The Proposal Read online

  I can't believe I picked peaches for these assholes.

  "Dignified?" I asked incredulously. "You want me to be dignified? I just walked up to a house where I thought I was supposed to be having a tea to meet my future-in-laws and found it swarming with people. I'm sorry if my first thought was that I was woefully underdressed and not that I just crashed an engagement party other than my own!"

  "How did this happen?" Jess asked. "Did you double book just in case one of the women didn't show up?"

  "No," Anthony said. "I didn't plan this. This was never my intention. I swear. I mentioned the tea to my mother a couple of weeks ago when we first planned it. When she told me that she had made a few more plans for today, the date was familiar, but honestly, I had completely forgotten about the tea."

  "That might be the first bit of honesty I have ever heard from you," I muttered bitterly.

  "When I got here today, my mother had put together this beautiful engagement party and Michelle was here...I got completely wrapped up in everything…"

  "And just conveniently forgot that you were celebrating your engagement to the wrong woman?" I asked.

  Anthony glanced at the muffled sound of the party and I saw his shoulders drop as he sighed.

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "I was celebrating my engagement to the right woman."

  Things got a little blurry after that.

  I heard a knock on my door two weeks later, but couldn't answer around the spoon that was in my mouth. Instead, I made a sound that was somewhere between a cordial invitation to enter my home and a primal grunt. Fortunately, Jess is fluent in Cherry-speak and let herself in. She gave me a scolding look as she closed the door behind herself and turned the deadbolt.

  "You really should keep your door locked when you're home alone."

  I managed to pull the spoon out of my mouth.

  "I'm always home alone."

  "You're not right now."

  "Because I didn't have my door locked."

  "You're a young, beautiful, single woman. The perfect target for a predator."

  I narrowed my eyes at her.

  "Did you just TV Guide description me? Are you watching Law and Order again?"

  "It's educational. Which reminds me...you really should keep your doors locked."

  I sighed.

  "Why? What's the point?"

  "Alright. That's enough," Jess said, coming across my apartment and trying to physically pull me out of my chair. In her efforts, she knocked over the basket that had once been filled with peaches. "I can't believe you brought those things home with you."

  "I had to. I needed to make a peach crumble. If I didn’t have the peaches it would have just been crumble."

  She walked past me into the kitchen and out of the corner of my eye I saw that she was staring down into the glass baking dish on the top of the stove.

  "There sure are a lot of peaches in here. What are you eating."

  I hesitated for a beat.

  "Crumble."

  Jess sighed and came back into the living room.

  "Come on. Get up."

  "What?"

  She reached for the spoon and pulled it out of my hand before I could get the next bite into my mouth.

  "Up. Come on. It's time to get back to the world of the living."

  "I don't want to."

  "We agreed that you would have one week to be miserable about Anthony, and then you were going to snap out of it. And honestly, I'm still in the camp that he didn't even deserve that much."

  "Yes," I said, "but then I lost my job."

  "Yes. And I even agreed that was pretty horrible timing on behalf of the universe and sucked a lot, which is why I gave you an extra week to get your shit together. But that's over now. It's time for you to start living again. You need to get up and get in the shower because I think you were wearing these clothes when I came to visit you three days ago. After that, we will figure out what to do next."

  I stood up reluctantly and glared at my best friend. I was doing my best to look angry and indignant but in reality, I felt fragile. I hated that.

  "You can be really mean, you know," I said.

  Jess reached forward and brushed a piece of my greasy hair away from my forehead.

  "I know," she said. "But it’s only because I love you."

  I nodded through the tears that were, once again, threatening to push past my eyelids. My eyeballs were red and stinging from crying so much over the last two weeks. Everything that had happened with Anthony was heartbreaking but also really humiliating. All those people saw me standing there. All of them saw him whisk me away after my sad attempt at a temper tantrum. Worse, they were probably judging my dress as much or even more harshly than they were me. That just felt like adding insult to injury. Losing the job that I had been at for almost five years felt like one kick in the teeth too many. They said that the company was downsizing and that my position had been eliminated in favor of streamlining. It didn't matter how they put it, really. I had gotten my ass fired a week after finding out that my fiancé was actually somebody else's fiancé and that she was the one that got to be the bride and have the happy ever after, not me.

  It seemed like the whole world is falling down around me and I’m paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do. I felt just about ready to give up. But Jess was right. I needed to keep going. It wasn't just about me. I still needed to take care of my mother. She had been getting sicker in the last few months and I was all she had. She relied almost completely on me. The pension check she got every month was barely enough to pay for groceries, much less to put a dent in her medical expenses. I knew that my father would be devastated if he knew how much she was struggling. He had worked so hard when he was alive, pouring himself into the company that he had been a part of since it first started. We had never been wealthy, but we were comfortable enough. He thought that the pension that he would get would keep the woman he loved comfortable for the rest of her life. His sudden death, however, had made it necessary for her to start relying on that money earlier than expected. The collapse of the company a few years ago had significantly cut into the amount that she received each month and there was always the looming threat that the checks would simply stop coming. I had done everything I could to make the situation better. I pursued legal action. I tried to figure out how this could have happened in the first place. In the end, I discovered there was nothing I could do. It was up to me now to make sure that she had the care that she needed, meaning that I didn't get to sit around and pity myself anymore.

  By the time that I got out of the shower, I almost felt human again. Washing away the grime and putting on fresh clothes, ones that weren’t stained by tears and an embarrassing level of melted ice cream, seemed to cut through the fog and bring me some level of focus. I walked back into the living room and found Jess sitting on the floor beside the coffee table. What looked like the classified sections of at least three different newspapers were spread out in front of her. Beside her was a bottle of bright red, sparkly nail polish. I finished drying my hair before dropping the towel into the hamper I kept next to the sliding glass doors to my back patio. It was mortifying to my mother that I would literally have my dirty laundry out for people to see but considering that I was the only one other than Jess who ever came into the apartment in the first place, it didn’t really matter. And since I was certainly the only one who had to haul the hamper to the laundry room, my linens-related interior design choices were up to me. It was easiest to get to the laundry room by going out the back door and passing between the two buildings behind me, so keeping the hamper there rather than in my bedroom or bathroom saved me the struggle of lugging the damp, heavy wicker.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  Jess took the brush from the bottle of nail polish and with a dramatic swooping motion, circled one of the listings on the newspaper directly in front of her. An instant later her arm shot out again and she circled another listing on the paper to the side. I was get
ting shades of her great aunt Lula Mae – who scandalized the local senior community by taking over an entire table with Bingo boards during the Senior Fall Bonanza one year. The uproar that had ensued meant the end of the Bonanza all together and ushered in the era of the spring garden tour. Allergies and the occasional bee sting aside, at least the event came without such an ill-advised name.

  "I'm going to help you find a job,” Jess said.

  She circled another listing enthusiastically.

  "I love a good Dolly Parton reenactment as much as anyone," I said, dropping down to sit on the couch behind her. “But as much as I appreciate the Straight Talk situation you have going here; most people actually do this type of thing online now.”

  "I don't have my computer with me," she explained, "and I'm in between cell phones at the moment."

  "What did you do to your phone?" I asked.

  "There was an unfortunate washing machine incident."

  "Ah," I said. I reached over to the end table where my phone was charging. "Well, it just so happens that I haven't laundered my phone recently."

  Jess signed and abandoned the newspapers and got up onto the couch with me, turning the attention of the nail polish brush to her fingernails instead.

  "You just got me thinking," she said.

  "That you might want a change of careers, too?" I asked, scrolling through listings on the job site I joined earlier in the year during a short-lived, fantasy mutiny against my boss that only ever existed in my head.

  "That we need to have a movie marathon soon. It's been ages since we've watched all those old movies."

  I resisted pointing out to her that devoting an entire evening to marathoning Dolly Parton movies wasn't exactly the same thing as appreciating the classics. But, it didn't seem like I was in the position at that moment to be the voice of reason.

  "This might be something," I said.

  I turned the phone toward Jess and she leaned forward slightly to look at the screen.

  "Elevator operator in the home of an elderly eccentric billionaire?" she asked. "I don't think you would look very good in the little hat you would wear."

  "Ha-ha. Not that one," I said. "The one under it."

  "Secretary?" she asked, with much of the same incredulity.

  "Yeah," I said. "Why not?"

  "You have absolutely no experience at being a secretary," she said.

  "So?"

  "The listing specifically says they are looking for a highly experienced executive assistant."

  "It pays better than my old job and it comes with much better benefits. The least I can do is try," I said. I stood up and headed for the kitchen. "At this point, getting rejected would kind of be par for the course. Besides, if it is, I can always grab a $20 bill and try to throw myself off the nearest bridge."

  "That might not be my favorite movie reference," Jess called after me. "I can't promise I'll be able to save you."

  I laughed, feeling like that might be the first time I had done so since the day I walked up that long winding sidewalk to Anthony's parent's house. I knew that the position wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse. Other than the spattering of restaurant jobs I had as a teenager and bartending when I was in college, the only real job I ever had was with the courier company. Answering phones and assisting with deliveries didn't exactly align with what I imagined an executive assistant did, but it couldn't be that much different. After all, there was some overlap. They both involved phones. Right?

  Even though I didn’t have the experience or expertise that they wanted, I hoped there was a chance I could get the job. The pay, while not astronomical, was an upgrade, and the benefits were definitely better. Besides, it would be a fresh start and that was exactly what I needed.

  Chapter Two

  Gabriel

  "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you right."

  "Yes, you did, Gabriel."

  I looked across the polished mahogany desk that I had found outlandish from the time I was old enough to visit my father at work. My plan had always been that as soon as I took over the corporate empire my father had built, and this became my office, that desk would be the first thing to go. Maybe I would take a sledgehammer to it and use the pieces to construct a dog house. I didn't have a dog, but from an early age, my father had instilled in me the importance of planning for the future.

  Now it seemed that he had done some planning of his own that involved taking a fairly slash-and-burn approach to my future.

  "I've expected to inherit this business my entire life," I pointed out.

  "Exactly," he said. "You've expected it. You felt entitled to it."

  "I'm your only child."

  "So, you think that you deserve to live off all of the hard work that I did and my father before me and his father before him and his father before him."

  "Yes, I know, and Benjamin begat Bale and they were your next-door neighbors."

  "That's exactly what I'm talking about, Gabriel."

  My father's hands were tightly clenched on top of his desk and he was glaring at me, anger in his eyes, across the gaudy, shining surface.

  "It was a joke," I said.

  "That's what you always do. You joke. You don't take anything seriously, including this company. You've always just assumed that it was going to be waiting for you, so you went about living whatever kind of life you wanted. I'm sick and tired of it. I don't approve of the behavior you've shown, especially in the last couple of years. I've told you time and time again to stop and reflect on your actions, and how they represent this company, but it hasn't seemed to sink in. Instead, you grow wilder and wilder. You have been completely irresponsible and haven't shown any interest in this company as anything more than a meal ticket. What’s worse is that you expect me to turn a blind eye to it. But I'm not going to any longer. Your behavior has been an insult to me and an embarrassment to this business. I can't, at least, not in good conscience, leave my life’s work, my legacy, to you."

  "So that's it?" I asked. "I'm supposed to just accept that you want me to be unemployed? Destitute?"

  "Don't be so dramatic. You're far from poor and you're not going to be unemployed. You have plenty money of your own and you will maintain your positions with headquarters and keep the offices you are responsible for. You will have a title and will be salaried at a level that is appropriate for your position."

  "Salaried at a level that is appropriate for the position?" I repeated incredulously. The words were almost as much of an insult as his decision to cut me out of my inheritance and the family business. He wasn't only denying me my birthright. He was relegating me to nothing more than a name on the company payroll. "What are you going to do with the company now? You are long past the age when you should have retired. Is your plan to just continue working into eternity?"

  "When and whether I retire is no concern of yours," my father snapped. "Besides, I have been planning for and making provisions for my eventual separation with the company for years. As you so delicately pointed out, I am getting on in age and there is no denying the health issues that run in the men of our family."

  "Your father died at ninety-eight-years-old because he decided to go ‘reconnect’ to his childhood and stay in his family's lakeside log cabin in the middle of the winter and his space heater malfunctioned. After he went swimming in the half-frozen pond."

  I had always felt a strong camaraderie with my grandfather. Despite my father's waxing poetic about the long line of men who had worked so hard to build this business, my grandfather's hard work had been well-tempered with eccentricity. The fact that he and my grandmother may or may not have been married when my father came along, was a well-kept family secret, and slight scandal back in the day. There's just that right amount of fuzziness around my dad’s birth and school records that make them slightly suspicious. It doesn’t help that the Justice of the Peace went to school with my grandfather.

  "Be that as it may, Gabriel, I have always been very aware of my mortality and the fac
t that I have to make the decisions that are right for this business moving forward. It is that awareness and sense of responsibility that has brought me to the conclusion that what is right for this business is not having you at the helm. I have made arrangements to have control of the company divided up and evenly distributed among members of a committee made up of senior executives. They will be instructed to operate as a single entity and run the company in the way they know I would."

  "You're going to divide up power? Leave it to random executives?" I asked, getting angrier by the moment. "You have always lectured me about how this company has never been run by anyone but members of our family. No shareholders. Sole proprietorship. And now you want to end all of that? You might not like the choices that I've made, but that shouldn't stop you from letting me maintain the family legacy."

  "The family legacy?" my father said.

  Something had changed in his voice. He leaned back in his chair, his hands coming to rest over his stomach, his elbows propped on the arms beside him. The expression on his face had changed in an instant and now he was looking at me in the way I had seen countless times before. It was the expression he wore every time he had just discovered a bargaining chip and negotiations were about to shift in his favor.

  "Yes," I said. "If you don't leave the company to me, the legacy will be over."

  "You know, Gabriel, I think you're right. I'll reconsider my decision to not pass the company on to you."

  I smiled.

  "I think you're making the right decision. I –"

  "When you have a child."

  I could feel every muscle in my face fall in disappointment.

  "Excuse me?"

  "The family line ends with you. There doesn't seem much logic in continuing a legacy that has a dead end. I want to know that the company will continue on. When you have a family to pass the legacy along to, I will consider retiring and leaving you in control."

  I blinked a few times.

  "You want me to have a baby?"