Romeo: A Payne Brothers Romance Page 11

But I’d forgotten the first rule of the Barlow family. Pregame any organized family event with a bottle of wine before sitting down at the table. Maybe it would’ve helped my appetite. I wasn’t very hungry. Or in the mood to socialize.

  Made it a little awkward seeing as it was my farewell dinner.

  Was I making the right decision?

  “Lady.” Grandma refolded her napkin in her lap and cast a disapproving glance in my direction. “Your fork is for eating your food, not squeaking against your plate.”

  The woman couldn’t see much through her cataracts, but Grandma had the hearing of a bat. I sighed, dropping the fork and leaving a mountain of mashed potatoes unplowed. Without the tinny squeal of my fork against the china, dinner once again dissolved into silence.

  It didn’t bother Grandma. Conversation was not meant for civilized folk to use idly, she always said. Better to sit quietly and appreciate a fine dinner than to whine, cry, grouse, argue, or prove yourself ungrateful for your blessings. So she allowed the silence to fall and meticulously cut her roast beef into tiny bites. She ate it dry. Gravy, she claimed, was a luxury which made men and women soft.

  That didn’t stop Marquis from creating a soup out of his dinner. The mashed potatoes became an island within a flood of gravy, and he scooped mouthfuls of roast beef with a biscuit. He ate as if he was still on the high school football team. At least he still looked like it. But Grandma disapproved of such gluttony.

  So did Regent. She looked upon dinner with disgust and reluctantly swallowed her potatoes and the dairy products contained within. After an ill-fated attempt at veganism, mostly beaten out of her by Duchess and the barrage of pastries and sweets she made while working in the market’s bakery, she’d resigned herself to vegetarianism. But, over the years, this proved to be a mockery of Grandma’s home cooked dinners. It caused endless amounts of consternation which civilized and grateful people did not discuss while eating their meals. Grandma had other ways of punishing those who disappointed her and disrespected the good food set on the table. Regent might’ve been too old for the switch, but a tongue lashing was sometimes even worse.

  “Lady, what the hell’s gotten into you?” Duchess asked.

  Grandma frowned. “No blasphemy at this table. I’ve taught you better than that.”

  Duchess didn’t apologize, but she did rephrase the question. She sipped her lemonade with a classic poise I longed to possess. She was the eldest of my sisters, both beautiful and devilishly smart. According to Grandma, Duchess possessed an excess of confidence, which basically meant she was the only one who ever confronted Grandma and lived. This gave her a position of authority with the family, something Marquis and Duke disliked.

  “I bet it’s about a boy,” Duchess said.

  My fork clattered to the floor. Grandma tutted her disapproval.

  “What?” I nervously laughed. “What are you talking about?”

  Duchess never spoke unless she already knew the answer. That made her a difficult conversationalist and an even worse know-it-all.

  “You’re moping over a boy,” Duchess said. “You’re miserable. Moody. Sullen. That means you’ve met someone.”

  “You’re such a romantic.”

  “Never said it was a good thing.” Duchess offered to pass the biscuits, but she held the butter hostage for more information. “Is it someone from town?”

  My sister was as persistent as she was perceptive. Denying it would’ve only made her work harder. I deflected instead.

  “There’re no good men in Butterpond,” I said.

  Contessa smirked. “Plenty of bad boys though.”

  She would know. My sisters and I often wondered if Contessa was more beautiful or jaded. For as much as she liked the bad boys, I think it was only because she liked to be treated worse. Her heart hadn’t just been broken. It was obliterated. And nothing she did convinced us that she was okay.

  But even if the discussion had Contessa smiling again, the last thing I wanted to talk about in front of Grandma was a man. Especially a Payne.

  “Don’t tease her,” Regent said. “She’s gonna meet plenty of guys once she gets to Europe. She’s gonna travel halfway around the world to find someone who meets her standards.”

  Grandma didn’t approve of the conversation. “This is not appropriate talk for this table. Lady is well within her rights to travel. She’s broadening her horizons and experiencing the world. Something you could benefit from, Contessa.”

  Contessa snorted. “No thanks, Grandma. The kind of man I want doesn’t come from Paris.”

  Marquis snorted, earning a chuckle from his twin. “No. You find them in the gutter.”

  Grandma rarely tolerated Marquis’s questionable sense of humor. A stern glance silenced my brother.

  “At least you’re finally starting to date now,” Duchess said. “With that crazy itinerary you’ve planned, you didn’t schedule any time to sleep, let alone meet someone.”

  I sought refuge in my mashed potatoes, doing my best to prevent the fork from scratching the plate. “I’m not traveling so I can fall in love.”

  “You just want to fool around then?”

  I didn’t need to protest. Grandma did it for me.

  “This family has lost its moral compass,” Grandma said. “And its mind. If I didn’t know better, I would assume Lucifer himself was sitting at this table right here, right now. And I would tell him to take you all back to Hades with him…if he’d even have you.”

  Duke didn’t often say much at the table, but he agreed with Grandma. His biscuit lowered, and he rubbed a hand over his eyes.

  “If we could not talk about our baby sister hooking up with someone, I’d be a happy man.”

  Duchess knew how to needle him. “Duke, you’ve never been happy.”

  But to our surprise, he smiled. “Not true. I’m very happy today. Got some good news for the market.”

  And yet, everyone tensed. Duke had a bad habit of making his own plans, enacting them, and then dragging us through the wreckage. It was one of the reasons he had such a strained relationship with my sisters. And it was only by the grace of God, and Grandma, that I’d escaped his chosen path for me.

  At least, for the next year.

  Instead of returning to college to finish my accounting degree, I’d been permitted to go traveling, just like Grandma wanted. All the places she’d wanted to travel with Grandpa on their second honeymoon, before the cancer. It seemed like such a romantic, wonderful trip. And she was eager for me to have the opportunities she hadn’t a chance to experience herself. After all, a Barlow girl needed more in life than BOGO coupons and fuel perks.

  Regent cast a worried glance between the candlesticks. “What sort of shit are you stirring up now?”

  Grandma’s cane rattled against the floor. “With a mouth like that, you should be eating next to the toilet.”

  Regent huffed. “Sorry, Grandma.”

  “And you.” Grandma broke her own table rules and pointed a gnarled finger at Duke. “What have I told you about discussing business at the table? It’s common.”

  Duke occasionally flexed his muscles, especially now that Dad was in Colorado and he had assumed the seat at the head of the table. He gestured toward Grandma with a smooth smile she would’ve knocked off his face had her cane reached.

  “Nah, Grandma. This isn’t just business. It affects all of us.”

  Duchess slid her plate away with a sigh. “Oh, good. Then we’re all going to hate it, aren’t we?”

  Duke didn’t stop eating, shoveling a mouthful of potatoes into his mouth. “I’ve decided to buy the Payne farm.”

  I snorted my lemonade, and the sour liquid inhaled all the way to my brain. My family quieted save for my hacking coughs.

  Duchess said nothing, but that wasn’t a good thing. Silence was the wind up before her pitch. And when she gathered her thoughts, appropriate vocabulary, and surplus of attitude, it coalesced into a dizzying strike of pure spite.

  Fortunatel
y, Contessa was the opposite. She pushed away from the table and tossed her napkin down with just enough force that she might’ve convinced Grandma that it hadn’t been aimed for Duke’s head.

  “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” Contessa shrieked. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Her excitement summoned another rattle of Grandma’s cane. “There’s no yelling or blasphemy at this table.”

  Contessa pointed at Duke. “Well, we should have a rule about no one acting like a goddamned idiot. What are you talking about?”

  Duke played it cool. “We’re going to buy the Payne’s farm.”

  It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten much. It was all about to come up.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Marquis wasn’t as eloquent as Duke, nor was he as skilled at hiding his excitement. He practically bounced out of his chair.

  “Because we want some fresh vegetables,” he said.

  And Regent was about to shove the broccoli on her plate down his throat. “We get fresh vegetables on the truck. A truck I was forced to help unload this week.”

  Duke winked. “And think of how much money we’ll save once we can provide locally sourced vegetables available daily at our market.”

  Duchess knew better. “This isn’t about fresh produce. This is about the fifty pounds of lettuce, cucumbers, and carrots that rotted away on the shelves this week because you couldn’t convince our shoppers to cross the picket line protesting the ban you put on the Paynes.”

  Everybody tensed, but Duke merely nodded. “You know we’ve been having trouble with the store.”

  It was an understatement, but no one had dared mention the lackluster reopening to Duke and Marquis.

  Except Duchess.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have banned the Paynes from shopping there,” she said. “You’ve effectively lost ten paying customers, all of their children, and all of their friends who now refuse to shop at our store until the Paynes are allowed back inside.”

  “And this is how I’ll rectify it.”

  “By buying their farm?”

  Marquis shrugged. “If we transition the business into a locally sourced, friendly neighborhood farmers market, we can settle this dispute once and for all.”

  It wasn’t that easy. It was never that easy with the Paynes.

  “But you’re not settling anything,” I said. “You’re buying them out.”

  Duke never appreciated my input on the market, especially after I’d fought so hard to spend the year in Europe. Even worse, my money from the trust was tied up in the travels. I hadn’t contributed anything to the renovation.

  It was a slight my brother was unlikely to forget.

  “And how would you resolve this, Lady?” Duke asked.

  I couldn’t believe the words that came out of my mouth. “We can try…talking to them. They might be just as tired of fighting as we are.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “What would be accomplished by talking to those bastards?” Duke frowned. Grandma snorted, but she didn’t correct the language. “They’re not people we should associate with.”

  Grandma stood, peering at us behind her cataracts with a disapproving glance. “I can see my family doesn’t appreciate their home cooked meal or the company of their loved ones. I will return when we are no longer talking business or vengeance at my dinner table.”

  Great. Duke had a bad enough temper, but nothing rivaled Grandma’s righteous indignation. She was as virtuous as she was critical, and nobody in the family, Heaven, or Hell could live up to those standards. The wrath of Widow Barlow was a plague, as persistent as darkness, as irritating as gnats, and, while no one could prove it, when Grandma was particularly perturbed, some townsfolk did complain more about boils and blisters on their tender feet.

  She exited the dining room, fully intending her disapproval to end the discussion.

  It didn’t.

  I’d regret jumping into the fray, but I couldn’t let Duke’s hatred of the Paynes blind him to the truth.

  “You know they’re never going to sell the farm,” I said. “They’ll laugh you off the property.”

  Duke wasn’t concerned. “Then I won’t give them a choice.”

  My stomach pitted. “What are you planning?”

  “I will give them every reason to sell,” my brother said. “Julian Payne is no farmer. He’s no football player now either, but that doesn’t mean he’d miss an opportunity to take some money and run. He’s just started his family, and he’s going to be worried about providing for them on a farm that may or may not succeed. I won’t give them a great deal, but it will be more than enough incentive for them to sell and get the hell out of Butterpond.”

  He didn’t understand the Paynes at all.

  No wonder our families had fought for so long.

  I shrugged. “And what happens when he inevitably refuses?”

  I loved Marquis, but he had an ugly smile when he thought he was being clever. “Then we sue the family and take the farm.”

  Duchess silenced my sisters before they shouted loud enough to summon Grandma.

  “You’re going to sue the Paynes?” Duchess rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder how you manage to function with that fat head of yours.”

  Duke wasn’t deterred. “Why shouldn’t we sue? The boy was in their care when he set fire to our store.”

  Duchess snapped her fingers, retrieving the flask of vodka from Contessa. She chugged half of it before addressing Duke.

  “How will this solve our customer problem?” she asked. “Half of Butterpond is boycotting our store because you banned them from shopping. How are they gonna react when we take them to court?”

  “What would you have me do? We gotta protect our interests.”

  It was not the argument he should’ve wielded against Duchess. She exchanged glances with Regent and Contessa before sliding back from the table.

  “And what about our interests?” she asked. “You know we had some plans too.”

  Marquis groaned, hiding his face in his hands. “Don’t start bitching about your fucking bakery again.”

  Wrong answer.

  “You’ll have to forgive me for being a little irritable about the dream that you ruined.” Her words dripped venom. “Ever since Mom and Dad left the business to you, we have been supportive of your every decision. But I’ll be damned if I sit here and waste another breath on your ridiculous plans when you’ve done nothing to help us with ours.”

  Duke wouldn’t hear it. “You know why we had to use the money to renovate the market. You agreed to it.”

  “We agreed to use the insurance money. And we volunteered to give a little extra to help out.” Duchess scowled. The wounds were still fresh. “But you took everything. You drained our trusts so you could renovate the entire store. We have nothing for the bakery now. We’ve been set back months. Maybe even years. And now you want to buy a farm? Just where are you getting that money?”

  His silence revealed everything we feared.

  Regent sucked in a breath. “You expect us to pay for that farm.”

  “You can secure loans,” he said. “It’s for the family.”

  Contessa swore. “How can you be this selfish? This isn’t for the family. This is for your own revenge.”

  “You promised us, Duke.” Duchess slammed a hand on the table. It wasn’t often that she lost control. But her voice wavered, very nearly spitting words she would seriously regret. “We’ve done everything you’ve asked for this market. You promised that once we helped you, we could separate from the family business to start one of our own.”

  “You’ll have time to start the bakery soon.”

  “We should’ve had it now!”

  “For Christ’s sake—”

  Duchess interrupted him with a harsh profanity loud enough to elicit a rattling of Grandma’s cane from the den. “For years we’ve been dicking around with you and your immature war against the Paynes. What the hell will buying their
farm accomplish?”

  “It will rid Butterpond of the Paynes.”

  “And if you expect us to pay for your vengeance, we’ll be out of this town too…and out of this family.”

  Marquis groaned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  All three of my sisters shared a nod.

  “Maybe we don’t need the family money to start our own place,” Duchess said. “Maybe those loans you’re talking about would be better served for our own business.”

  Duke laughed. “You won’t make it ten minutes without Mom and Dad’s money. And you’re going to need my help and my profits to get your business started. Do you even know how expensive a bakery is?”

  “We’ll find out.” Duchess punctuated her statement with a middle finger. “Make your choice, Duke. If you fuck over the Paynes, you destroy your own family.”

  Duke didn’t hesitate. “I’m doing this for the family.”

  “No. You’re doing it for yourself. And you’re on your own.”

  My sisters stormed from the room. Duke and Marquis shrugged, digging back into their cold dinners like nothing went down. Like no words had been spat. Like no threats had been uttered.

  Like my entire world hadn’t come tumbling down.

  What had happened to Butterpond, to its people, to my own family? All hell was breaking loose, and it felt like I was the only one who could see it.

  No.

  Not the only one.

  I bolted out of my chair, ignoring Duke as he called for me to sit back down.

  “Lady, this doesn’t impact you.” He called for me as I gathered my purse and phone. “Nothing’s changed. You get to go to Europe and have your little vacation while the rest of us work our asses off. Thought that’s what you wanted.”

  Duke didn’t understand anything about anyone in this family. And he didn’t see the chaos he caused.

  I couldn’t leave the country while my family was on the verge of completely falling apart. Especially since the way to fix everyone’s problems was so abundantly clear.

  I had to find Quint.

  It was a monumental discourtesy to leave Grandma’s house without saying goodbye, but I didn’t have time for formalities. I also wasn’t foolish enough to ask Duchess if I could borrow her car to race to the Payne farm.