7. Theo
7
THEO
I knocked on Nelson’s door, but the sound of gunfire—simulated gunfire from a game—didn’t lessen.
Which wasn’t much of a surprise.
“It’s Theo. Open up.”
Nelson wasn’t my favorite guy ever. We didn’t have much in common, and I hadn’t spent all that much time with him. But this was a fraternity. That made us brothers. And it was time to get my brother to haul his ass out of his room.
“What?”
Fumes assaulted me as he opened the door. Most were from the pot he constantly smoked, but there were some other scents that I didn’t want to think too much about. Nelson’s room was full of clutter—it was pretty much the opposite of Ian’s room. “It’s time for dinner.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I grinned. If I were his mother, the first thing I’d do would be to order him to clean his room. Hopefully Hailey would be smart enough not to set foot in here and do it for him. “Come on, Hailey made dinner.”
“Who?”
It took everything I had not to roll my eyes. “Hailey. The girl Bennett hired to cook and clean this summer.”
“Oh yeah.” The gears in his brain started slowly turning. “Is she hot?”
“Her food won’t be, not if we don’t get down there,” I said. The answer to his question was yes, but it wasn’t my job to point that out to him.
“I’m not hungry.” His eyes were red, and his beard was growing in unevenly.
“Come join us anyway. Hailey went to the store and cooked the meal for us. So at least come with us. If nothing else, you could use the fresh air.”
He blinked. “Are we eating outside?”
“No.” I left it to him to work out that the air in the dining room was much fresher than the air in his room. “Let’s go.”
He grumbled but followed me down the hall. Matt was easier to wrangle. He answered after the first knock and seemed surprised to see Nelson in my wake.
Matt was eager for dinner. He was on Langley’s baseball team and had a huge appetite, but he warned us that he couldn’t stay for very long. He was going to see his girlfriend right after dinner, which was a newsflash to no one because he spent seventy-five percent of his time at Tonya’s apartment.
It was kind of surprising that he still paid for a room here. Too bad Nelson didn’t have a girlfriend nearby.
The others were waiting at the table when we got downstairs. I took a seat next to Ian and was glad that Nelson sat across from me, not next to me. Bennett was at the head of the table, of course. He played up the president thing whenever he could. I’d known him since we were kids when I’d first become friends with his cousin, and I’d swear on a bible that his ego had gotten bigger each year. Grant, who didn’t exactly have a small ego either, sat next to him.
Even with six of us, we barely took up a third of the table. I missed the big meals with all of us together last semester. It was loud and chaotic, but fun. They were good guys—for the most part.
Hailey appeared, looking nervous as she carried a big serving bowl to the table. I didn’t blame her. A young woman like that serving food to six guys, six strangers—that couldn’t be a comfortable situation for her. But Bennett and Grant had made that call. Apparently, we couldn’t be trusted to look after ourselves for six months. Or couldn’t be bothered, perhaps, in some guys’ cases.
Hailey looked good. She had on a skirt, like she had at the interview. Her legs were bare and tan. She didn’t strike me as the type to lay out in the sun, so I wondered if that was just her natural skin tone.
As a student of architecture, I had a thing for proportions, and Hailey… well, hers were pretty damn impressive. Her shirt clung to her curves, with a scooped neckline. It was a simple look, but it worked for her, with her tawny hair flowing loosely about her shoulders. I didn’t know her all that well, but she was one of the least pretentious people I’d ever met. She was about as different from the students on this campus as could be. Which was a good thing in my book.
She leaned between me and Ian to put the bowl down on the table, and I slid to the side, giving her space. Smart girl to not have chosen Bennett and Grant to stand between. One was harmless, one not so much, but neither was very progressive in their treatment of women.
“What’s that?” Bennett said, staring at the covered dish as if she’d just placed a python on the table.
“It’s potatoes.” She sounded flustered. Figuring she could use a friendly smile, I aimed one her way, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her face was a little flushed and there was a smudge of something on her cheek. Was she uncomfortable with cooking in general or cooking for us specifically?
“I’ll get the rest of the food.”
“Potatoes,” Bennett repeated, as if she’d said she was serving us slugs. The judgment in his voice didn’t stop him from watching her ass as she hurried off. But poor Hailey had unknowingly pissed him off by bringing out the main dishes family style.
During the past school year, the cook had plated our food in the kitchen and then served it to us like a restaurant would. But that had been a professional chef with assistants. This was just a young, overworked girl.
Hailey returned. “Here’s the salad. I probably should have brought that first.” She placed a huge bowl on the table in front of me. “I already added the dressing. I hope that’s all right.” She set six bowls down on the table and headed back to the kitchen.
Bennett’s disdain was clear on his face.
“Why don’t I get this for us.” I reached for the wooden salad tongs, tossing the spring mix and chopped veggies before scooping it into a bowl. Then I handed the first bowl to Ian, who passed it to Bennett. He caught my eye as I filled the next one. He knew as well as I did that Bennett was fuming at what he would likely consider self-service. As if Hailey hadn’t spent hours preparing the meal. And shopping for it before that.
But entitlement was Bennett’s middle name.
Hailey returned as I was dishing out the last bowl of salad. “And here’s the fish.” Using both hands, she carefully placed a glass casserole dish in the middle of the table. Steam rose from the edges of the aluminum foil that covered it.
“Fish?” Bennett echoed, as if he’d never heard of the creature. Grant looked part amused, part appalled. Sometimes he could be almost as much of a snob as Bennett. They were family, after all, and Grant’s family played an all too important role in his life. But I knew my friend, and his opinion of Hailey probably had nothing to do with her cooking and everything to do with how she looked in that tight skirt and scoop-neck blouse.
“Yes.” Hailey stood her ground, but her voice faltered. “I thought?—”
“Where’s the wine?”
“Wine?” Hailey echoed, her face falling. “I didn’t think about that.”
“Obviously.” God, Bennett could be a stuck up prick sometimes. “There’s a wine cabinet in the basement. I assumed you saw it when you got the beer yesterday.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know?—”
Bennett spoke over her. “It’s in the basement.”
“All right.” She gripped the hem of her shirt nervously, practically wringing her hands as she stretched the fabric. I could practically hear the turmoil in her brain. She was a small-town girl who likely didn’t have much experience with wine. Hell, she probably wasn’t even old enough to drink.
I pushed back my chair. “I’ll help you pick it out.”
She gave me a grateful look that made me feel like shit. I wasn’t responsible for Bennett being such a pompous prick, but I felt guilt by association. It was obvious Hailey needed this job. And that meant that she would likely jump through any hoop Bennett held up.
So I’d do what I could to knock some of those hoops out of the way.
I caught up to her in the kitchen. Some of the tension had drained from her face, whether it was from my offer of help or just because she was no longer in the room with the others.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know much about wine.”
That was pretty obvious. “Are you twenty-one?”
“Twenty,” she admitted.
“Then you have an excuse.” She tentatively returned the smile I gave her.
I flipped on the light in the storeroom.
Hailey went straight to the wine cabinet. “I don’t know which foods go with white, and which ones with red. And then I panicked—what if I accidentally picked an expensive one that costs a hundred bucks or something?”
I wondered what she’d say if she knew that most of the guys here would consider that the bare minimum for a bottle of wine. I knelt down and scanned the selection. “Chardonnay goes well with salmon.”
“It’s not salmon, though.”
I twisted my head to look up at her. “It’s not?”
“No, it’s trout. Bennett sent me to that fancy grocery store, the one on East Street, and everything was so expensive.”
“He made you pay for it?” I asked sharply.
“No, he gave me money, but I didn’t want to waste it. And there were so many kinds of fish I’d never even heard of, but then I saw the trout. It was local, and you know how hard it is to get fresh fish in northern Georgia. And it’s something I actually know how to cook.” Her eyes grew distant with memory.
I thought it over and then grabbed two pinot noirs instead, which I preferred over chardonnay. It really didn’t matter at this point—once Bennett heard that she’d cooked trout, the wine pairing would be the last thing on his mind.
Shit. But what had he expected? He’d hired an inexperienced young woman to do the work of a professional chef. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why he’d hired her. I’d seen that French maid costume he’d jokingly held out for her. It wasn’t hard to imagine how hot she’d look in it.
But I didn’t care if Bennett was disappointed. He’d probably be disappointed at a Michelin-starred restaurant. It was Hailey I was worried about.
I straightened up and handed her the bottle. “This will do.”
“Thank you.” She managed to put a lot of intensity in those two little words.
Back in the kitchen, I located a corkscrew while Hailey stretched up on her toes to reach the wine glasses. When she started back toward the dining room, I stopped her. “Let’s pour them out here.”
She nodded, as if that made sense, but I wasn’t sure it did. Yes, it was her job, but letting Bennett treat her like a serf didn’t sit well with me.
She deserved better than that.
We each balanced three glasses. The others looked up as we approached.
“You didn’t like the salads?” Hailey asked.
“They’re great,” Ian said, and Matt echoed his words. But it didn’t look like any of them had eaten much of it.
“I can make something else.”
“It’s fine,” I said firmly, handing out glasses. Bennett downed his without proposing a toast, and Grant followed suit.
“I’ll go get the other bottle,” Hailey said, sounding worried.
The moment she left the room, I spoke in a low voice. “She made trout, and I’m sure she did the best she could. She didn’t grow up the same way we did. She’s not used to the kind of food we eat.”
“Obviously,” Bennett said. “I guess we’re lucky we didn’t get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Matt took the lid off the mashed potatoes and scooped some onto his plate. “These look good.”
Bennett merely raised an eyebrow at them. He was such a stuck up, arrogant jerk. Unlike Hailey, he’d been eating the best quality food his whole life, but if you put him in a kitchen and told him to cook something, he wouldn’t have the first clue how to do that.
Ian used the tongs to push aside the foil over the trout. It actually smelled pretty good, with notes of lemon and herbs.
We’d all served ourselves—another concept Bennett was unfamiliar with—by the time Hailey came back. If I had to guess, I’d bet she had trouble opening the other bottle.
I discreetly indicated an open spot on the table, and she set it down, looking rather anxiously at Bennett.
“Would you care to join us?” I asked. The table was only set for six, but she’d obviously worked hard on this meal.
“What?” she said, at the same time as Bennett. Then she shook her head. “Thanks, but I made dessert, too. I need to go check on that.”
She hurried away as I sampled the trout. In truth, it wasn’t bad. Not fancy, but flavorful.
Bennett’s silverware remained untouched on either side of his plate. We all knew his temper was likely to get the better of him.
“Go easy on her,” Ian said.
“She needs to learn to do better,” Bennett stated flatly. “No wine, lumpy mashed potatoes, and cheap fish.”
“And how’s she going to learn that?” I pointed out. “Are you going to teach her?”
Bennett rolled his eyes for form. “It’s her job.”
Nelson reached for seconds of the mashed potatoes, while Bennett and Grant hadn’t touched theirs. I stared at my old buddy until he felt the weight of my glare and looked up.
“I’m sure she tried her best,” Grant said.
“That doesn’t make it good enough,” Bennett responded. Of course, if the Pope showed up to say grace, Bennett probably wouldn’t think that was good enough.
“This really isn’t that bad,” Grant said after finally taking a bite of fish. “Try some.” Grant could sometimes rein his cousin in, and sometimes not. But Grant had to stay on Bennett’s good side. We all did, to some extent.
“You’re eating that?” Bennett asked.
“What else am I supposed to do with it?”
“Fertilizing the lawn comes to mind.” Bennett’s voice was dry. “Clearly, we made the wrong choice when hiring.”
“Maybe not,” Grant said lightly. “She’s got one hell of a body on her. Hell, I’d eat dog food if she’d wear a bikini while serving it.”
Classy. Really classy.
“Dog food and fertilizer.” I rolled my eyes. “I hope poor Hailey never needs to ask you two for a letter of reference.”
Bennett’s face darkened. “She’d better hope that, too.”
Ian rolled his eyes. “Would you guys just eat? It’s food. You eat it. Then you get on with your life.”
I winced, waiting to see if Bennett was going to lash out. Few people ever spoke out against him. And no one spoke out against his father. Senator Forsythe was one of the most influential politicians in the country. Every year, he proposed new laws, most of them draconian, and headed powerful committees. Grant’s father was a well-known and well-regarded lawyer with countless connections in Washington, DC, but the unspoken bylaw was that he didn’t ever cross or challenge his brother.
When Grant was a child, he’d had a similar message drilled into him. Be more like Bennett. Play nice with your cousin. Let him have his way. Grant’s family had only allowed him to care about the things they cared about—and as a result, these days he pretended he didn’t care about anything.
Ian and I were also connected to the Forsythe family in some ways, but my father was one of the best architects in the world. That gave me some freedom to speak my mind, but I’d received the same message when I was younger. Play nicely with the Forsythe boys. And for the most part, I had.
We spent most of the rest of the meal in silence—a rarity for us. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t dragged Nelson along. He would’ve been happier in his room. Hell, I might’ve been happier in his room, too. I hated seeing Hailey treated so poorly.
She appeared about twenty minutes later. “Are you ready for dessert?”
“Clear the plates first,” Bennett said. “Then ask again.”
I winced, and Ian did, too.
Hailey nodded and came to get Bennett’s plate first. Then Grant’s. She was learning—but I wished this kind of classist crap was something she didn’t have to learn.
After she’d taken the plates and the serving bowls, she reappeared. “Are you ready for dessert now? I made pie. And would anyone like coffee with their dessert?”
“We’re not eighty,” Bennett said. “We have better things to drink.”
Shit, it was her second day on the job. Couldn’t he cut her some slack?
Hailey nodded and slunk back into the kitchen while I whirled on Bennett. “Jesus, would you lay off? She’s trying to do what you told her to.”
“She’s failing.”
“She—”
Hailey came out, holding two small plates. It looked like she’d made apple pie. The strips of crust on the top were slightly burnt. She didn’t speak as she brought in the rest of the plates. Then she retreated to the kitchen, and I didn’t blame her.
Nelson ate his slice. Matt and Grant had a few bites. Ian ate about half of his, even though he normally steered clear of things with added sugar.
I tried it, and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great, but it was good enough to eat a couple of bites of.
Apparently, Grant didn’t think so. He pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’ll go talk to her.”
“Let me.” I got to my feet.
He looked irritated. “I’m not going to shout at her. The only thing worse than a bad cook is a bad cook who’s crying.”
Since I was pretty sure that both of them had made a lot of women cry over the years, I tried again. “I’ve got a good rapport with her. I’ll talk to her.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Ian chimed in.
But Bennett still didn’t look happy, and Grant spoke up.
“It’s not that big of a deal. Either she’ll get better, or we’ll fire her.” Grant got to his feet, and I wasn’t sure if that was wise. Bennett had always seemed to resent that Grant had a few inches on him. But Grant knew how to play it. “It’s no big deal. Let Theo take care of it.”
“He’s got this,” Ian added.
I watched Bennett’s face and saw the moment he gave in. Grant had played it perfectly—he’d made it seem like talking to the poor girl in the kitchen was a task that was beneath Bennett.
Bennett nodded and threw his napkin down on the table. After he left, I exchanged glances with Ian and Grant. They’d both had my back.
Now I had to go explain Bennett’s expectations to Hailey—while at the same time, making sure she knew I had her back.