Page 21 of The Business of Love Box Set 1: Books 1 - 4

VANESSA

I drove straight to my parents’ house after my shift at the station. Rhys was on my mind the whole time. I could hardly make it through the four calls that followed his. He hung around in the back of my head like an incessant buzzing wasp.

I needed a distraction and there was no better place for that than home sweet home.

When I walked through the front door, Bear came and greeted me with a thick wagging tail that bumped against the narrow table in the hall.

I lunged to stabilize the picture frames of family photos and, once they were safe, hooked a finger in Bear’s collar and pulled him away from the table.

I dropped into a crouch and held his dopey face in my hands, massaging his cheeks with my thumbs.

“Hey there, handsome.”

Bear’s tongue lolled in a goofy smile. Some people didn’t believe dogs can smile, but those people had no heart. All happy dogs smile. And Bear was a very happy dog.

I pressed my lips to the top of his snout in a kiss, and then the pair of us followed the sound of music down the hall into the living room, where both my parents were curled up on opposite ends of the sofa.

Mom had her nose buried in a Harlequin romance while Dad watched YouTube videos on his tablet with his headphones in.

When I walked in, they both looked up and smiled.

“Hey, sweetheart.” My mother rose from the couch and gave me a warm hug.

Then she took my hand and guided me down into the open spot between them.

I had memories of being a young girl sitting tucked in the middle of the sofa reading a book of my own.

It was our little ritual after dinner to sit with our books and a cup of tea and two cookies.

Mom always had a pack or two stored somewhere out of my reach so they lasted more than three days after coming home from the grocery store.

My father set his tablet on the armrest of the sofa. “How was your shift at the station?”

“Good. A little long.”

“Any interesting callers?” he asked.

Interesting didn’t even come close to defining what the call with Rhys had been. “A little.”

My mom popped to her feet again. “Cup of tea?”

“Sure.”

“Cookies?”

I smiled. “Why not?”

She bustled off into the kitchen, where I heard her filling the kettle. The element clicked as she turned it on.

“Dad, can I get your advice about something?”

He turned to me. “Of course.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “I’m considering whether or not I should go to my high-school reunion.”

He didn’t say anything.

I searched his face for a hint of what he was thinking and came up empty. “Well? What do you think? Do you think I’d regret it if I didn’t go?”

“It’s hard to say, pumpkin.” He gave me a little shrug. “I never went to mine. And I didn’t necessarily regret it, but I did feel like I missed out a little. All my friends went. One even reconnected with an ex-girlfriend and they ended up getting married. Ralph—”

“Westland. I know, Dad. You’ve told me. Dozens of times.”

He laughed lightly. “Yes. I suppose I have. I think you’re the only one who knows if you’ll have regrets.”

I sighed. I was so torn. I didn’t know what the right decision was. “I just… you know I didn’t have a good high school experience. And the thought of being surrounded by all those people who made my life a living nightmare is paralyzing.”

My father was quiet for a moment, thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Do you think it would serve you better to protect yourself from them or to confront them with your chin held high?”

I groaned and slumped into the sofa. “Well, when you put it like that, the choice is an obvious one.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. I have to go.”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and gave me a playful shake like he’d done since I was old enough to sit upright. “There you go, kiddo. I think that’s the right decision. And when the day comes, if you decide not to go, that’s also the right decision.”

“My father, the cheerleader every girl needs in her life.” I grinned up at him.

“It’s easy to cheer when you have such a good kid.”

“You have two good kids, Dad.”

“I do?” he asked innocently.

I laughed. So did he. The laughter stole away some of the apprehension that had been building up in me for days and the tension I’d been carrying around since my call with Rhys back at the station.

I felt a little more like myself, and even more so when my Mom came back into the living room with a tray carrying three piping hot mugs of English breakfast tea, a matching sugar and creamer set, and six chocolate chip cookies divided up onto their own leaf-patterned paper napkin.

“Where’s Nannie?” I asked, blowing on my tea after Mom handed out the mugs and cookies.

My mother glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantle. “She should be home soon. She was at the senior center this evening for Bingo. She’s getting a ride home from one of her friends’ sons.”

With any luck, I’d be en route home by the time Nannie got here. I was in no mood for her fuckery and wise-ass cracks about my weight. She could keep her generational-age-gap opinions to herself.

As if my life were written by a sadistic author who took the utmost pleasure in torturing me, the front door opened with a soft click.

I froze, the chocolate chip cookie in my hand halfway to my mouth, and strained my ears for the telltale greeting Nannie always rattled off whenever she returned after a night of Bingo.

Three.

Two.

One.

“I don’t know why I bother going to those silly Bingo games anymore. They’re all cheats. All of them. I swear the extent Bernie Willard will go to win a buck is appalling. He should be removed from the games entirely.”

My parents and I shared a look.

Nannie talked about Bingo like it was the Olympics.

Always had. And she would continue to do so because she made a point to go to “the games” every other week, regardless of whether she actually believed her competitors—all white-haired, ear-aid-wearing, cane-walking, toothless seniors—were cheats or not.

I heard her coming down the hall and crammed the cookie into my mouth. I chewed a grand total of six times before washing down the still rough-edged cookie with a sip of tea.

Nannie stopped in the hallway at the edge of the living room.

She was wearing a matching lilac sweater and pants with a pink and purple floral-patterned shirt underneath.

As usual, she wore her pearls from my late grandfather, and her nails had been painted purple to match her outfit sometime between now and when I saw her at her birthday.

“I didn’t know you were coming over tonight, Vanessa.” Nannie looked between me and my folks. “Did you all have dinner together without me? How thoughtful.”

My mother sighed and shook her head. “No, Mom. Vanny just popped by after work to say hello and have a cup of tea.”

Nannie’s lips quirked and her gaze fell back to me. “Just tea? Or cookies too?”

Wicked, wretched, smart-mouthed old crone.

“Who could pass up homemade chocolate chip cookies?” Dad teased, shouldering me with his own. “Not me. That’s for certain. Help yourself, Nannie. They’re on the kitchen counter. Still warm, too.”

Nannie shook her head like she still had a mane of youthful hair she could flip over her shoulder. “No thanks. I know the metabolism I’m working with. Sweets after six in the evening is no good for anyone. Especially women.”

My mother rolled her eyes and stood to collect our napkins, which she crumpled into a tiny ball in her fist. “Two cookies won’t make your pants too tight, Mom. Live a little.”

“I was just at Bingo.”

My mother opened her mouth to say something and promptly closed it again. I made a mental note to ask her what she was going to say when we were in a safe place to do so. Nannie might have been old, but she had hearing like a predatory cat.

Nannie took the vacant spot my mother left on the sofa beside me.

Like the coward he was, my father made up some line about how he had to let the dog out and clean up the not so little piles of shit in the yard, leaving me in the company of my grandmother, who’d bullied me more than the blonde bimbos I’d gone to high school with.

She stared pointedly at the right corner of my mouth. “You still have crumbs on your jowl, Vanessa.”

Jowl?!

I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand, panicked. I hadn’t intended on leaving any evidence behind. But her eyes were as quick as her ears—and her tongue. I knew without a shadow of a doubt Nannie had been a mean girl in high school.

Nannie put both her thin hands on my knee. “Child. When are you going to stop letting food have so much power over you? Your life could be so much more if you—”

“Please don’t.”

“Were a little thinner.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You don’t think it’s true, or you don’t want it to be true?

” Nannie asked. Somehow, she made the question sound innocent.

But it was so far from that. “When I was your age, my full-time job was taking care of myself. I made sure I ate properly and exercised to stay trim. It’s important.

Your generation is calling it self-care.

And it is, though I don’t like how indulgent the term is. ”

Of course, she didn’t like it. It was a positive instead of a negative.

“I really don’t want to talk about this right now, Nannie.”

“You never want to talk about it. You always push me away. I’m only trying to help you. Don’t you want a husband? And children? Vanessa, if you don’t start taking yourself more seriously, you’re going to end up—”

“If you say barefoot in the kitchen with an excess hundred pounds on my back, I’m going to drown myself in this cup of tea.”

Nannie blinked.

I set my cup down and stood up. “I’m leaving.”

“No, you’re not. Sit down. We’re in the middle of a conversation.”

I rounded on her with my hands balled into fists at my sides.

Heat rose in my cheeks and up my throat, and before I knew it, words were tumbling out of me that I couldn’t put back in no matter how hard I tried to swallow them.

“This isn’t a conversation! This has never been a conversation.

This is you taking every opportunity you can to shame me for my size. And I can’t take it anymore!”

Mom came around the corner of the kitchen with a dishtowel in one hand. “Vanny, what’s going on? Is everything—”

Nannie waved her off. “Nothing to worry about, dear. Just a little disagreement. Vanny is perfectly all right.”

I blinked furiously as tears sprang to my eyes and clung to my lashes.

“No. Everything is not all right. I’m so sick of this.

You think I don’t spend every minute of every day wishing this wasn’t me?

” I gestured down at myself. Then I pointed an accusing finger at Nannie.

“I do not need you taking every opportunity to remind me that I have weight to lose. Now, if you don’t fucking mind, I’m going to go home and eat as many fucking donuts as I please, and the only one with any right to say anything about it is me. ”

I headed for the door.

Mom was hot on my heels. She came jogging down the hall behind me. I heard Dad open the sliding door off the kitchen and call out if everything was okay. He must have heard me yelling.

“Sweetheart, please don’t go.” My mother took my elbow lightly. “We can talk about this. I’m sorry. She’s insensitive. She doesn’t think before she speaks.”

“Yes, she does.” I wiped at my tears and fished my keys out of my purse.

Then I opened the front door and stepped into the cold night air.

“She knows exactly what she’s saying. And she knows exactly how much it hurts.

And she knows you’ll never say anything to her, and I can’t sit around and take this anymore, Mom. It’s too much. I’ll call you later.”

My mother called after me as I stormed down the drive, but she didn’t follow.