anyone was surprised anymore. This routine had been clockwork since I was sixteen and my father cheated on her for the first time. She’d always been an alcoholic, but she’d never drank to the point of real danger until then.

And chances were, he’d done something tonight to set her off down this path again.