“Of course they’re happy baking! Who doesn’t want to bake?” Tess railed. “I love baking. That’s literally all I’d do if I could. And it’s great that they’re passionate about it, so you need to use that as a way to teach them real skills.”
“I’m busy,” I said.
“Make time,” she countered. “Your sisters need you—not your money. They need you.”
“I just want them to be happy.” I swallowed.
“They’re not going to be happy if they don’t have the skills to build their own lives,” Tess said. “They need to be able to build their own empires. They were bored and constrained at school. You can help them reach their full potential.”
“They’re just little girls.”
“I just don’t see why you don’t care about them,” she said, frustrated.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said, slamming my fist on the desk. “I care about them. They’re my sisters. I know what’s best for them. Not you. You’re not their mom. I don’t know why you’re giving me a hard time. Nothing I ever do with them is good enough for you.”
“Excuse me for having high standards,” she said sharply, “and for not wanting Annie and Enola to end up in some dead-end assistant job.”
I paused. “What’s wrong with being an assistant?”
“Never mind,” Tess said, mouth a thin line.
“I thought you liked being my assistant.”
“I said never mind.” She jumped up out of her chair. “I have to go. I have work to catch up on.”
Tess didn’t like being my assistant? Did she not like me? I thought we had, well,something.
You knew that was a bad idea to begin with, I reminded myself as I scrolled through emails, not really reading any of them.
Tess is literally just doing her job. She wasn’t being nice to you because she liked you. She was being nice to you because you pay her.
Tess must have mentionedsomething in the car to the girls because the entire ride back to the condo, they bugged me about baking.
“Why can’t we bake all day?” Annie begged. “I love baking.”
“You need some additional skills,” Tess told them.
“No, we don’t,” Annie said, dramatically flopping back in her seat.
A headache set behind my eyes. Normally, I used car rides home to de-stress from the day. Now they just amped up the pressure.
“Are you going to teach us about finance?” Enola asked me.
I was annoyed that Tess had gone behind my back to talk to my sisters.
“I’ll see.”
“You don’t think we can do it?”
“Is that what Tess said?” I asked her sharply.
Enola refused to answer and glowered at me.
What the hell is Tess’s problem?
All three of them were angry at me when the car pulled up in front of the tower.
I wanted to escape and go for a swim or a run, especially when we walked into the tower lobby and were confronted with ear-piercing shrieking.
