Page 48 of Heated Takeover

“No. Not at all, other than Garrett,” she answers.

“So none then,” I say, and she laughs. It’s the first time I’ve seen her laugh since she got here, and honestly, it’s a bit of a relief. All of this feels a little wild, and yet, something about being around her and Jamie together puts a part of me at ease. I almost feel like I can just enjoy being here, like all the other people here.

Jamie is insistent on doing all the things: the bouncy houses, the obstacle course, and getting his face paint touched up since it got messed up in the bouncy house. Natalie goes along with all of it with ease, as if there’s no other place she’d rather be. As if this is what all her Saturdays look like, and she is a million percent okay with that. I always thought most single mothers probably wished their Saturdays looked a little different.

She doesn’t play the victim. She doesn’t seem overly exhausted. She just appreciates everything and is so chill that I find my own shoulders untensing a little. This surprises me because we are literally surrounded by a million kids and a million other people.

The day goes by surprisingly quickly. We bounce from one thing to the next, taking a break to grab a bite to eat at a restaurant called the Salty Shack. I’d never go to a place like this on my own, but Jamie was insisting on it.

“They have the best popcorn shrimp,” he says over and over as we go inside, getting a table on the patio by the water. And while I don’t care for fried mini-shrimp, I take his word for it and order the king crab boil to share with Natalie.

“We used to come here when I was a kid,” she says, and I’m a little surprised.

“Really?” I ask, taking another bite.

“Are you surprised?” she asks, smiling and chewing gingerly. There is something sassy in her eyes that is driving me wild, but of course I pretend that it’s not.

“No. It’s just not the fanciest–”

“My parents weren’t actually all that fancy,” she says. “I mean, yes, we had money. But they didn’t really like people knowing that. We lived a pretty normal life. Until my mom died.”

“That’s why I don’t have a grandma,” Jamie adds, dousing a shrimp in ketchup before popping it into his mouth with a smile.

“You were young,” I say, only because I remember it being mentioned at the dinner party at Reese and Garrett’s house. She hadn’t gone into any detail then, and I actually don’t expect her to now. But Natalie fishes a red potato out of the boil pot and cuts it in half on her plate; she keeps talking.

“I was,” she says. “It was hard. Pretty much ripped the family apart. My dad was very sad for a very long time, but he was still a good dad and a good CEO. My sister and I had different ways of coping. She was dramatic and then closed off and then tried to replace my mom by insisting she should be taking care of me.”

“And how did that go?” I ask.

Natalie covers her mouth with her hand to finish chewing. “A nightmare. It’s like she was doing it out of guilt, not because she worried about me. And then when I refused to be her mini-me, well, she kind of just labeled me a lost cause. She’s spent every day since reminding me how inferior she thinks I am to her.”

“Aunt Reese doesn’t like when you use the towels in the bathroom,” Jamie says, listening but not listening. “Even though there’s nothing else to dry your hands on. Then she gets mad if your hands are still wet when you leave the bathroom cuz her couches are white and hands leave oily spots…”

“My sister in a nutshell,” Natalie says, and we both laugh. And for whatever reason, I am actually enjoying sitting here at a three-star seafood shack eating buttery crab and sipping iced tea with Natalie and her son. Even though we are talking about her overbearing sister and houses that weren’t as perfect as our parents wanted to think.

“My mother is still alive,” I say, surprising myself. “But we don’t speak.”

Natalie’s expression softens. “I’m sorry.”

“Most of my father’s money had already been placed in a trust for me. After he died, I offered to help her. She refused, remarried, and decided I was easier to resent than he was. Eventually, she stopped calling.”

It is more than I usually tell anyone, but Natalie does not pry. She only reaches across the table and rests her hand over mine.

“So how is your dad?” I ask because, for some reason, it feels right to.

“Still bitter that he’s not the CEO anymore. But he does have more free time, which isn’t terrible. He’s golfing today. Something he would have never done before on a Saturday.”

“So I’m doing him a favor,” I state, and she narrows her eyes.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she says.

Afterwards, we walk around some more. When the sun starts to set, I realize that I’ve spent the entire day into the evening at a festival I never wanted to be at. And yet, I don’t regret it. I almost want to thank Tuck for dragging me out here. I won’t, of course, because that would mean admitting that he was right.

As the sunlight disappears and the stars come out, the marketplace lights up. The atmosphere makes me think of that night five years ago at the charity gala. I can’t help looking at her and remembering what I thought the first time I saw her.

At the time, I was avoiding people, avoiding networking any more than I had to because I was burnt out from doing it. And there she was, standing near the Ferris wheel with her sister. I admit, I recognized Reese first, but only because she’s that kind of person. She’s not even part of the industry, but her family is, so her face is everywhere.

Still, it was Natalie who got my attention. She was the only woman, the only person at the gala dressed appropriately. She wore an expression I could relate to immediately. She looked like she would have rather been anywhere but there.