She walked into the large dining room and smiled at Keira. Her sister grinned back.
“There are macadamia pancakes,” Keira said happily, still in her bathrobe. “Have you had them before? They’re delicious. Carmen is amazing.”
Callie eyed the plate of pancakes in front of her sister. “They do look good.” She helped herself to coffee and juice and sat down.
Carmen came in from the kitchen. “Pancakes, Callie?”
“Thank you. That would be very nice.”
Carmen smiled and returned to the kitchen. Callie stared after her, still not comfortable ordering food from the family housekeeper. She kept wanting to say she could fix it herself.
But that wasn’t how things were done here, she reminded herself. The rich really were different.
“Where’s Malcolm?” Callie asked, trying to sound casual.
“He already ate. He’s in his study, on a conference call.” Keira rolled her eyes. “It’s international. He’s very busy.”
Callie grinned. “Is he?”
“Uh-huh. He’s expanded the company to a lot of Europe. I don’t know all the countries. Sometimes he travels there.” She thought for a second. “I’d like to go to London, I think. They still have a royal family and that would be fun.”
“Because you’d meet them?”
“No, but I could see a palace. And maybe Paris.” Her expression was wistful. “Angelina talked about Paris a lot.”
Paris. To Callie it was like talking about the moon. Did regular people really get to go places like that? She couldn’t imagine.
Of course a month ago, she would never have imagined that she would be living in this huge house in Seattle. Thinking about it made her head spin. She had family—a concept she couldn’t wrap her mind around. Keira was great and Grandfather Alberto couldn’t be nicer. When they had lunch, he’d told her the history of the family and had mentioned maybe five times how happy he was to have her here. Yesterday he’d talked about the company and how he started it right after the Second World War. But Malcolm was another story.
It wasn’t that he was mean, it was just that... She thought for a second—to be honest, the man scared her. She couldn’t say why, but he did. He was so stern and serious about everything. Keira had confessed she referred to him as her asshole brother. While Callie couldn’t claim he’d behaved that way with her, she got the sentiment.
She didn’t want to think about Malcolm, so asked Keira about her English project. From there the topic shifted to the reality dancing competition they’d watched the previous night.
“You’re wrong,” Keira told her. “Madison was totally the better dancer.”
“You just think she’s prettier. Anastasia knew the routine.”
Carmen came in with Callie’s breakfast. There were pancakes, bacon and a lovely little fruit garnish. “When you’re done, Malcolm would like to see you in his study,” Carmen said with a smile.
“Uh-oh,” Keira whispered.
Callie wanted to say she wasn’t worried, but she found she suddenly had a knot in her stomach.
“I’ll be fine,” she lied.
“Better you than me.”
Fifteen minutes later, Callie gave up pretending she could eat and went up to talk to Malcolm. At the top of the stairs, she turned away from her room and toward his. She told herself that if she didn’t like what he had to say, she would leave. She could find a room to rent and a job and just get on with her life, only the words sounded a lot like whistling in the dark.
She knocked once on his open door and walked into his study. She realized immediately that his floor plan was the reverse of Keira’s, only he used the front room as his home office and the back one as his bedroom.
He sat at a large desk. He was already dressed in a suit and tie, his jacket hanging by the door. He looked up when she knocked and motioned for her to enter and take a seat.
“Thanks for coming to see me,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about how you’re settling in. Is your room comfortable?”
Was he kidding? Her room was amazing—of course it was comfortable. What else could it be? Was this a trick? She didn’t know him well enough to guess so only said, “It’s very nice, thank you.”
Emotions chased across his face, but she couldn’t read them. She supposed that a disinterested bystander would say that her brother was handsome and he obviously looked successful, but none of that mattered to her.
“I want to make sure you’re happy,” he began, then stopped. “I’m saying this all wrong.”
“Then let me talk,” she said, perched on the edge of her chair. “I need a job.”
“What?”
“I need to work. I have to be doing something with my day. I can’t just sit around here. Carmen keeps the house spotless and while Grandfather Alberto is a fascinating guy, I can’t expect him to entertain me.”
“Okay.” He drew out the word. “What would you like to do?”
Go back to college, she thought wistfully. No, she would like to be eighteen again, on the day of her birthday, and not screw up her whole life. That’s what she would like.
“You know I’m a convicted felon, right?” she asked bluntly.
Malcolm stiffened slightly. “Yes, but I—”
“Don’t,” she told him. “Don’t say it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. It’s something I have to carry with me every second of every day. It will never be out of my life.” She drew in a breath to get control. “I was in high school. I had fallen in with some bad kids who skipped school and did drugs. My boyfriend convinced me it would be fun to rob a liquor store. I was young and stupid and...” She paused. “That’s all I have. I was young and stupid. I wasn’t bad or evil, just foolish. I was scared, but I thought I had to do it to keep him, so I went along. What I didn’t know was he would use a gun and when we got caught, because he was a selfish jerk, that he would tell the police it was all me. I didn’t ask for a lawyer, I told them I did it and before I knew what was happening, I was convicted.”
She met his gaze. “I was wrong. I’m not blaming anyone else. I take responsibility for what happened, just so you know. I served five years and I’ve been out for three. I lived in a halfway house and I did what I was supposed to do. In theory, I have paid my debt to society, only it’s never over. While I was in prison, I learned to cook. I worked in the kitchen and it was interesting and I got good at it, but I can’t get a job in a restaurant. I can’t get much of a job anywhere because they all have that box you have to check—the one about being a convicted felon.”
She inhaled. “I worked nights cleaning offices and during the day I worked under the table for a caterer. I’m a good worker. I show up, I do my job. I just want to be like everyone else.”
She realized she’d said too much—certainly more than he would want to know, so she pressed her lips together and waited.
He studied her. “You do realize your grandfather started a business based on food. It must be in the blood.”
“Like little tiny pie slices floating around?”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but why not? You’re welcome to come work at the company. Just say the word.”
“You’d give me a job there? Knowing what you know?”
He hesitated just long enough for her to figure out he didn’t trust her. “Of course. For what it’s worth, Grandfather Alberto knows about your past, but we haven’t told Carmen or Keira.”
Something she could be grateful for, she thought. “Thank you. And I would like a job at the company.” It would give her a local reference. If she had to take off, at least she would have that.
“You can start tomorrow if you’d like.”
“I would. Thank you.” She prepared to stand, but before she could duck out of the room, he spoke.
“We should talk about money.”
“You mean what you’re going to pay me?”
He frowned. “No. The family money. I was waiting for you to get settled, but I probably should have told you sooner.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out several envelopes. Two were legal size.
“There’s a family trust,” he began. “Each of us—you, me and Keira—inherit a third of that. In addition, you own a part of the business and part of this house. There are restrictions—you can’t sell any part of the business. If you choose to walk away, then you lose your share of the company. The trust is different. That is fully yours regardless. You can’t touch the principle until you’re thirty-five, but you will receive a quarterly stipend.”
He opened one of the envelopes and pulled out a checkbook. “This quarter’s payment has been made. I took the liberty of opening a checking account in your name. You need to go to the bank and sign some paperwork to activate it, but the money is already in the account.” He held out the checkbook.
Her stomach turned over as unease settled over her. She didn’t want this, she thought. Despite what the lawyer in Houston had said, she wasn’t comfortable just being handed something for nothing. She didn’t know Malcolm or Grandfather Alberto. Why were they doing this? So what if Jerry was her father—she was a stranger.