The Boyfriend (The Boss 7)

Mom shook her head fondly. “I remember when you were that age. You were a handful.”

“Julia, can you give us a minute?” I asked the housekeeper, who tossed her rag down as though I’d just ordered her away from helping bleeding accident victims on the site of a grisly crash. She left the kitchen door swinging vigorously in her wake.

Mom sighed. “Okay. Neil is pissed off at me.”

“No. We’re both pissed off at you.” I sat on one of the stools across the island from her. “We’ve already talked about this like six hundred times.”

“You’re my kid. It’s your birthday. I wanted to surprise you,” she said with a shrug, as though I were making way too big a deal about it.

“I’m not a kid, though. I’m a grown woman with a husband, and you might have been the one who got surprised. Need I remind you about the great Denim & Co. tragedy?” One of my mother’s QVC orders had accidentally been left at the main house. I’d walked it down to the guesthouse and let myself in, only to catch my mother mid-coitus with her now-fiancé. “And in my defense, I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend. You’re fully aware that you could be walking into your worst nightmare.”

“I told you, I listened at the door—”

“Not better! Actually, way, way creepier!” I pinched the bridge of my nose and squinted my eyes shut. Wow, that really helps. No wonder Neil is doing that all the time. “Look, it’s not just that. It’s the fact that you come in here without knocking—”

“You gave me a key!” she protested.

“Yes. To use when we’re not home. When we’re here, please, just give us our privacy, okay?” As I finished the sentence, Neil came into the kitchen, his hair wet, wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants to deliberately annoy my mother, who hated them.

Mom shook her head. “Back home, we always left our doors unlocked and came and went as we pleased. Have you ever once rung the doorbell at your grandma’s house?”

“We don’t live in Calumet, Rebecca, and some of us grew up far differently than you did,” Neil said tersely. “I appreciate that you wanted to surprise Sophie for her birthday, but privacy is essential to me and, frankly, being woken by my mother-in-law while I’m stark naked in bed isn’t something I should be expected to be comfortable with.”

She sighed like we were asking her to make the biggest sacrifice ever. “Fine. Do you want me to go?”

“No, I just don’t want you to see my genitals!” Neil snapped back.

Mom pushed the lid back on the ice cream container. “Then don’t wear sweatpants everywhere!”

“Oh my god, both of you, just stop!” I threw my hands up in the air. “This is my fucking birthday! And it’s starting out like this? With both of you screaming at each other about genitals?”

The house phone rang, and I went angrily to the handset on the wall. “Hello?”

“...is this a bad time?” El-Mudad’s voice instantly melted away my tension, replacing it with the butterflies that never stopped fluttering when he was with me, even over the phone.

“Not at all.” My gaze flicked to Neil. I mouthed, “Be nice,” gave my mother a warning look, and left the kitchen for somewhere more private.

If such a place existed.

“Do you know how much I treasure this day, my love?” El-Mudad asked.

I smiled to myself. “Thursday?”

He laughed softly. I could imagine his face, his fond smile, the endless depths of his warm brown eyes. My heart ached, reaching out to him over the thousands of miles between us. “Your birthday. The day you were born to be with me.”

“You’re going to make me cry.” I blinked back my tears. “Are you still in Paris?”

“With the girls, yes. We’ve been shopping. Enthusiastically.” He chuckled again. “But we will still be together…well, I suppose it will be tonight, for you, won’t it?”

“And almost morning for you,” I said, worrying my bottom lip with my teeth. “Are you sure you won’t be too tired?”

“It’s the only way I’m guaranteed time alone,” he said. “Time when no one will be banging on my locked door.”

I snorted. “Yeah, we’ve got some of that going around here, too.”

“Rebecca?” he asked. I knew Neil had complained to him more than once.

“They’ll be moving after the wedding.” I took a deep breath. “And we were thinking maybe we could discuss our...arrangement more at that time?”

“Of course. And I thought I might bring the girls along. To Christmas. If that was all right with you?”

“Oh, um.” How did I respond to that? We’d planned to spend Christmas together at Langhurst Court the year before, but plans had fallen through when Olivia and Neil had both come down with a truly wretched case of the flu. “I’m sure Neil won’t mind. My family will be there, as well. Obviously, we’ll have to figure out some of the details—”