“Trust me, I know someone.” She would just have to swallow her pride to make it work and ask Anne-Sophie to help her. Hopefully her youngest sister would agree.
She was debating calling her right then, when her phone vibrated on the table. She glanced down at the incoming call and smiled. Gabrielle’s face lit up the screen. “It’s Gabi.”
“Go ahead and take it.” Brock winked, and Juliette’s stomach did a little flip. Completely unnecessary. “We’ll finish up here. Tell Gabi I said hey.”
“Sure.” Not a chance. If Gabrielle found out that Juliette was spending time with Brock, even though it was strictly business related, she would never hear the end of it. Grabbing her phone, she headed toward the front of the house, away from the dining room. “Hello?”
“Hey, Jules.” Concern clouded Gabrielle’s voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, of course. I’m fine.” Juliette’s brow furrowed. “Why? Should I not be okay? Did something happen?”
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. Viv was just telling me that you and Mama got into an argument.” She paused on the other line, muttering something about someone not being able to merge properly. “A new flower bar at the shop?”
Juliette groaned and rolled her eyes to the exposed beam ceiling. “Mama hated the idea.”
“Did she?” Gabrielle asked, that motherly, sage-like voice bleeding into her tone. “Or did she hate that you did it without asking her first?”
The knot of guilt twisting around in Juliette’s chest tightened further. She hated that Gabrielle was probably right. Why was the oldest sibling always right?
“I was only trying to help.” Annoyance flickered through her. The window display had been in desperate need of a facelift, and even though Juliette freshened it up without permission, even if she had asked, she could practically guarantee her mother’s answer would be no.
“I get it,” Gabrielle crooned softly. “And I love that about you. It never fails that you’re always the first to help. But that shop is Mama’s pride and joy.”
Something Juliette knew all too well. So many times she and her sisters had been put on the back burner because of the shop. No after-school activities because Mama was too busy at the shop. The last pickings for homecoming and prom corsages because the other clients got the best choices, and her girls shouldn’t outshine them. No family vacations because they lived in paradise and weddings occupied almost every weekend. Mama was always busy. Always preoccupied. Always focused on everything and everyone else, except her children.
“She didn’t have to be so snippy about it,” Juliette muttered, recalling all theotherthings her mother said, none of which had anything to do with the flower bar.
“Be real, Jules.” Gabrielle’s voice cut through her thoughts and dragged her back to reality. “How do you feel when people help you, or think they are helping you, without asking first?”
“I get agitated,” she admitted. A fault she probably inherited from Gigi.
“Exactly,” Gabrielle laughed. “Give her a few days. I bet she keeps the flower bar.”
“Maybe.”
Juliette glanced down the hall. She could hear Brock and Anders’s laughter, and for a split second, she could picture Brock’s face. The way the whole of it illuminated when he laughed. The way tiny lines would crinkle at the corners of his eyes. The way his broad, wide smile made her feel like it was solely for her.
She shook the crazy thought from her head. “Well, I appreciate the pep talk.”
“Good. But that’s not the reason I called.”
A horn blasted on Gabrielle’s end, and Juliette checked her watch. “Are you on your way to work?”
“Yeah.” Another horn. “Jeremiah went to Yuma for some kind of training operation, so I picked up a couple extra shifts at the hospital.”
Juliette’s biological clock gave a little tick. Gabrielle was a natural-born nurturer, an ability that served her well as a neonatal intensive care nurse. Her days were spent with the tiniest of souls—loving them, helping them, saving them.
Gabrielle clicked her tongue. “A little bird told me you’re hanging out with Brockton Gallagher.”
“If the little bird is named Adrienne or Vivianne, they’re wrong.” Juliette expelled a dramatic sigh of frustration. “I’m working for him. Not hanging out with him. I’m doing some interior design for his beach house. That’s all.”
“Really? That’s wonderful, Jules.” The pride in Gabrielle’s voice was genuine. “I’m glad to hear you’re getting back into design.”
Juliette had to admit, it felt good to finally work with colors, shapes, layouts, and textiles. Her love of design was self-taught, and she’d thrown herself into learning all she could whenever she had a spare moment. She read books, studied other designers’ styles, practiced creating her own color boards, and was about to enroll in a couple online courses until her mother told her to stop wasting her time.
It took nothing more than Gigi’s thoughtless dismissal of Juliette’s dreams for her to throw it all away.
Even after she ran off with Rodrigo, she stayed far from design. She bounced around between jobs, never really holding anything of interest for longer than a couple months. Nothing sparked her curiosity or ignited her passion like interior design.
