“Work stuff? I didn’t think you had a job.”
“I mean, I don’t, really. It’s not a big deal.”
Teagan looked at her suspiciously. Sloane took no longer to crack than she had at age five on the subject ofwhat happened to the rug. She wasn’t good at keeping secrets.
“So, you know how you’ve been asking me if I wanted to start working at the foundation,” she said.
Teagan had to go months back in his memory, but he had suggested that Sloane might enjoy earning money at one of the summer programs the foundation sponsored rather than take another unpaid internship shadowing entertainment executives of questionable morality back in LA. Prepping paper-mache animals, he’d meant, or making sack lunches.
“Yes,” he said, eyes narrowing.
“I started talking to Rose about what I could do from here, and she’s had me make some fundraising calls.” Her face reflected a bit of fragile pride. “Like, I got over fifty K this week just by calling up some of Mom’s friends.”
“What?” he exploded. “Since when? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’tRosetell me?”
Setting aside the issue of his sister being an art history student and not a professional, their mother’s friends were a collection of aging socialites pickled in vodka and hardened by decades of debauchery. Teagan didn’t want Sloane anywhere near that mess, especially while she was dealing with her own substance issues.
“Since you’ve beenhereand notthere, and you’re notsupposedto be working, according to yourdoctors, I asked Roseif there was anything I could do to help, and I’ve been working with her. She says I’ve done a good job, and I have a talent for it, and if I wanted to, she’d bring me on full time this fall.”
Teagan stared at her. “You’re going back to school this fall,” he said, focusing on the most urgent of the unpleasant disclosures she’d just made.
“I already missed the first week. I’m going to take the semester off, and this way I’ll be there in New York when you get back, and I can help with fundraising. Like, I went to high school with June Marino’s daughter, and I know she’s got her name on the wall at the symphony—”
“June Marino! I found her and Mom passed out in our jacuzzi at six on a Sunday morning once. And still she tried to cry all over me at Mom’s funeral and say she never saw it coming.”
Sloane shrugged dramatically. “So she probably feels guilty, right? That’s worth at least twenty grand in blood money. For the kids, you know. Remember them? Little cherubs who want to go to pottery class instead of watching TV alone all summer? According to Rose, you need the cash.”
“I don’t want you involved in making fundraising calls. This is serious—”
“Of course it’s serious!” she snapped at him. “It was serious enough that you nearly gave yourself a freaking heart attack over it. And I am serious about it. I can be a very serious person!”
Teagan dragged his fingers through his hair, trying to gather the words to warn Sloane off the disaster that had ruined his life—no, wait, where had that come from? He was lucky to have his job. Surely he ought to be happy Sloane was interested in a real job—without putting her efforts down.
He finally settled on, “Rose doesn’t actually have hiringauthority. We’d have to go through normal channels.” And Teagan did all the hiring. That would do it.
“She seemed like she knew what she was talking about. She thought I’d get the job.” Sloane’s face dared him to contradict either of them.
Teagan didn’t usually contradict Rose. Nora, the board chair, had made him hire Rose when he started as CEO, because he was nothing but a municipal bond trader with a slightly dusty MBA, and Rose had worked in wealth management for most of her career. But Rose had never previously tried to undercut him or acted with anything but icy professionalism.
Of course, he’d never had to call her while having a psychiatric episode before, so perhaps this was what he ought to expect from here on out.
Teagan sat down in the chair in the corner and bent until his elbows hit his knees, trying not to imagine things gettingworseat the office when he returned.
“It’s not that I think you wouldn’t be good at it. I don’t want you uprooting your life any more than you already have. I just want things to go back to normal when I get out of here,” he said.
Sloane snorted. “Don’t sound so eager to leave your comfy tent and your hot maintenance girl. Your normal life gave you panic attacks.”
“You know what I mean,” Teagan said, although he wasn’t sure he did.
“Yeah,” Sloane said, face still skeptical. She spun her chair and kicked the sole of his shoe with her own. “Wouldn’t you be glad to get me away from the LA party scene, anyway?”
“Not really. I’ve heard that it is also possible to purchase cocaine in New York.”
“Oh, well, fine. I guess I’ll follow career plan B. Model for a few years, marry rich, then become someone’s muse,” Sloane said in an airy tone.
Teagan stared at her in consternation, because she didn’t really sound like she was joking.
She snorted. “Fundraising it is, then. Okay, so whenweget back to New York, I won’t do coke anymore, and you’ll take it easy, all right? Deal?”
