Page 6

“Obviously,” Joy said, stopping short of rolling her eyes. “I meant personally. He’ll have my respect as the mall's owner, but that’s as far as it will go. Not that he deserves that respect, either. He owns the place by default, but it’s been our hard work that has made it what it is today.”

“That’s true,” Marci agreed, nodding.

Marci had been Lorelei’s assistant for years, and when Lorelei died, Joy had brought her on as assistant general manager. Now, Marci was the glue that held everything together for Joy when it came to running this place. It wasn’t a one-woman job. It wasn’t even a two-woman job. They might hold the top seats, but every department manager helped head off problems before they got out of control, easing what Joy and Marci had to deal with. Anyone who thought running a place like this was easy could happily take the reins for a day. They’d find out the truth. An idea dawned.

“You know what? I think it’s time for the bossman to have a chance to run the place.”

“What now?” Marci asked, confused. “You are the boss.”

“No, I’m talking about the big boss. The head cheese. The commander in chief. The king himself.”

“Kian?” Marci asked, and Joy nodded. “I don’t believe for even a second that you’d turn over the day-to-day management of the mall to him.”

“For a day? Absolutely. How else will he come to understand the rhythm of the place? If he thinks he’s going to waltz in here, sit down, read some paperwork, and waltz back out with all the secrets to building a better outlet mall, he’s wrong. I have to tell him, but no law says I can’t make him earn it.”

Marci’s even smile slipped into place. “Okay, girl,” she said, her fake sassy Bronx accent in place. “I can get behind this. What’s the plan?”

“Simple,” Joy said, setting her cocoa on the table. “I try to be nice to King Kian Van Adler.”

“Why do you call him the king?” Marci asked, confusion in her voice as she tilted her head. “I noticed it started after Lorelei died.”

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know,” Joy said. Marci hadn’t gone to school with them. “Kian’s name literally means the king. He made that clear in elementary school. He’d say, ‘My name is Kian; it rhymes with Ian, and it means the king.’ He was pompous even as a kindergartner.” Joy’s eye roll got an extra lift as she pulled out her phone and typed in an address. She held the phone out to Marci and flashed a snarky smile. “Operation Bye Bye Bossman begins in 21 minutes.”

Marci rubbed her hands together as Joy settled her legs back into her AFOs and zipped her shoes. God bless whoever had created shoes with zippers. They made life so much easier. She owned one of every design the company made, including their winter boots.

The address on her phone caught her eye. 1487 Wintercrest Summit Drive. She’d spent so many hours at that house over the years, but she hadn’t been back in six months. That changed today. She’d go to The King and give him a chance to prove he deserved the title. When he failed, as he would, she’d claim the throne of Snowcap Ridge Outlet Mall, a title she’d earned through hard work and determination. A title Kian Van Adler could take but never earn.

5

#OperationwinJoyover

Kian walked through his mother’s office, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves still crammed with her favorite things: books, pictures, and memories. He trailed his finger along the spines of the classics, like Little Women and Moby-Dick. Then came her childhood favorites, like The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew. She had shelves and shelves of Nancy, side by side with the Hardy Boys. He almost wondered if she had them all. As he neared her desk, he found all her books on business and building an empire, one brick at a time. Those were the books she kept close at hand as she worked.

What surprised him most when he sat in her well-worn executive chair was how many photos adorned her workspace. Lifting a frame from the mahogany desk, he smiled as he traced his finger along his mother’s cheek. It was a rare photo of them standing at the top of a ski slope, both laughing as she snapped a selfie. He remembered that trip. It was Christmas break of his junior year. He was so wrapped up in worrying about which college to attend that his mother insisted they get away and do nothing but drink hot cocoa and ski for the holidays. That's exactly what they did. It was the only time in his childhood that he’d had his mother’s attention for an entire week. That was probably why he could remember every second.

Lowering the frame to the desk again, he remembered how much he had learned about her during that week in Vail. He also remembered how angry he had been when she refused to tell him who his father was, even refusing to give him a reason. He’d stewed over it for a night and concluded that he was less than a year away from being old enough to hire someone to look into it for him. If he really wanted to know who his father was, there were ways. So he’d let it go, and the next morning he apologized for upsetting her. She accepted his apology, assuring him that it was better for him not to know. He was a Van Adler, and that was the only surname that mattered. Maybe to her, but not to him. He’d nodded along, knowing he could do his own thing one day. Once he did, his first thought was that he wished he had listened to his mother.

Another photo caught his eye, and he lifted it, surprised to see Joy’s beaming face. She wore a graduation cap and gown and held a diploma. The writing was too small to read, but with his mother standing beside her, also beaming, Kian knew the photo hadn’t been taken at their high school graduation. The gown was the wrong color.

Setting it back down, he turned to his left and found several more framed photos of him at both his high school and college graduations. His mother had always been his biggest cheerleader. She pushed him because she wanted him to do great things. Lorelei often reminded him that she had laid the foundation for his new life, but it was up to him to make something of it.

“Have I made something of it, Mom?” he asked the empty space. It didn’t feel empty, though. In his heart, the room was packed with her memories. All the times he’d come home from school to find her here on a conference call or working through monthly paperwork. She’d clear a space on the desk for him to sit and do his homework with her until the cook called them to dinner. Those were the moments he remembered most about his mother. The times she’d included him in her world. The rest of the time, he was cared for by a nanny who was usually nice but not the person he wanted to see at the end of the day. He wanted to see his mother, but she missed more bedtimes than she made. He couldn’t whine too loudly about it, though, considering he was always safe and fed. Even if it wasn’t by the woman he’d longed to be with more than anything.

As Kian got older, the nannies disappeared, and his mother began to trust him to be home alone with the house staff when she went off to do business. There was no question the house staff would report back to her if he tried anything out of bounds. He was smart enough, even as a teen, to know that if he screwed up the privilege of independence, she’d hire a nanny so fast his head would spin. That nanny would have a list of rules and tasks to keep him busy from morning to night. Not to mention how horrifying it would be if one of his friends discovered he still had a nanny.

Kian had learned early on how to get around some of the house rules. He’d write his ball practices on the calendar for the staff, making sure to include a few that weren’t practices at all, but times he wanted to hang out with his friends. Whether the staff knew or not, he couldn’t say, but they never outed him to his mother, and that was all he cared about.

Standing, he walked to the back of the room to gaze out the window. There, on a credenza, were more photos. One showed him as a baby with cereal all over his face. Some were from his baseball banquets, and others from their outings together.

What surprised him most were the framed photos on the credenza's second shelf. They were all of Joy Brady, including her high school graduation picture. Most were images his mother had snapped as Joy chatted with shoppers and storekeepers at the mall. Some showed them laughing over lunch or seated together at important business events. Kneeling, he moved each picture forward for a closer look, surprised by the love in his mother’s eyes for Joy. Well, should he be surprised? Probably not. They’d become incredibly close once he went off to college. One day, if he ever got the chance to ask Joy something without her answering with sarcasm-laced lies, he’d ask her how they had become such good friends.

“Fat chance of that ever happening, buddy,” he muttered. “You deserve every one of those sarcastic lies, and more.”

Standing, he shook off the melancholy. Since he couldn’t work with Joy today, he decided to go through each room in the expansive home to decide what to pack for storage and what to sell or keep with the house. Did he want to sell the Van Adler Estate? No, but he also couldn’t see the point of hanging onto it when he was the only Van Adler left and he lived in a different state. He employed people to take care of it, but he wasn’t sure it was worth the expense.

Laughing, he stood and shook his head. As if he had to worry about expenses. Van Adler Holdings had more money than he or his heirs could ever spend. Barring a gambling addiction, that is. But his mother had left him everything, and after the will was read, he’d been overwhelmed, so it was easier to keep paying the house staff for the estate than to make decisions while grief-stricken.

Mother left you almost everything, he reminded himself, grimacing.