Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
“Oh my God!” Dru shouted back. “That’s it!” She pulled Val’s phone out of her hand and extended it to Nora. “What do you think?”
Nora glanced at the phone and decreed, “Perfection, dearest. Order it immediately.”
Dru handed Val’s phone back in order to dig out her own.
“They need a bed-length bolster pillow,” Darryn declared.
“You and those bolster pillows,” Allegra replied.
“Baby, they’re the shit,” Darryn said.
“Mom reads, and she says Jamie reads too. They need reading wedge pillows.”
Darryn appeared revolted. “Those are ugly as fuck.”
“They’re useful. Not everything has to be about aesthetics,” Allegra retorted.
“Since when?” Darryn asked.
“I’m so not coming to Sunday lunch when D and A start redesigning Momma Nora’s place,” Archie muttered.
“Word,” Nico said.
As an aside, Nico had taken Jamie up on the offer to move into the brownstone when his courses ended in Vermont so he could keep an eye on it. Jamie was grateful because a home needed to be inhabited for more than safety. Nico was grateful because he didn’t want to interfere with Nora and Jamie’s new situation (even if it didn’t feel new, it was), and it gave him a chance to take time to pick his own place and make it the right one.
The apartment phone buzzed, sharing someone was out front, and Darryn got up from the table to get it.
“Dearest, we need cake, so we’ll have to make a cake tasting appointment, tout de suite,” Nora said to Dru.
Now they were on about the adoption party.
“We don’t have to have a big, elaborate cake, Nora,” Dru replied.
Nora appeared stunned before she assumed her Now, listen to me, I’m imparting wisdom on you expression.
She then imparted wisdom.
“My beautiful girl, unlike most of the rest of the population, essentially, you’ve managed to be able to have two birthdays. As every woman knows, her birthday is the most important day of the year. More important than Christmas. More important even than her anniversary. It reigns supreme. You get two, darling. And if from this day forward you don’t celebrate yourself to the absolute fullest on both, I’m disinheriting you. We’re having an extravagant cake for your first one. No argument. I’ll set up a tasting.”
Jamie was careful to make note of his woman’s views on birthdays as Nora started scribbling in her Mètier notebook that he’d long-since learned was the nerve center to all Nora’s magic, and Dru turned to look at her dad. His girl’s face was beaming with wonder mixed with happiness at the thought of having two birthdays.
Jamie had no idea he could love his daughter more, or Nora.
But in that moment, he knew he could, because he did.
Both of his girls.
Darryn’s raised voice suddenly cut into the space. “I won’t say it again, back off.”
Everyone’s attention turned to Darryn, but only Allegra got up and went to him.
She put her hand on his back as he listened on the phone, and he shook his head at her questioning look.
“You got some pretty big balls to pull this shit again,” Darryn said into his phone.
At that, Jamie turned his attention to Nora. He tensed when he saw her face had paled.
“Is it Dad?” Allegra asked.
“Yup,” Darryn answered.
Allegra held up her hand. “Let me talk to him.”
“Nope,” Darryn denied.
“Honey,” she whispered.
Darryn’s mouth grew tight, then he said into the phone, “Allegra wants to talk to you.”
He handed over the phone, but he didn’t move an inch out of his wife’s space.
And Jamie was reminded just how much he liked Nora’s son-in-law.
“Dad?” she said. She listened. She listened longer. Finally, she went on, “Okay. I’m hanging up the apartment phone. I’ll call you if they say it’s all right. I’ll text if it’s not, and then you have to promise to go.”
Jamie blew out a sigh which corresponded with Nico mumbling, “Fucking shit,” and Archie grousing, “Fuck me.”
Allegra hung up the phone, turned to the room at large, but homed in on her mother.
“Dad’s downstairs,” she told them something they all knew.
“God! Did you tell him again we’re having our family lunch and that’s why he’s here, messing up our family lunch?” Val accused her sister through a question.
“It shits me to say this,” Nico put in. “But that was me.”
“For fuck’s sake, why? And when?” Val demanded of her brother.
“He called. He’s been calling,” Nico shared. “I’ve been ignoring him or answering and telling him to fuck off. It was stupid, I see that now, because a couple of days ago, in the middle of telling him to fuck off, I told him about lunch. But I did it to rub it in we’re all good when he’s not around.”
“Actually, a boss play,” Archie approved under his breath.
“He says he has something to tell us,” Allegra announced. She turned uncertainly to Jamie. “I’m sorry, Jamie. He said it’s something about AJ Oakley and some woman.”