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“She doesn’t talk much about it and I don’t feel right asking. I assume she’ll tell me if she wants to.”
“Once she trusts you,” his mother said. “I bet it helped being around Abby this weekend.”
“It did. They got along great and even went shopping together on Sunday.”
“I can tell by your voice you’re annoyed over that,” his mother said, laughing.
“It’s not like we get to spend that much time together. Maybe I wanted to be with her.”
“You have to learn to share,” his mother said. “I’d think you’d know how to with all your siblings.”
“I can share and never had a problem with it,” he said. “But when it comes to time with the woman I barely get to see, I’m selfish.”
“It sounds it. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
He should have figured his mother would bring that up. “I don’t know yet. She’s going home. She already bought her plane ticket. She’s not going to cancel that.”
“Will you go if you’re invited?” his mother asked. “We always get together on that holiday.”
He let out a sigh. “We do, but you had us all there this summer when we don’t normally do it so if I can skip out this year on Thanksgiving without too much guilt on my shoulders, that would be nice.”
There was silence on the other end. “Fine. If you’re invited, but I expect you home for Christmas and Lilian with you.”
He didn’t want to comment that he didn’t know what was going on that far in advance. If he had his way, he’d have Lilian in North Carolina with him, but he couldn’t speak for her. He didn’t know how much time she got off either.
Though taking the jet would cut that worry back. It wasn’t that far to fly, just a few hours. Less than a lot of people travel by car.
“I’ll keep you posted,” he said. “But I’ve got to get to work.”
“Bye, Braylon,” his mother said. “And thanks for calling me directly. I’d be upset if I heard it from someone else first.”
“I know you would have.”
He hung up and looked up to see Thomas standing there. He’d been looking out the window when he was talking to his mother.
“Now that you’re done with your personal call,” Thomas said. “We’ve got things we need to take care of. I know when West isn’t around, you tend to be more casual.”
He wanted to grind his teeth over that comment. “Considering I worked this weekend with West, I’d hardly say I was slacking off anywhere. Are we meeting in your office or the conference room?”
Thomas never came to his office to meet, only to give him shit.
“My office,” Thomas said and walked out. Thomas never liked it when Braylon talked back and said he’d been with West working all weekend. It just proved that Thomas wasn’t included in those meetings and, for the guy who was the VP of the legal division, it irked him to not be included.
Good, maybe his boss knew how it felt.
15
WALKED ALL OVER
At the end of the day, Lilian was gathering her things to leave. Braylon hadn’t been able to meet for lunch at one and since Stella barely left her alone for her lunch hour, if her boss was in the office, she wasn’t considerate enough to make sure Lilian got her lunch hour.
“I need another thing from you,” Stella said when she was getting ready to pack up her laptop.
“What’s that?” she asked, turning to look at her watch. It was deliberate on her part. One of Stella’s passive-aggressive moves to let it be known it was past her normal workday.
Lilian had been hired for eight to five. She was getting their morning coffee by seven one to two times a week and at night worked in the office until seven thirty every other day. Most times she worked through her lunch and the only times she actually got out at five was when Stella wasn’t around.
Even when Stella left at five, she always gave Lilian work to be done and not enough time to do it in the morning.
