“How’s your ass?” she teases me. Now she’s the one trying to change the subject. I let her lighten the mood.
“If I don’t stop eating the products around here it’s not going to be good.”
She laughs. “I meant from the chair.” She shakes her head at me. “That sign was terrible.”
She says was like I’m not going to use it. She’s in for a shock because she might be playing nice with our soon-to-be new neighbors but I’m not.
2
Jax
“Get your feet off my desk.” My sister Andrea pushes them off as she walks by me in one of her manly power suits. She is only older than me by two minutes but she will never let me live that down. We might be twins but we don’t look much alike. Our matching blue eyes is as far as our similarities go. She has a mass of red hair where mine is as black as the coffee I crafted into an empire.
I let my feet fall, having only put them up there to annoy her to begin with. I’ve been sitting in her office for over twenty minutes. “Don’t you have an empire to run?” She sits down behind her giant glass desk. Everything is perfectly in its place. Her assistant Marco appears a moment later with her coffee. He sets one down for me too. I give him a nod of thanks as he darts back out of the room. I’m sure he has a pile of crap to do. Andrea is always going a mile a minute. I used to be that way.
“It runs itself,” I say absently with a shrug. I have an impeccable team. I was like my sister when I first started my business. It was all work all the time. I’ve built a good team around myself and now it really does take care of itself. I merely sign off on things these days and check in. I look back down at the tablet in my hand, studying the reports that are on display.
“Your stocks?” she says, picking up her coffee and taking a drink.
“Boring.” I started playing with the stock market a few years ago. It too at one time had been fun—or at least entertaining. Now it doesn’t hold the same appeal it once had. Nothing does. Same shit, different day. I close all the screens, dropping the tablet down onto the chair next to me before reaching for my coffee and taking a drink. I can’t help but to push the picture frame that I know is of the family over a few inches with my fingers. Andrea gives me a glare before moving it back to its place. I hide my smile behind my coffee.
“You should start a new company. There are so many options. I mean, you own the biggest coffee shop franchise in the world. How about—” I hold my hand up, stopping her.
“No thanks,” I cut her off. I am bored but not that bored. When I started out with Brewed Awakening it consumed every second of my life. Now since it’s off and running I don’t want to go down the same rabbit hole. I don’t have to. I am more than well off at this point. My money isn’t only from what I’ve made on my own but the Roberts family is a name all on its own. My father and mother have one of the biggest grocery manufacturing companies. You can’t go into a store without seeing our name on something. It was handed down from their parents and so on. I ventured out on my own after college and made my own way.
I got into the coffee world while my sister decided to get into the family business. She helped my father run the Roberts family empire. She carved a path for herself and has been trying to branch out even more with Roberts. She dabbles in things such as cosmetics. People joke that we are trying to have our hands in everything. Really we are just a driven bunch. It is in our blood but lately I haven’t been feeling that pull for anything. There is no chase or thrill anymore. I even learned last week that Brewed Awakening has opened its ten thousandth store and I merely shrug at that too.
“So you’re going to lie around being lazy with Bear.” Her eyes dart to Bear, who is lying at my feet. He lifts his head to look at her when she says his name. I know they are glaring at each other. They have a weird love-hate relationship. She watches Bear if I need to travel and he can’t go with me for some odd reason. When it’s the two of them they are all happy-go-lucky. Add in anything more and they are like frenemies. She complains about him shedding hair while he pretends she doesn’t exist. Bear probably outweighs her. She might act annoyed with him but when she watches him she’s like a mother hen. Pretty sure she takes him to dog spas and so on. “When was his last check-up?” She starts clicking away on her computer. I know she’s checking her calendar to see when she last took Bear to the veterinarian.