“It made for an experience.” I grinned at Isadora before glancing at Ash – Mr. Lang. I didn’t want to think of him as Ash, even if Isadora had said that it was okay. A nickname was too sexy, too casual. Too intimate. It made him sound too...normal. I preferred for him to sound like the snooty asshole I knew him to be. Even if he was a sexy snooty asshole.

“Oh! I needed to get you something…” Isadora clapped a hand to her forehead. “I know you need to go soon, but you have to have this. It was the whole reason I wanted to see you today, really.”

Sipping from my soda, I watched Isadora dig around in her purse. When she still couldn’t find a pen, I turned over one of mine. I had to move if I was going to make it to my class today. I was just grateful I had finals next week, and then three weeks off before I had to talk to her about adjusting my schedule for my summer classes.

She scrawled something on a piece of paper and shoved it at me. “Here.”

I blinked at the number, trying to understand what I was reading. She shoved a phone across the table at me and beamed.

“It’s the newest version. Doug picked it up yesterday. You need a better phone,” she said.

She couldn't be serious.

“You can just use this one for work, if you want.” Isadora leaned forward and touched my hand. “But if you want it for personal use, you can use it for that too. It’s just…” She shrugged. “I saw you grumbling at your other one yesterday and...and, well, I’ll make you work a lot and a better phone will help.”

I was still staring at it. Everything that wasn’t vital fell to the wayside while I was paying for school. A new phone wasn’t vital. As long as my old one worked, then I’d stick with it, even if the battery sucked, the browser was outdated, and few apps worked on it anymore...

“And it has unlimited data so you can even use it for school stuff while you're waiting on stuff for me.”

I jerked my head up. “What?”

Isadora bit her lip and looked away, her pale skin flushing pink.

“What did you say about school?” I demanded.

“Ah…” She shrugged and looked sheepish. “I kind of know you're finishing up your Ph.D in psychology.”

“How do you know that?” I managed to keep the question calm. I hadn’t mentioned it on my application and I'd only told Robson Findley that I was finishing up school. I'd never mentioned which degree I was pursuing.

“My…” Isadora hesitated, and then finally heaved out a sigh. “Ash did a background check on you. Like a work-for-the-president kind of check. He does it on everybody who works for us. Especially anybody coming in close contact with me. I’m sorry, Toni.”

The look in her eyes was so forlorn, I had to force myself to smile. I didn’t want her feeling bad. It seemed like she'd had to deal with the repercussions of her brother's behavior quite a bit.

As for her brother...I absolutely wanted him to feel bad. Guilty for putting his sister in this position. And guilty for sticking his nose where it didn't belong.

Shifting my attention toward him, I gave him my best glare, the kind that had always let my brothers know they'd crossed the line.

He simply cocked his eyebrow and met my gaze head on.

Asshole.

***

There was nothing like family dinners with my folks.

Exhausted after a week of running from home to school, and then all the way uptown to work with Isadora, I practically collapsed into my customary seat, ready to eat until I popped and then fall asleep. I just kept telling myself that I had to get through finals and then I could rest before the insanity started up again.

“How’s the new job going?” My mother stood at the stove, her face pink from the heat, her eyes glowing and bright.

Mom was fifty-eight years old, but she looked like she was in her early forties. People were always surprised to hear her actual age. She was beautiful, her hair cut to chin length and her eyes just as blue as mine. She'd been eighteen when she'd married my father, and he still looked at her the same way. I'd often wondered if that was the reason I'd never found someone I could settled down with. I wanted what they had.

“It’s…” I opened the refrigerator, rummaging through for the condiments I knew we'd need as I searched for the right word. “Interesting. We’ll go with interesting for now.”

“Working for somebody rich, and all you can say is interesting?” Vic asked as he came striding into the room. “Heard you were working for the Langs. Damn, Toni. That’s some serious money there.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and none of it's mine.”

“Boo-hoo.”

Franky, my middle brother at thirty-one, flung himself down into the chair next to Vic’s while his wife came in and immediately went to my mom for a hug. Yvette and Franky had been married for seven years and had three kids. I could hear them all out in the living room, chattering away to my dad. The table squeaked as Franky settled his elbows on the surface and leaned forward, drawing my eyes back to his light brown ones. Out of all of us kids, he looked the most like dad, even with the slight auburn tint to his hair.

“I heard where the house was. Working at some swank joint on Fifth Avenue for a rich, pampered little princess. What’s her husband do? Sit around and sip martinis all day?” He grinned at me.

“No.” Irritated for reasons I didn’t understand, I set the butter dish down with more force than necessary. “She’s not married. She’s this twenty year-old, cute little darling.” I looked over at Mom then, my heart aching with the realization that Isadora didn't have this. “She lost both of her parents when she was seven. Her older brother raised her.”

I remembered, then, how she told me that everyone had assumed she'd be sent away to England to live with some distant cousins of her mother. Strangers she'd never met. How Ash had been only nineteen and away at school getting his MBA when their parents died, but he'd come back and transferred to NYU so he could have custody of her and she wouldn't have to leave their home. Ash had gone from being a carefree teenager enjoying the college life and its freedom, to being a single dad to a grief-stricken little girl.

And he'd never complained.

Dammit.

He wasn’t Mr. Lang in my head any longer.

All because he’d pushed to take care of his little sister.

Family mattered.

Unaware of my distraction, my mother sighed at the stove, shaking her head. “How awful. Those poor kids.”

“I don’t think poor is the right word, Mom,” Vic said as he got a beer from the fridge and went back to his chair.

My dad passed behind Vic at the worst possible moment for my brother. The crack to the back of my brother's head was hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to actually hurt.

“There’s more to life than money, Vic,” Dad said, shaking his head.

At sixty, my father was still as strong and broad as he’d been in his twenties, although his brown hair had long since gone to gray. He claimed that we were responsible for scaring the life out of it. We probably were. Vic more than any of us.

I smiled at my dad and he winked at me before moving up behind my mom and grabbing her around the waist, planting a loud kiss on her neck.

She laughed and leaned into him for a minute before elbowing him back gently. “Come on, Thomas. If you keep that up, it'll be midnight before we eat.”

“Good things come to those who wait, my beautiful Margie.” He nuzzled her for a moment longer, and then moved away, sneaking a scoop of the potatoes she was mashing. He fired a look at me, his brows arching. “So, the Langs. Deacon told me. They okay with you leaving in six months?”

I looked down at the table, tracing my fingers over the wood grain. “I didn’t exactly tell them.”