A Forever Love(56)

Aubrey pushed back from her desk and away from the pie. “Again I ask, what do you want?” There was too much at risk now that she knew her sister was a spy working for Justin Travati.

Nina folded herself into the chair opposite Aubrey’s desk. Uh-oh. The alarm bells in Aubrey’s head started to clang. Pie and Nina was sitting down. Digging in for the long haul of a conversation. This didn’t look good.

“I hear there’s pie.”

“Dad is here too?”

Nina nodded with a wicked gleam in her eye. Oh no. This was bad. Very, very bad.

Dad walked into the office, already halfway through his first slice. “My God, Nina, why do you waste your time being a chef when you can make pie like this?” Dad took another big bite and sat in the chair next to Nina.

“Why are you both here?” Aubrey asked. She could count on one hand the number of times Nina and Dad had been in her office at the same time. Two were coincidence and the other was when Max fell off the jungle gym at school and broke his arm.

“Try the pie,” Nina said and raised one eyebrow. The wicked little-sister gleam remained in her eyes, and the corner of her lips lifted into a half smile.

“Not falling for that one.” But Aubrey looked at the pie and then at Dad taking the final bit of his slice.

“If you don’t, Aubrey, girl, then I will,” Dad said and reached for the plate on her desk.

“That’s mine,” Aubrey said and lifted the plate. The moment her fingertips touched the porcelain, she knew she was a goner. She might have resisted with the piece an arm’s reach away, but now that she had the plate, the pie, and a fork, the end was inevitable. She took her finger and swiped through the fresh whipped cream that dotted the slice of key lime pie’s surface. My God, that was good. She lifted the fork and slid it through the thick, rich goodness. One bite. Heaven. Pure, wonderful, sweet-tart heaven.

“So why are you here?” She didn’t even care why these two were in her office now that she had started eating this delicious pie. A look passed between Nina and Dad. Dad nodded toward Aubrey, and Nina cleared her throat.

“We want you to take Max to New York.”

Suddenly the pie tasted like wet paper.

“What?”

“He needs to go to New York, and we want you to take him,” Dad said. “Pretty clear, isn’t it? The plane will be here tomorrow and you’ll go.” Dad stood and scraped his hands down the front of his pants. “See, Nina, told you that you didn’t need to bake a damn pie, but I’m glad you did. Is there more?”

“Wait? What? You two think that you can come in here and order me to take Max to New York? With a piece of pie?”

“Order’s an awfully strong word, honey,” Dad said. “More like encouraging. We need you to do this.”

“For Justin? I’m not doing this for Justin. He promised Max he’d come back and get him, and he can haul his ass back to Kansas and do exactly what he said he’d do.”

“Aubrey.” Dad settled his gaze on her face. “We’re not asking you to do this for Justin. I wouldn’t give much more than a rat’s ass about that guy except for one thing.”

Aubrey stared at her father. “And that is?”

“He’s Max’s dad. Max needs this, Aubrey. We’re not asking you to go for Justin. We’re asking you to go for Max.”

“Neither one of us want him to go alone, especially with everything going on at Travati Financial. Max might get lost in the shuffle, but if you go—”

“Then none of us, including you, have to worry about Max.”

“Are you kidding? No way,” Aubrey said. “I’m not taking Max to New York. Why should I help to fix Justin’s fu—” She glanced at her father, who raised an eyebrow. “Mess. Why should I clean up Justin’s mess?”

“Because anything having to do with Max is our mess too,” Nina said. “Hudson isn’t a big city, Aubrey. He’s already gotten some heat for not going to Justin’s when he thought he was. You know he told all his friends he’s going to New York. You don’t want him to start high school with his tail between his legs, having to explain to every kid that’s heard just who he is why his dad didn’t take him to New York like he said he would.”

“Peer pressure, plain and simple.”

“Don’t act like you were immune,” Dad said. “I remember a freshman who burned her scalp trying to make her curls straight so she could look like all them other freshman girls at Hudson High.”

Aubrey touched her curls. That was a bad memory. Loads of tears and a trip to the salon with Mom to try to fix that mess. Aubrey took a deep breath. Max would already have a target on his back because he was now the “different” kid with a “different” family. Sure, he’d been different before because of not having a dad around, but single-parent households weren’t all that uncommon, even in Hudson, Kansas. Billionaires were uncommon. Dammed uncommon, and now her son was a Travati, heir to a billion dollars, with a dad who had a private jet, a couple of sports teams, and mansions around the world.