Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
JAMESON
Boston, MA
Could this day get any worse? I highly fucking doubt it.
“Two days?” I ask the Pre-K teacher as I look down at my Italian leather shoes that are now covered in puke from my four-year-old nephew.
“At least. He can’t come back tomorrow because he has to be symptom-free for twenty-four hours before he can return.” She has the no-nonsense approach of an elderly aunt who’s seen it all and has no time for your issues.
“Great.”
I consider the three remaining meetings I have this afternoon—one of which includes signing an eight-figure endorsement deal with an international athletic wear company for my highest profile hockey player. We’re supposed to be meeting in my office in an hour.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with Graham during those meetings, but at least his mom—my sister, Audrey—will be back in town tonight.
I do feel bad for the little guy. I carry him out of the school because he’s too weak to walk at the pace I need to be moving.
I don’t have a choice but to hurry. When we get to my car and I take in the custom leather upholstery with the detailed stitching, I wonder if I can possibly get him home without wrecking the interior of my Maserati.
There’s really no other option, so I buckle him into his booster in the back seat.
“How you doing, bud?” I ask as I ruffle his hair back from where it’s plastered against his forehead with sweat. The kid is burning up.
“Awful.”
“Yeah, I can tell. I’ll get you home and in bed, and hopefully that’ll help.”
He leans his head back against the seat and closes those big brown eyes, so I shut the car door, come around to the driver’s side, and get in. Then I crack my window despite the cold temperatures because I can hardly breathe through the stench of our soaked clothes.
Every time I peek in the rearview mirror, Graham’s eyes are closed. And by the time we get back to the South End and turn onto our street, I breathe a sigh of relief. We made it.
“I don’t feel good.” Graham groans.
Oh shit.
“We’re almost home,” I assure him, giving him another glance in the mirror.
He’s thrashing his head back and forth like he does when he doesn’t want to do something you’re telling him to do.
“I’m going—” his words are cut off by the projectile vomit.
I glance over and watch it trickle down the passenger seat, where it runs along the white stitched seams of the dark gray leather.
My stomach roils and then clenches in disgust, and I’m dry heaving.
I take the turn to the alley that leads along the side of our brownstone a little too quickly and come to a skidding stop in the space next to the side entrance of our house.
I push my car door open and run around to the passenger side to get Graham out before he can do any more damage, and as soon as I open the door, he vomits all over me. “Fuck!”
“That was a very bad word, Uncle Jameson,” he says somberly as he unbuckles himself.
“Yeah, well, this is a very expensive car you just threw up in,” I mutter as I lift him out of his seat and set him on the ground. His little body weaves back and forth like a boxer who just got clocked in the head. “You going to throw up again?”
“I don’t know.” He looks down at his abdomen, then back up at me. “My stomach says ‘maybe.’”
“I need three huge favors right now,” I say quickly, hoping that Derek, my personal assistant, is in a forgiving mood today.
I sigh, thinking back to thirty minutes ago in the school nurse’s office when I didn’t think my day could get worse. It feels like maybe I was inviting disaster.
“You already owe me big for last week.”
“Like hell I do.” Last week I gave him five hundred dollars to show up in my place to a fancy dinner at an outstanding restaurant, because I had somewhere else I needed to be: taking Graham to a Boston Rebels hockey game.
“Listen, this is very much not within your role as my personal assistant, but I need you to get your ass over to my place as quick as humanly possible. Then I need you to stay with Graham until Jules gets home.”
“Why isn’t Graham at school?” he asks. Over the speakerphone, I can hear him putting on his coat and gathering his things.
“Stomach bug. Audrey is flying back from that conference in Chicago, and Jules is at a jobsite in West Roxbury.”
Together, my sisters run the construction company that’s been in my family for three generations now. Audrey is the architect, and Jules is the structural engineer and lead contractor.
“I talked to Jules a few minutes ago and she’ll get here as quickly as she can, but I suspect we’re looking at a minimum of forty-five minutes and I don’t have that long. I need to get back to the office for the signing in”—I glance at my watch—“thirty minutes.”
I hear the elevator ding over the phone and Derek says, “If I get the stomach bug, I’m taking three days of sick time and not feeling bad about it.”
“Understood. But you’re invaluable to me, so don’t get too close to Graham, and you’ll be fine.”
As he gets in his Uber, I give Derek some more instructions about scheduling the dry-cleaning pickup for my suit and finding a detail place that can pick up my car and have it back to me before I leave for work tomorrow morning.
“I’ll be lucky if I can find someone to pick it up today,” he says, “much less get it back to you by tomorrow morning.”
“Make it happen.” I have full confidence in his abilities. It’s amazing what he can accomplish when he’s throwing my money around.
I set my phone on the coffee table and bend down to feel Graham’s forehead. He still feels hot and clammy. “Hey, Derek is going to come and hang out with you until Auntie Jules gets back, okay? I have to go into the office.”
“Okay,” Graham says, his eyes never leaving his episode of Spider-Man.
He’s lying on the couch on his side with his iPad propped up on the coffee table and a garbage can sitting right between him and his show.
Hopefully, if there’s any more throwing up, he can aim it in the can.
I already got him cleaned off as best I could and took a record-breaking fast shower myself.
“I’m going to run upstairs to my place to grab a tie.
” Converting our childhood home into a two-family house—where my sisters and Graham live on the first two floors, and I have my own place on the third floor—was one of the smartest things I’ve done.
“I’ll keep the door open so I can hear you.
If you need me, just call. And if you need to throw up again, make it—”
“In the trash can. I knooow,” Graham says.
He must be starting to feel better if he’s already getting back to his normal smart-ass self.
Audrey blames that part on me, saying I’m a bad example.
Which always leads me to remind her that if she hadn’t gotten knocked up in college, I wouldn’t have to help raise my nephew after I already raised my two little sisters. She always appreciates that reminder.
I’m walking back down the stairs and tightening the knot on my tie when I hear the doorbell. Derek is less pissy about being here than I expected, probably because I tell him to get himself a nice dinner tonight and expense it.
Whereas many of my colleagues complain about not being able to find good assistants, I’ve held onto Derek for the last four years through a combination of paying him well and rewarding him when I ask him to do stupid shit that shouldn’t really be part of his job, like today.
Because he’s good at what he does, Derek even booked his Uber to take me back to the office, so I’m sitting back down behind my desk before Colt arrives.
“I’m about to sign the biggest endorsement deal of my life,” he says, his huge frame filling my doorway as he walks into my office, “and you don’t even have Derek here to help us celebrate? He should at least be here offering me a beer or something!”
“He’s taking care of my sick nephew. I’ll take you out for celebratory drinks another time.”
“What’s wrong with Graham?” At this point, Colt’s been my teammate, client, and friend long enough that he knows my family.
“Stomach bug.”
Colt has virtually no experience with kids, so I assume his grimace as he sits down in the chair across from me is in response to the thought of a kid throwing up. “And you made Derek go babysit him?”
“Yes, well, I pay him accordingly. And it’s just until Jules can get back from a jobsite.” I pick up the stack of papers on my desk and slide them across my desk toward him. “You ready to sign?”
“No,” Colt says, the sarcasm evident in his voice, “I’m having second thoughts about all those zeros.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I growl as Derek’s name lights up my phone.
It’s easy to see the screen since I’m curled up on my side on my bathroom rug with a wadded up towel serving as a pillow.
I reach over and tap the phone to answer it.
“What part of don’t contact me before noon was unclear?
” My voice is more of a moan than a bark.
I’d texted Derek around two in the morning when I woke up sick. I told him I wouldn’t be in and that unless someone died, I’d better not hear from him.
“So, about that text . . .” Derek says.
“What time is it right now?” It’s still dark out, but I can see the orange-pink light of sunrise starting to filter through the seam between the shade and the frame of my bathroom window.
“Almost seven.”
“Why the fuck are you calling me this early?”
Derek takes a deep breath. “Josh Emerson was killed yesterday in an avalanche.”
“What?” I sit up so fast the whole room spins. I curl into a sitting fetal position, with my forehead resting on my knees. My stomach is still flipping over, though not as badly as it has been for the past several hours.
“He was skiing out of bounds in Sun Valley,” Derek says, then gives me the very few details he was able to find out so far.
“Shit.” There is nothing else to say.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Print out a copy of his trust. I’ll be in as soon as I can fucking walk.”
“Do you want me to contact his family?”
“No!” The word hurtles from my mouth before I can stop it. “No,” I say more calmly, “It’s too soon.”
When we disconnect the call, I sit there with my head on my knees for a few more minutes. The thought of having to talk to Lauren about Josh, seeing her devastation—it’s more than my virus-addled mind can handle.
Fuck, I think to myself. In my whole portfolio of clients, there’s only one person whose significant other I would do just about anything to avoid. And now I have no choice but to go see her.
The thought of coming face-to-face with her after all these years is apparently more than my stomach can handle, and I barely make it to the toilet in time.