“Lennox,” I corrected.
“Ah. Right. Sorry.”
Like hell you are.
“So you and my son met when you showed him your . . . office skills?”
Brady stiffened beside me. Then he laughed. “No, actually we met at the LCCO outreach program. Lennox’s roommate heads up the county’s program. I’d run into Lennox a few times before that at LI, but we both just happened to volunteer on that day.”
Selka’s eyes burned into me. “You have roommate?”
Her accent sounded part Scandinavian, part Russian. “Yes. We share a house.”
“I had roommate once. Terrible person. She wore all my clothes.”
“Fortunately, I don’t have that problem with Kiley.”
“Have you been married before?”
“No.”
“Do you have children?”
“Mom,” Brady said with exasperation. “Knock it off.”
Selka patted Brady’s cheek and said something in Swedish.
“No, Mrs. Lund, I don’t have any children.”
“You’re lovely. You must be part Swede.” She cocked her head. “My son is handsome, yes?”
“Jesus.” Brady looked at his father for help.
But Ward Lund just held up his hands in surrender.
“Yes, Brady is very handsome. And he’s smart. He can be very funny.” I paused. “What surprised me most about him, though, was his kindness. He was great with the teenagers in the program the morning he volunteered. That’s why I agreed to go out with him, despite our potential conflict of interest with the CFO dating a lower-level clerical employee.”
I felt Selka studying me as Ward said, “We don’t have rules about interpersonal relationships at LI. In fact, several of our employees met there and have been married for years.”
“And just as many were divorced,” Selka added.
Looked like I was scoring points with Mama Bear. Not.
“I’m happy you’re here,” Ward said. “I’m sure you at least know of the other members of the family, so we’ll let you get on with the introductions, Brady.”
Selka said nothing.
I didn’t ask Brady’s take on how I’d done with his mother once they’d walked away. He had no other experiences to judge it by. And men were often clueless about women stuff anyway.
Brady introduced me to his uncle Monte, who was president of the board of directors, and his wife, Priscilla. Next we moved on to his uncle Archer, CEO of LI. He was an imposing man and my hand shook as if I was meeting a rock star. Archer’s wife, Edie, thought I was cute and asked me a bunch of questions about my position at LI, which calmed me a little because she knew Lola. She also knew Anita, and the way her nose wrinkled told me she didn’t care for her either.
Annika was the biggest surprise. She hugged me. “Lennox! Look at you, dating my brother. Everyone thinks he’s the big bad wolf so I’m glad to see someone got past his sharp teeth.”
“Thanks for that analogy, sis.”
“Did Lennox tell you I tried to hire her?”
I closed my eyes and willed her to stop talking.
“No, she forgot to mention it.”
“Well, when May had her baby, Lennox was assigned to my department. She was so efficient and got us all caught up on a backlog of filing and she even cross-referenced all the information. It was amazing. So when May came back and saw all that Lennox had done, she knew she’d been busted for doing the absolute minimum and she requested a departmental change from Personnel as well as a job-share position to part-time.”
Yes, I’d done my job so well that I’d cost a new mother her job. I still felt guilty about that.
“But when I tried to get Lennox to stay on as May’s replacement, she declined. She said she was still too new to the company and wanted to remain in her current position for at least a year.” Annika punched me in the arm—right on my recently re-inked tattoo. “Crazy loyal, huh?”
“What are you? A thirteen-year-old boy? Stop smacking my girlfriend, Nika.”
“Shit. Sorry.” Then she proceeded to rub really hard on the spot she’d just hit. “I’m just glad Brady finally showed he has good taste in women.”
“Uh . . . thanks?”
Brady steered me away. Then he got right in my face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It just stings.”
“Annika tends to forget sometimes that she’s a girl. Blame it on three brothers and three older boy cousins.”
I set my hand on his chest.
He took my other hand and kissed the inside of my wrist.
“Nice little PDA you’ve got going on, cuz.”
“Fuck off, Nolan.”