Thad was too tired for this shit. He folded the other pillow in half and slipped under the covers.
“Stupid-ass dog,” he muttered before using the remote on the fancy ceiling fan and light combo that had been installed—no doubt his sister’s doing—and going to bed.
17
Ashanti balanced her cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she piped icing around the edges of the scepter-shaped cookies—her newest design courtesy of Evie’s late-night cookie-cutter Etsy shopping spree.
She listened with half an ear as the reporter from some small town in Illinois droned on about the summer she volunteered at their local animal shelter back when she was in high school. Ashanti now understood what Ridley meant when she told her to be selective regarding the media interviews. Nothing about this story would benefit her or Barkingham Palace.
She’d thought the hoopla over the viral livestream video would have died down by now, but it had been shared by the host of a popular TV show on the Animal Planet network over the weekend, restarting the madness and kicking it up several notches. Deja had called a half hour ago, threatening to quit.
So now they forwarded incoming calls to the overnight answering service and sent texts to all clients with pets being boarded today with instructions to call Ashanti’s office line if they needed to get in touch.
Ashanti had promised to join her staff at the daycare as soon as she could, but orders for Duchess Delights had gone through the roof. She’d farmed out some work to her next-door neighbor’s son, Bernard—a six-year senior at the University of New Orleans who spent more time playing video games on his mom’s couch than in class. He was currently bagging treats and would make deliveries later today.
Thanks to Duchess Delights’ newfound fame, Ashanti’s inbox was filled with job applicants for the daycare. She felt even more confident about the decision she’d made yesterday to put a bid in on the house in the Lower Garden District. It was no longer a question that she would need the extra space.
She’d sweet-talked Leslie, Deja, and Colleen with promises of pizza and wine if they would stay late to review resumes. Ashanti trusted them to weed out candidates, but the final decision on who they hired would be hers.
If she could find time to conduct interviews.
She heard the front door open and looked up from the dining room table, expecting to see Kara walk in from the foyer. Instead, it was Kendra.
“Hey,” her sister said.
When she realized Kendra wasn’t making a mad dash up the stairs to her bedroom, Ashanti abruptly ended the interview and set the phone down.
“Hey,” she said. “No cheerleader practice today?”
Kendra shook her head. Defying all of Ashanti’s expectations, she walked farther into the dining room and poked around at the doggy treat–making paraphernalia littering the table. She picked up the scepter cookie cutter.
“Why are you making penis cookies?”
“It’s a scepter,” Ashanti said. Her chest felt uncomfortablytight as a string of awkward seconds passed with neither of them speaking.
“Do you… uh… want to talk?” Ashanti asked.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Shanti. I told you already, I’m fine.”
She was not fine, but Ashanti knew better than to push. The fact that Kendra was even speaking to her was a gift.
She still couldn’t believe she’d allowed things to get to this point, where it felt like a victory to have her sixteen-year-old sister speak more than two nonhostile words to her.
“Do you want to help me out with these?” she asked, holding up the piping bag. “I can use it.”
Ashanti held her breath. She released it, along with more of the tension she’d been holding, when Kendra dropped the backpack she’d still had hanging on her shoulder and sat down at the table.
“Those are ready to be packaged.” Ashanti nodded toward the decorated cookies on a silicon drying mat.
“It looks as if that viral video has been good for business,” Kendra said as she closed the cellophane bag with a label.
“I have so many orders that I hired Mrs. Willis’s son from next door to help package them.”
“Ugh.” Kendra scrunched up her nose. “Bernard Willis is gross. The other day he offered to let me ‘experiment on him’ to see if I’m really gay.”
“What?” Ashanti pitched the piping bag into the bowl of icing. “That little bastard! I’m gonna kill him!”
“Don’t bother,” Kendra said. “I threatened to sic Duchess on him if he comes near me. Bernard is terrified of your dog.”
