Page 62 of Keeping Kaitlyn

Instead of saying it out loud, I lead her into the living room. Sitting down in one of its black leather club chairs, I look up at her with a sigh. “What are you doing here,Mother?” I ask a final time, my tone making it obvious that my patience is wearing thin. “I know you want something—so just tell me what it is.” The last time she dropped by to show me her motherly concern, it was to ask me to increase her monthly maintenance allowance because seven-hundred-fifty thousand dollars a month wasn’t nearly enough for her to live on.

“Okay.” Sitting down with an exasperated sigh, she lifts her oversized Birkin bag and sets it on the table between us. “Being here for the Halston-Day wedding, on the heels of your sister’s disastrously poor judgment of late?—”

“Delilah has always had poor judgment but if you’re talking about her decision to marry Gray Bright, I don’t think that one qualifies.” I’ll be the first to admit that when they first startedseeing each other, I wasn’t a fan but the fact that he literally took a bullet for my baby sister changed my mind.

“He’s a bouncer in a bar, Wentworth,” she says with a dismissive flip of her hand.

“No—I’ma bouncer in a bar, Mother.” Sitting back in my seat, I shake my head. “Gray is a bouncer in anightclub—there’s a difference.” Gray is more than that. He’s the chief security officer of his brother’s multi-billion-dollar company.

Instead of reminding her, I let her seethe.

“Please don’t remind me,” my mother says, her mouth flattening out as much as her lip fillers will allow. “It’s bad enough that you’ve decided to do this in your spare time—” She flips her hand at my tattooed arm. “Luckily, you’re a Hawthorne, whether you like it or not which means people are willing to overlook your…eccentricities.” Opening her bag, she reaches inside and pulls out a short stack of pictures. “Here,” she says, offering them to me. “Pick one.”

Confused and admittedly curious, I take the stack of photographs. The top one is a headshot of a generically pretty blonde. Flipping it over, I snort when I see that it’s printed with her stats like she’s an outfielder for the Mets.

Name: Cordilia Maitland-Hobbs

Age: 23

Height: 5’9

Weight: 115 pounds

Family’s net worth: 450,000,000

Flipping to the next one, there’s another blonde, this one almost creepily similar to the last. Shuffling through the stack, I note that they’re all of young women. All blonde and look like they could be related. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

“I already told you,” she says with another exasperated sigh. “Pick one.”

Tossing the stack of photos onto the table next to her bag, I look at her like she’s lost her mind. “Pick one forwhat?” This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation but she hasn’t ambushed me with her collection of debutante collector’s cards before.

Giving me another one of her put upon sighs, Astrid rolls her eyes. “Well, we’ll start with a date to the Halston-Day affair but eventually?—”

“If you saymarriage, I swear to god…” Sitting back in my seat, I take a rough swipe at my face. “No, Astrid. The answer isno.”

Unwilling to accept my answer, my mother shakes her head. “You’re nearly thirty years old, Wentworth,” she reminds me while she gathers up her stack of candidates. “It’s time to stop playing make believe and to start thinking about the future of this family.”

She doesn’t mean family.

She means the future of Hawthorne International.

Because when it comes to my mother, it always circles back to money. Nothing matters more. Nothing is more important. Not even the happiness of her own children.

“I’m already seeing someone,” I tell her, lying through my teeth in an effort to get rid of her. “As a matter of fact, I’m meeting her for dinner tonight?—”

Astrid looks at me like I just threatened her with a gun. “It’s not that dreadful Italian girl with all the tattoos and that ring in her lip, is it?”

“No—but Tess is Henley’s maid of honor so she’ll be at the wedding. Make sure you say hello.” Standing, I make it obvious our mother/son time is over. “Like I said—I have a date to get ready for.”

Ever the optimist, Astrid gathers her purse but leaves the stack of photographs behind. Standing, she shoulders her bag with a huff. “Well, do I at least know who she is?”

Thinking of Kait and knowing that she wouldn’t fair any better in my mother’s eyes than Tess, I shake my head. “I seriously doubt it.”

THIRTY-FIVE

KAITLYN

After what Isaid to him on the way to the cape house, I’m not at all surprised when Went tells me that he’s taking off, directly after the wedding rehearsal and that Conner’s parents agreed to drive me and Mook back to the city.

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