Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
“Christian, I only have a minute.” Angelica gripped the handle on her purse tightly as she pressed the phone to her ear. “I’m about to get on a plane.”
Her heart steadied, but it was rare for her brother to call. Usually it was texts and emails that she never actually answered.
“It’s Mom.”
Cold rushed through Angelica. She stilled, staring at the gate that was in front of her, the escape she’d already been begging to take from filming for the one night that she could get away before flying back into the chaos that had been this season so far.
“What about Mom?” She really didn’t want to ask that, but Christian wasn’t giving her any more information. In fact, he sounded like he had struggled just to get those two words out. She could be patient, even when it was about her mother, because this was for him and no one else.
“It’s bad, Ange.” He choked again.
Angelica glanced up at the gate desk with her phone in her hand—ticket on that phone—and knew she’d have to rush this along. “I hate to push, but I’m about to get on a plane. What’s going on?”
“She’s in the hospital. It’s… they don’t expect she’ll make it. She’s really sick.”
“Sick with what?” Angelica shifted her stance, easing the tension that entered her right hip from how she’d been leaning.
Christian didn’t answer immediately, which set the hairs at the back of Angelica’s neck standing straight up. She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard.
“What’s she sick with, Christian?”
“I don’t know. She won’t tell me, and she told Dad not to tell me either.”
Angelica sighed heavily. Leave it to her mother to still try and manipulate people on her deathbed. If she even was on her deathbed. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Angelica closed her eyes and centered herself. “Why are you calling me?”
“I thought you might…” he paused, as if realizing what he was going to say out loud and then backtracking a bit. “I thought you might want to see her one last time.”
Oh no, he just went there, fully.
“We talked about this, and you can either respect my decision or not. But I’m not going to see her, I don’t want to speak with her, and if she dies with just you and Dad, then that’s who she dies with.
It doesn’t concern me.” Angelica’s heart pattered wildly.
Why was it always so difficult to talk to Christian like this?
Normally she had no issues keeping her boundaries in place and making sure that everyone understood where she stood on a matter.
But this…
This was so much harder than that.
“She did ask for you,” Christian started.
“I don’t care if she did or didn’t.” Angelica was firm in this. She’d ended her relationship with her mother more years ago than she cared to count, and she wasn’t about to be thrust back into one when she didn’t want it.
“I know you don’t. I’m just telling you that she did ask for you.” Christian sighed heavily.
This did have to be hard for him. He was the one dealing with everything on his own because their father would be absolutely useless against her like he always was.
“She just wants to find another way to get under my skin and convince me to go there so she can abuse me again. And I’m not going to play into her hand, Christian.
Not again, not ever.” Her shoulders were so tight that they hurt.
“I really do hate to cut talking to you short, but I’m the last to board already and I need to go. I’ll call you when I get to LA.”
“LA? I thought you were filming.”
Angelica sighed heavily. “We are filming. But I’ve been called back to LA for some emergency meeting and well… it sounds like a better place to be than in Virginia with Hope right now.”
“Why?”
“Just search my name in Google, and you’ll find out. It’s been wild and crazy, and I need a break from it. Really, Christian, I have to go. Talk to you soon.” She didn’t even wait for an answer as she hung up on him.
She pulled up her virtual wallet and slid it under the scanner so she could start the long walk down to the plane.
It felt like an escape, because that’s exactly what it was.
She’d barely even told Hope that she was leaving for the weekend—well, really the night—because they hadn’t had any time alone together and it just hadn’t come up beyond that.
When she was finally seated, Angelica pulled up her iPad and scrolled through the emails she’d ignored in the last week.
At least the ones she’d put off for a later date, which was now.
Her lawyers had emailed nearly nonstop in the last week, no doubt responding to the forced outing.
They wanted to know how forced it was, they wanted to know what Josef had done this week, as if everyone anticipated that something was going to go awry every three minutes with him.
Well, they weren’t necessarily wrong.
Josef kept popping his way into her life even if she didn’t have to see him. Angelica sighed as she began answering those emails, one after the other, with long explanations of what had happened and as much detail as possible. That’s what they’d asked for, so that’s what she’d give them.
When she finished with those, she turned to the lawyers she’d hired to help her close on Mountain View West. While the property was mostly hers at this point, there were still finer details that needed to happen, paperwork to be signed, contracts and the like shifted.
She’d thought initially that she could handle most of it, but with the intensity of the filming schedule and more, she’d realized that hiring someone else was exactly what she’d needed.
The hours on the plane passed quickly, and by the time she landed in Los Angeles, Angelica had her life put back together. At least, it felt that way for a bit. She’d gotten caught up, and she hadn’t lost much time either since the time zone change worked in her favor for this round.
When she arrived at her hotel, everything eased into place. This was her home, her comfort. And being here, even if it was for less than twenty-four hours, would give her what she needed to head back into the fray that was filming.
Her phone buzzed.
Hope
Did you get back safely?
Angelica’s lips curled upward. She should have texted.
Hope had warned her before that she was supposed to do that, but she was so long out of relationships, that often these little moments of connection weren’t things that she thought about.
Angelica glanced up, seeing Mr. Kartali coming toward her. She hurriedly typed.
Angelica
Yes, I did. Thank you. Meeting.
She slipped her phone into her purse and canted her head to the side. She hadn’t expected him to be here. The emergency she’d been called back for was certainly something that she could handle on her own, and he never—
“Angelica.” He grinned at her, that comforting grin she’d become so familiar with over the years. He held his hand out, but instead of shaking hers, he covered hers with his large other one. “We need to have a conversation.”
“Oh? About what?” She tried hard to keep herself from tightening her grip on his hand.
She wanted to seem relaxed, like she’d expected this.
But she hadn’t. She figured if they were going to let her go for purchasing Mountain View West, that it would have happened already, that they would have sat her down to have this conversation well before now.
But they hadn’t.
“We’ll talk in your office.” He pointed toward the door.
Angelica looked over her shoulder at her office admin’s desk. “I really should check on—”
“The situation with Matthias Bryan has been resolved.” Mr. Kartali’s voice was so calm and measured.
For some reason, Angelica didn’t want to trust it. It was such a struggle to not force her feet to carry her to the main offices where she could see Matthias himself and address the problem at hand. Because why else would she have flown all the way back here?
“Come along.” Mr. Kartali nodded toward Angelica’s office. “We have much to discuss.”
Well, now that sounded ominous.
Bracing herself, Angelica followed him into the conference area of her office.
Everything on her desk was as she left it, which was a good sign.
No one had boxed up her belongings to force her out of her position, so maybe he wasn’t here to fire her.
They sat down in silence, Angelica ruing the moment that he’d actually tell her what was going on.
Because she needed to know.
“My wife should be here momentarily.” Mr. Kartali put his phone on top of the table, screen side down.
He was being decidedly withdrawn and evasive, which wasn’t like him.
He was typically the one who came right out and told her what was what, and his wife was the one who showed up to play hardball.
Angelica shifted in the chair, crossing her legs and wishing that Hope was here with her.
Maybe then she’d feel a bit more of a sense of ease.
Or at least have a safety net.
“Angelica!” Mrs. Kartali stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her. “I’m so glad you were able to come here on such short notice.”
“We may have told a fib,” Mr. Kartali started, leaning back in the chair.
Angelica turned her gaze onto him now. “What fib?”
“That there was an emergency,” Mrs. Kartali started. “We wanted to speak with you in person since you’ve been ignoring our other communications.”
Narrowing her gaze, Angelica stilled. Other communications? What the hell were they going on about? “What communications?”
“About selling the franchise,” Mr. Kartali jumped in.
“Right, you did tell me you were looking to sell.” Angelica tensed again.
She didn’t exactly want to break in new owners who would definitely have an issue with her also owning another hotel.
It’d be a conflict of interest for sure.
The only reason she’d managed to get away with it with the Kartalis was because they knew her and she’d worked for them, and her new hotel wasn’t in any conflict with theirs.
“We want you to buy them,” Mrs. Kartali simply stated.
“You… you what?” Angelica’s eyebrows rose in shock, her lips parted in stunning surprise. “You want me to buy all your hotels?”
“Yes,” Mr. Kartali confirmed. “We thought when we told you that we were looking at selling that you would jump at the opportunity.”
“Oh.” Angelica relaxed slightly into her chair and then tensed again. “I haven’t even completed the purchase of Mountain View West yet. Acquiring an entire business takes time.”
“It does.” Mrs. Kartali canted her head to the side, her salt-and-pepper hair brushing against her shoulders. “And we’re prepared to wait for you.”
“For me?” Angelica nearly squeaked out those words, but she managed to catch herself finally. She focused on her breathing for a second and then settled herself. “Surely it’d be faster if another already established company were to buy out—”
“That’s not what we want.” Mr. Kartali pointed at her with one finger. “We’ve discussed, and we want you.”
There it was again. That accusation along with the expectation that she was just going to fall in line. “I don’t know if I want more than Mountain View…”
“We’ll give you time to think about it, Angelica, but we expect an answer by the end of your filming adventures. We need to know what we’re up against when it comes to our future plans.” Mrs. Kartali gave her a hard look as if that was going to make all the difference in the world.
Angelica felt smaller by the second. Pushed into a corner where she was forced to make a decision that would indeed change the course of her life. If she owned these hotels that lined the coast, then how much time could she reasonably spend in Colorado or filming?
Why was there never enough time?
She nodded at them slowly. “I promise I’ll think about it.”
“You have three weeks to think about it, until the end of the month. Then we want your answer.” Mrs. Kartali held her hand out, palm up. “And Angelica, when you think about it, know that you can’t be everything for everyone, and when you own, you’ll have to step back in some of your duties.”
Probably the ones that she loved the most, which was the unfortunate part. Angelica already knew that. She’d never fully contemplated owning hotels, and it hadn’t been until Tatum had insisted that she’d truly toyed with the idea.
And now this?
“We trust you implicitly,” Mr. Kartali added. “That’s why we want you to carry on the legacy you helped us to shape.”
Fuck, why did he have to throw that in there?
Angelica nodded, though she struggled to meet his eye. “I promise I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” They both grinned. “For now, you can give us an update on how everything is going.”
“Right.” Angelica put her iPad onto the table and started to pull up reports. This hadn’t been what she expected to come back to, but she wouldn’t be caught off guard. Not when it came to this at least.