And then her phone rang and ruined everything.
“Fuck.” The word was short but heartfelt, and Erik’s soft expression shifted to concern.
“What’s up?”
She scrambled to her feet, phone clutched to her chest. “Fuck!”
“Jos? You okay?” The question came from Finn, who’d emerged from her bedroom with a sleepy Tom in tow.
She waved her phone at Finn. “It’s Pam.”
Finn winced as she gathered her long dark hair into a tail at the nape of her neck. “I should’ve recognized that ‘my mom’s in town’ panic.” She moved to the kitchen and the coffeepot while Tom slumped into a kitchen chair.
Josie’s phone buzzed again, and her stomach dropped. “Oh God, she’s summoned me. I’ve got ninety minutes to get cleaned up and present myself at Monteverde for brunch.” She paced a circle around the living room, her brain clicking through possible responses.
She should tell Pam to go to hell. That it was a Saturday and she already had plans. That she wasn’t a puppet on a maternal string.
But she wouldn’t. Her mother snapped her fingers and Josie jumped. That’s how it worked.
Erik closed her laptop and set it on the coffee table, his steady eyes tracking her movements. “Do you want me to—?” he started to ask at the same time she turned to him and said, “Would you mind if I—?”
She laughed weakly. “Would you mind if I cut this short? Maybe we can catch up after, either here or at the bakery?” Dammit, she hadn’t gotten a fraction of the time she’d been wanting with him.
“Sure,” he said. “Text me.”
Tom looked up from where he’d propped his head on his hand at the table. “In the meantime, feel free to keep your kitchen skills sharp by making us pancakes.”
Josie paused on her way out of the room. “Don’t you dare let those jackals take advantage of your good nature,” she ordered Erik before diving into the bathroom and resigning herself to a long session with her hair straightener.
After she’d wrestled her naturally bouncy curls into submission, sleek and straight the way her mother preferred it, she rummaged through her closet for her most sedate baby-pink sheath dress and pair of nude sling-backs. Nothing said “relaxed Saturday with Mom” like cosplaying Joan fromMad Men.
She emerged from her room as she was securing a pair of pearl studs in her ears, and surprise surprise, there was Erik at the stove with a spatula in his hand.
“Shame on you two!” she chided Finn and Tom, who both grinned back at her, unrepentant.
“I volunteered,” Erik said as he flipped a pancake.
She nevertheless hit the freeloaders with a glare. “You did nothing to deserve this generosity.”
“Which makes us all the more grateful for it,” Tom said after a slurp of coffee.
Josie just shook her head and grabbed her purse, pausing awkwardly at the door. Were she and Erik at the goodbye-kiss stage? And was it weird to leave her business partner/hookup alone with her friends? Another glance at her phone chased every other thought out of her head as her anxiety soared.
“Gotta run. Finn and Tom, if I come home and find out that you made this man bake you anything else, you’re both officially cut off.”
She had her hand on the doorknob when Erik surprised her by abandoning his pancakes to give her arm a quick squeeze just above the elbow.
“Don’t let her push your buttons, okay?”
His brow creased in concern, and the unexpected emotions that had overwhelmed her on the couch came flooding back. God, she just wanted to stay here with him.
“I’ll try. But you have no idea what she’s capable of.” She pushed up on her toes to give him a quick kiss for luck and left to meet her fate.
* * *
Successful women never slouched.
Pamela Ryan hadn’t taught her only daughter a damn thing about unconditional love or placing value on her own self-worth, but she had ensured that Josie could make it through a hellish meal without her spine once touching the back of the chair. Ordinarily Josie lived for seeing and being seen at a posh lunch spot in the Loop, but the ice queen seated across from her in austere black turned every bite into sawdust and every interaction into a verbal land mine.
