Declan
“Seriously, though… how are you feeling?” I ask Leonie for the third time this evening. The first two times she refused to answer, instead fawning in delight first over the bottle of wine I’d chosen, and next over the shrimp scampi she’d ordered.
She makes a low growling harrumph deep in her throat, a sound she always makes when she’s irritated with me. “Honestly, Dec,” she admonishes. “I’m doing great. Leave it alone.”
I settle back in my seat as she scoops a spoonful of crème brûlée into her mouth and sighs in delight. The woman could always eat a full-grown man under the table, and she usually held onto those delightful calories in her wide expanse of hips and plump bosom. She’s lost some weight over the last six months. It worries me, although she assures me it’s because she’s been extremely active lately, taking advantage of the warmer weather here in Nevada.
“You’d tell me if something were wrong, wouldn’t you?” I press.
She glares.
“Damn it, woman,” I growl at her. “I’m paying for a damn fine meal for you, the least you could do is answer my questions.”
“You watch your tone with me, mister,” she growls right back. “I’m still spry enough to take you over my knee.”
I roll my eyes. For the eighteen years she was my nanny, she never once raised a hand to me, but the same cannot be said of my parents. Of course, I don’t blame them. They sucked at parenting, and didn’t know how to deal with the least bit of disrespect or rebellion from a young boy. When they got easily frustrated, they would often lash out with a hard whack across my backside.
Not Leonie, though. She was smart, patient, and loving enough to attempt to redirect me first. That often succeeded, but if it didn’t, she just had a look she leveled my way that would make me snap to attention.
Then she’d say in her barely-there German accent, “I’m going to blister your butt, young man.”
It was always an empty promise. I knew it, and she knew I knew it. I’d reply rather cheekily, “Really?”
Her shoulders would sag, and she’d admit, “No. Not really.”
And that would make me laugh like a loon, and see what she did there? Totally redirected me.
Leonie Schmidt served the Blackwood family, having first been hired to raise my father and his two brothers. She’d stayed on and ended up as a nanny to my older sister, Marissa, and then me.
Sadly, her age—she claims it’s a youthful seventy-six—is a preventative now with Marissa’s children—who are three and six. At least that’s what Marissa says. My parents agree, so Leonie has been living out her golden years in a retirement community. I moved her to Vegas so she would be close to me. The little desert village she lives in keeps her active, but it has constant support and care if she needs it. Someone comes by to check on her daily, which is something I can’t often do, to make sure she’s okay. Still, she’s a responsibility I take seriously, given she’s my closest family member. Yes, I consider her family.
Despite her lifelong devoted service to the Blackwoods, they cut her loose without a backward glance once she was of no more use to them as a nanny. Granted, they gave her a generous severance and a healthy pension, but it was the quiet disconnect from our family that hurt her. Even after having raised them from babies and then their babies, they’d essentially turned her out in the cold and slammed the door in her face.
Not by me, though.
Never by me.
And when I move on from the Vegas resort to the next big project, wherever that may be, Leonie will come along with me.
“How are your parents?” Leonie asks, a diversionary tactic to move the questioning off herself.
The question bothers me deeply because my parents never ask about her. Neither does my sister, for that matter. But Leonie always wants Blackwood news, so I fill her with silly details that will make her happy, but which boil my blood because they mean nothing to my family.
I prattle on about my parents’ plan to take a winter holiday in Paris, where they own a luxury apartment, my sister serving on the boards of numerous charities, and her kids being well… spoiled the same way Marissa and I were.
Our meal ends, as it usually does, with Leonie getting a little drunk on wine. She becomes contemplative, and her worries come out. “You take such good care of me, Declan. You know you don’t have to.”
“I do nothing,” I assure her.
She waves me off with another guttural sound from her throat. “You watch over me, you help ensure I have the finest of places to live, which I can’t afford on my own, and you cart me around from location to location with you, so I’m never alone.”
“You do like traveling around, don’t you?” I ask, wondering if perhaps I’m doing a disservice to her by uprooting her.
“It’s an adventure, and I love meeting new people,” she reassures me. “If I ever feel strong ties to a community when you’re ready to leave an area, I’ll tell you. You know I have enough confidence to do that.”
Yeah, that I know. My parents taught me how to wield power by coercing an ego bordering on the vapid side out of my impressionable mind. Any ounce of decency I have in the decisions I make with the immense power backing me are strictly from Leonie and the moral compass she helped instill. One of those traits was teaching me how to be confident without being too much of an asshole.
I’d like to say I mastered that trait, but alas… I know I’m still an asshole some of the time, particularly with women.
“What about you?” Leonie asks, sitting back in her chair and holding her wineglass up for a small sip.
“What about me?” I tease, also leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest. I always relish in making her work for the slightest bit of personal information about me. It’s a game, no more, because Leonie is the only person who could ever get me to just let go and talk.
She rolls her eyes. “How’s work going? Have your next project lined up?”
I smile at her, wondering just what she’d think of me wanting to open up a resort—outside of the Blackwood name, of course—that focused on a sex club? She’d probably blister my butt for sure, but on the other hand, she’d celebrate me wanting to do something for myself. She’d always encouraged me to find my own path in life, including some of the darkest days of my life just a few years ago when I needed her guidance more than anything.
“I have some solid ideas I’m working on,” I say vaguely. “I’m looking at investors right now, but I’m considering a smaller, boutique type of resort.”
Leonie nods thoughtfully. “What about your next Blackwood project? Where might that be?”
“We have it narrowed down between Miami and San Francisco,” I say.
Leonie gets a gleam in her eye, holds up her wine glass. “Being nearer to the California wine country doesn’t sound all that bad.”
Laughing, I tip my head back. She may be seventy-six, but she has a lot of damn living left within her. Part of me loves that she moves everywhere with me, but the other part wonders if she’s not missing out on settling down in the few remaining years she has. She’s never been married and always insists she never had any desire to do so.
“I’ll put in a word to Father that I’d prefer the San Francisco project then,” I say, gladly willing to give her time there. At this point, we don’t know how much time she has left.
“Now, the most important question,” she says, and there’s a sly gleam in her eyes as her lips curl upward. “When are you going to consider settling down and giving me some grandbabies to fawn over.”
My mother would gasp in a slight outrage if she heard Leonie right now. She’d be offended that Leonie would consider herself a grandmother to any potential offspring I might have, but I love it. While I don’t understand grandparent influences since I didn’t have them, I suppose if I ever did have kids, I’d want them to have a grandmother like Leonie instead of my own mother who can be cold and off-putting in the best of times.
“I’m still a young man,” I grin at her. “Plenty of time still to sow more wild oats. And you’re still a young woman. Plenty of time for grandbabies later.”
“Bah,” she grumbles, flicking her hand. “You should fall in love, kiss your woman under the Eiffel tower and enjoy the rigors of what it takes to make babies. You work too hard, and you’re too jaundiced when it comes to love.”
“Don’t I have reason to be?” I counter, no hint of teasing at all in my tone.
Her expression sobers, and she nods, “Aye… you have reason.”
She knows. The only one who really does.
“But,” she continues on with the tone of a woman that’s seen a lot in her many years. “You shouldn’t let past experiences define the way you step into your future. Because if you do—if you let it scare you and put boundaries in place that you’re afraid to cross—you’re going to miss out on so much opportunity.”
I give her a wry smile. “You’re ever the romantic, Leonie. Aren’t you?”
“I just want you to be happy, Declan,” she counters pointedly. “I don’t want you to sabotage yourself in finding that happiness.”
In a rare display of genuine affection, because those moments strike me few and far between, I reach across the table and hold my hand out to her. She doesn’t hesitate, placing her wrinkled, age-spotted one in mine, and I curl my fingers gently around her. I squeeze lightly and hold tight. “I am happy, Leonie. The way my life is right now, I’m pleased. And I don’t feel things are lacking. But I do love you for worrying about me in that way. I know I can always count on you to worry over me, and that’s something I’ll always treasure.”
Her eyes get wet with emotion, and I squeeze her hand one more time before letting it go. It’s been a good night for sure. I got to spend quality time with my favorite woman in my life, and I got an agreement from Bailey that she’ll attend The Wicked Horse with me tomorrow night.
Yes, I’m happy with my life right now.