Tilly still beamed for the rest of the party to see, but her tone let me know her teeth were most definitely clenched behind that bright smile.
Or maybe I was projecting since I was smiling and clenching my own teeth as I answered, “Maybe this is a conversation you should be having with Garrett. He could also find the time to meet with a wedding planner.”
Tllly visibly startled as if the idea of her precious youngest son planning his own wedding was on par with a member of the aristocracy being asked to take out the trash.
And that was it for keeping up appearances. Her smile disappeared, and her eyes narrowed on me like a blonde honey badger.
But before she could reply, Gerald said, “Let’s not make a scene, dears.”
The Easton CEO turned to me with a conciliatory look. “My wife is simply excited to get the ball rolling on this wedding before our big acquisition.”
“What big acquisition?” I asked, grateful but confused about the subject change.
Gerald visibly startled at my question. “Easton Whiskey has been in talks to acquire Glendaver Bourbon since Garrett proposed. Did your father not tell you?”
I shook my head—not only because my father hadn’t told me, but also because I could hardly believe it.
Glendaver was one of the few privately held liquor companies left in America, and my father tended to look down his nose at companies that had either been gobbled up by liquor conglomerates like Jack Daniels or gone public, like Easton. Plus, he abhorred their product.
“If you ever think I’m letting that Virginia whiskey past my lips, then you’ve been out there in New York too long,” he’d said after I offered to bring him home a bottle when I dated Garrett the first time around.
But now Dad was discussing selling Glendaver to Easton? I mean, I know our family-owned company had taken a hit during the last recession. People had turned to cheaper options like Bulleit. Also, unlike Bulleit, the Glendaver marketing department, which was pretty much made up of Dad’s University of Kentucky B-school buddies, had failed to grasp the importance of social media and other alternative modes of advertising.
So though bourbon had grown in popularity since I left home, Glendaver had become that slightly too expensive bottle in grocery stores that people might gift but tended to skip over when it came time to pick a bottle to imbibe at home.
Dad had talked about retiring next year and selling the company. But I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d choose Easton Whiskey as a buyer in a million years.
Why hadn’t he told me?
Even more upsetting, why hadn’t Garrett told me?
“Excuse me,” I mumbled. “I have to…go change my usual drink order with Garrett.”
I walked away before Tilly could ask why I didn’t just text him.
Suddenly, I was tired of being accommodating. It was my birthday, and all I’d gotten from my boyfriend was a whole bunch of confusion and unanswered questions.
I went looking for him at the wet bar right off the formal dining room. But he wasn’t there.
And I also couldn’t find him anywhere among all the guests milling around the first floor—a few of whom asked if I was one of the Chrysanthemum cast members who’d apparently performed a song from the show before my arrival. I almost couldn’t blame them for the assumption. I was one of the very few dark-skinned people in attendance who wasn’t in the cast. Yet another reason I’d like to be ringing in my thirty-sixth birthday pretty much anywhere but here tonight.
Maybe Garrett was upstairs. Whenever we visited for dinner, Gerald Easton made sure to take us up to his study to share a finger of the 100-year-old Glendaver I’d gifted him the first time Garrett and I dated.
“When Garrett told me you’d parted, I said to him, ‘Well, I’m keeping the bottle!’” he’d joked the first time we came over for dinner after getting back together—and pretty much every dinner afterward. So the bottle was nearly empty now.
Garrett preferred top-shelf alcohol, so it stood to reason he’d come up here to enjoy the good stuff.
I opened the door to the study to check, and as it turned out, I was both right and wrong.
My whole body went cold with shock and I dropped my clutch onto the study’s plush rug.
Yes, Garrett was in the study. But the only thing that was getting swallowed was his dick—which was in Leighton’s mouth.
He half sat on the edge of his father’s desk, his eyes closed and his mouth gaping open as my sophisticated stepsister bobbed her head frantically, making gagging sounds as if Garrett’s four inches was actually the six he’d claimed.
“Oh, babe, you always do that so well,” he said, fluttering his eyes open to look down at her. “You’re so much better at it than—Olivia!” He yelled out when he saw me standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”