Brad gasped. “You two are having pre-marital sex?”
His poker face faded and all of us roared with laughter—Lizzy most of all. She clapped my brother on the back again and he grinned like he didn’t expect the joke to land so well.
He’s back to his old self,I thought with a smile.He’s gotten over our parents’ death, and he’s more fun and charming than ever.
Hunter didn’t laugh as much as everyone else. He was staring off, lost in thought. I could practically see the gears grinding in his head.
“You may not have thought that far ahead, but I’ve been toying with an idea,” he told me. “And it solves all of our problems.”
*
They say money can’t buy happiness. That may or may not be true. But moneycanget you pretty damn close.
Once we found a home remodeling expert, Hunter’s idea turned out to be perfect. We knocked down the wall between my bedroom and the guest bedroom, and expanded the bathroom. The result was one huge bedroom, a second master, that we could call our own.
We also expanded the garage, making it deeperandwider, so Hunter could fit all his cars in it. Then we turned Mom and Dad’s old room into a dedicated office where I could runYours Forever Gemstonesfrom. Eventually, I would need to rentrealoffice space, but for now this would do just fine.
All the renovations were expensive, but between Hunter’s YouTube channel and my flourishing gemstone business, money wasn’t as much of a concern as it used to be.
It was amazing the difference a few months could make.
When the renovations were finished, we stood in the new master bedroom and smiled at all the space we had. Then Hunter took me in his arms and lowered his lips to mine. My body surged upward at his touch, and the kiss deepened.
“We don’t have furniture,” I whispered.
“I don’t care,” he growled into my neck. “I can’t wait.”
Hunter and I fell to the carpet, a tangle of kisses and arms and legs. We made love there on the floor of our new bedroom, christening it asours.
Hunter held me in his arms long after we had finished, going soft inside of me while staring deeply into my eyes as if searching for something.
“What?” I asked. “You’re creeping me out.”
“You,” he said. “I can’t stop looking at you. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.”
“You’d better not.”
He kissed me again, tongue flicking against my lower lip. “I love you so much, Erica.”
I wrapped my legs tightly around his body. “I love you, Hunter Cade.”
He hardened inside me again, and we lost ourselves in the loving drive of our bodies once again.
I didn’t realize how nice it was to have an office until I actuallyhadan office. Before that, I had been using my laptop on the dining room table or the couch, wherever was the most quiet during the renovation construction noise. But now I had a desk all to myself. One of those fancy ones that goes up and turns into a standing desk at the press of a button. The desk also had two external monitors I could connect my laptop to, which allowed me to keep multiple spreadsheets and charts of sales data up simultaneously.
Having my office inthatroom, the one that had belonged to my parents, made me feel closer to them. It was like they were watching over me throughout the day. I knew it was probably just my imagination, but sometimes I thought I could feel my mom’s gaze on the back of my head, smiling proudly at what I had accomplished.
You haven’t seen anything yet, Mom,I thought.My company is just getting started.
That ended up being more true than I expected.Yours Forever Gemstonesgrew faster than I could keep up with, especially with fifty-one new jewelers offering my products in-store. Soon I was working ten hours a day handling all the minutiae, then twelve.
The solution ended up being right in front of my nose. The CBD-infused beauty products that Lizzy had showcased at the Small Business Expo stopped selling well when a hundred competitors sprung up around Columbus. She was looking for a way to make some extra money, so I brought her in to help me answer all the customer support emails I was getting.
Within a week, I hired her to be my Director of Customer Experience. She handled customers the way she handled Dad’s vintage Mustang: bluntly and with alarming precision. Soon she started helping me with other aspects of the company, such as expanding the production contract with our gemstone laboratory. She was a tornado of sales, negotiations, and fiery attitude.
“That’sbullshit,and you know it,” she shouted into her phone one afternoon. “We’ve already reserved twenty thousand gemstone production slots over the next five years. You can’t retroactively try to tack on a laboratory processing fee. Oh yeah? I don’t care if it’s eating into your margins. We’ve got ink on paper that says otherwise. We’re not passing those costs onto the customer.”
I smiled from my own desk while she paced the room. With her by my side, the company was in good hands.