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Dinner that night was an interesting affair. Unbeknownst to them beforehand, Aunt Cassandra had decided to stop by and visit her favorite – and not so favorite – nieces. The reality was she had some sources informing her that Derek Worth had been invited to dinner and she did not want to miss this assembly around the dining room table for anything in the world.
Once again Anne had been tasked with the job of preparing dinner for seven people. Thankfully her aunt had called ahead of time to inform Anne that she would be stopping by. With the ingredients in front of her, she cursed the closed off floor plan that kept her isolated from everybody else. On occasion, Derek or Will would escape to keep her some company, but Elizabeth or Walter would call them back.
On one of those visits, she shook her head as she stirred the pot of fettuccine. “Years ago, you wouldn’t have even been in Elizabeth’s cross-hairs. She would have dismissed you as a poor soldier and focused all of her attention on trying to gain Will’s favor. And now, you have all that potential real estate money.”
“I still have to get through grad school first,” Derek pointed out.
Beckoning him to her, Anne pulled him down for a quick kiss. “It doesn’t matter. She is seeing dollar signs and the chance to show off her amazing home décor skills. She’s considering that as her next career move.”
“She does know she needs certification to become an interior decorator, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“Ed’s new wife. That’s how they met, actually. Ed was looking for an interior decorator when he moved the business. He wanted somebody to help stage some of the homes that were having difficulty selling and Ava was the person who used to help him. Sarah was one of the applicants, but on the day of her interview Ed couldn’t get a babysitter and his former in-laws had a doctor’s appointment. The other applicants dismissed the girls, but Sarah smiled at them when she came in. Ed found her playing with them when he came out to call her back. Then, in the middle of it, one of them burst into the office because the other one had bumped her head and Sarah managed to calm her down while Ed checked on the girl still in the waiting room.”
“Aww. I wish Sophy had told me that story instead of skimming over the details,” Anne smiled as she went to grab a jar of alfredo sauce out of the cabinets.
“Sophy didn’t know the details.”
“And you did?”
“I was living with Ed at the time. We’d just moved here and I wasn’t able to watch them because of my knee. It still hurts when it rains.”
“You must be miserable with this weather.”
Shrugging, “It’s worth it.”
From the other room, Elizabeth called, “Derek!”
“I’m helping Anne in the kitchen?”
“You can cook?” Elizabeth called back, her voice sounding closer than before.
“Of course I can cook,” Derek replied. “It’s an extremely valuable skill to know.”
“I just love cooking,” Elizabeth purred. She sneered when she caught Anne’s eye roll. “It’s one of my favorite things to do.”
“Then do you want to finish up here and I can go set the table?” Anne innocently asked, knowing that Elizabeth could burn water. She wasn’t about to let her near the garlic bread in the oven or the knife she had been using to cut up vegetables for a salad.
“You know, I think I hear Will in the living room calling my name,” Elizabeth quickly backtracked, slipping out of the room quicker than Anne had ever seen her sister move.
“That was...”
“Interesting,” Anne supplied. “Simply interesting.”
“Do you need help setting the table?”
“No,” Anne answered with a shake of her head as she grabbed a strainer to drain the water off of the pasta. “I already set it before I started cooking.”
“You are brilliant,” he grinned, taking the hot pot from her hands and nudging her over to where the salad was sitting, unfinished. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Thank you.”
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Barely twenty minutes later, Anne interrupted the tense stand-off between her father and aunt, the twitchiness of her cousin and sister, and called them all to dinner.
Elizabeth glared at Anne as she bumped into her. “Don’t hog Derek all through dinner, will you?” she hissed just loud enough to Anne to hear.
“Derek is his own person with his own mind. If he wants to sit next to me at dinner, he can. We can’t stop him,” Anne retorted.
Rolling her eyes, Elizabeth started to plan.
What they didn’t notice was Will was eyeing Penelope carefully, wondering if he would be able to snag a seat next to her. Glancing over towards them, Anne noticed the look that Will was giving Penelope and her father. Tilting her head, she started to wonder if there was something going on that she had missed.
Elizabeth had no problem claiming the seat at the foot of the table, the seat that their aunt should have been sitting at. Cassandra softly glared at her niece, not enough where they could tell, except for Anne, but more thoughtfully than anything else.
“Derek,” Elizabeth purred, “you can sit next to me.”
“I...” he hesitated, watching as Penelope quickly claimed the seat next to Walter at the other end of the table and Will quickly following suit.
“It’s not like he has much of a choice,” Anne laughed sitting in the chair next to Will and patting the empty seat between her and Elizabeth.
That left Aunt Cassandra on the other side of the table between Elizabeth and Penelope.
“So, Cassandra,” Walter asked after spooning a more than generous helping of fettuccine alfredo onto his plate and a tiny portion of the salad, “what brings you here?”
“Business,” she answered him. “I already told you that.” Looking at Derek she explained that she dealt in mergers and acquisitions and would be sent to various places to check out how companies were doing and estimating how much those branches of the companies were worth.
“That sounds interesting,” Derek replied.
“It really isn’t,” Cassandra contradicted him, “but it is something to do.”
“So, Derek,” Elizabeth redirected the conversation, pushing around the pasta on her plate and picking at her salad. “How long until you have completed your master’s program.”
“I have one hundred and fifty credit hours to complete before I can apply for my CPA license. Then I can go get my real estate license, but I haven’t looked into how long that is going to take yet. So...” he quickly did the math, “about two years for the CPA and another six months or so for the real estate license.”
Leaning back in her chair, Elizabeth visibly deflated. “Oh.”
“Derek always has been good with numbers,” Anne grinned at everybody, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze underneath the table.
Across the table, Penelope jumped, startled by something happening where nobody could see it.
“Are you okay, my dear?” Walter asked.
‘My dear?’ Anne mouthed to Derek and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, sitting up at her father’s term of endearment, shrugged a shoulder and leaned forward.
“Yes, fine,” Penelope squeaked. “I thought I felt something on my ankle.
She had: Will’s foot.
“So, Derek,” Cassandra interrupted the exchange. She had seen the look in Will’s eye right before Penelope had startled. “How are you paying for all of your schooling.”
“That is one of the benefits of going into the military.”
“But you didn’t finish your enlistment term.”
“Because of an injury that was not my fault,” he countered. “I still get some of my schooling paid for since I wasn’t in service for a full year. The rest of it comes from scholarships and money my mother left me when she passed away. I also took on tutoring jobs to help supplement my income. I’m a hard worker,” he assured Cassandra. “I’m not one to not work.”
Nodding her head, “Good,” was all that she said.
“So,” Walter added from his end of the table, “you won’t be saddling my daughter with your debt.”
Derek felt Anne’s hand slip out of his and form a fist.
“Sir,” he felt his jaw tense, “my mother left me with enough money to not stress over bills and college as long as I played my cards right. That means working. I could easily pay off Anne’s student loans if she wanted me to, if we ever got married that is, but I also know that your daughter has an independent streak a mile wide and a solid work ethic. She doesn’t need me to pay her way. What she does need is support and help with the every day things like cooking meals and cleaning up the house, and if things progress in that direction,” he stole her hand back and gave it a squeeze, “I’d be a good help-mate for your daughter.”
“But you’ll be rich once you join your brother in his real estate company,” Elizabeth piped up.
“Only if I put forth the effort,” Derek countered. “And even then, that money would go towards a decent house of my own, a savings account for my retirement, and trusts for any children I have in the future. I’m not somebody who buys things just because it’s shiny and fast and can get attention.”
Anne and Cassandra sat there motionless. It took an effort to keep their faces expressionless as Derek essentially told their family that he was nothing like Walter, Elizabeth, and Mary. Anne really wanted to applaud the barbed comments that Derek had thrown out. She didn’t know how angry Derek had been when he learned that Walter had used her college fund to bail himself out of his financial hole.
“I see,” was all that Walter said in response.
Elizabeth glowered.
Not long after that, in an attempt to smooth over the tension around the table, Penelope asked Will if he had any interesting stories about his job.
It didn’t change the fact that Walter Elliot was glaring at Derek, Elizabeth was looking at Derek as if everything he said did not make a single ounce of sense, and Aunt Cassandra was examining Derek as if there was more to him than she expected.
Will was, unbeknownst to the others at the table, playing footsie with Penelope.
