I remembered her assistant comment.
“You mean unlike you?” I prodded.
“This isn’t about me,” Tess said defensively.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I told her, taking her hand. “You’re smart and perceptive. You also have several people with a lot of money and power anxiously awaiting your big idea for salvaging the AstraDrone contract.”
She grimaced. “Don’t put too much stock in it.”
“I will,” I said simply. “I do value your insight and your work. And I have taken into consideration what you’ve said. I’ve already told my sisters that I will be hosting a How to be a CEO class on the weekends. They are going to start with finance.”
“For all your sisters?”
I thought about the toddlers and cringed. “The ones who can read and write.”
“You have to make your brothers participate too,” Tess said excitedly. She took out a notepad. “And we’ll organize it into modules. First one is finance, then we can have Walker give a unit on logistics. Mike can talk about branding and marketing. And Greg can talk about investing.”
I sucked in a breath. “I don’t know if Greg’s going to be on board.”
“Of course he will,” she said. “I’ll organize it. You need to set milestone goals. Maybe he and Belle can do a joint investment session.”
“Only if you clean the blood off the walls after.”
She smirked. “The course should be project-based learning.”
“Maybe an app?” I suggested.
Tess smiled at me—a warm, genuine smile that made my whole body tingle.
“I think the most shocking part of this whole thing is that you do know how to take directions!”
I gave her a small smile. “When the mood strikes me.”
“Guess I better try harder to get you in the mood in the future!”
Was she flirting with me?
31
Tess
Iyawned. It was too early in the morning. Enola had a report on nineteenth-century housing in New York City that her history teacher had just now said was due when she went back to school on Monday. We were going to grab pictures of buildings close to my neighborhood because, apparently, I lived in a tenement house.
“I wish I lived in the 1800s!” Annie said, skipping beside me. “You can wear a big pretty dress and ride on a beautiful ocean liner and have a steamer trunk and marry a rich guy with a big house with huge windows.”
“Clearly, you have good taste,” I told her. “And I know Beck gave you a business reading list, but I think it’s time we read a little Emily Brontë.”
“Can we eat brunch after this?” Annie asked as Enola took pictures of the buildings. We followed her into an alley to take pictures of the fire escapes that had been there for the last hundred years.
“Now that you live in Manhattan, officially, you’re going to have to get with the program. If you want to see the worst of humanity, you go to brunch on a Sunday.”
“Please?” Annie begged.
“Fine, but when we have to wait an hour for room-temperature eggs Benedict, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“We could ask Beck to come meet us.”
Ever since we’d had it out at the sushi restaurant, he’d been nicer to me. Well, maybe not so much nicer but more like less of an asshole. He wasn’t domesticated by any means. He still had that edge that pushed him over from attractive to sexy.
