She hugged me, enveloping me in warmth, silk and the scent of Joy perfume. “You are solid, not wispy dream fragment.” Stepping back, she flicked her gaze over me. “Was there press conference today?”
“No.”
“You coming from funeral?”
“No.”
Her eyes widened. “You dressed for a date! Yes, I approve of the suit.” She squinted at my tie and tsk-tsked. “Come closer so I fix that ugly knot. Looks like noose, not a four-hundred-dollar tie.”
“There is no date. Unless I can convince my beautiful mother to fika after my meeting with Aunt Priscilla.”
“Honey-sweet words dripping from your lips just like your father,” she scoffed with a smile . . . as she attempted to straighten my tie.
Astrid cleared her throat. “I don’t see you on Priscilla’s calendar today, Mr. Lund.”
“I’m hoping my aunt could squeeze me in.”
“Her schedule is full today. Perhaps—”
“Of course Cilla has time for her nephew,” my mother said to Astrid sweetly. “We appreciate that you keep us on right trail but sometimes . . . we must freewheel.”
“You mean track,” I corrected Mom before Astrid did.
“Yah. Whatever.” Mom grabbed hold of my arm as if I were a ten-year-old in trouble. Over her shoulder she said to Astrid, “Hold the phone, please.”
I had the mental image of Astrid literally holding the phone until we finished the meeting.
Mom squeezed my arm. “When you were little boy, I could wrap whole hand around scrawny chicken arm. Now? My fingertips don’t touch from you having athlete’s arm.”
“Athletes’ foot is a thing—not a good thing—but there’s no such thing as athlete’s arm, Mom.”
“I say it is so, it is so.” She opened Aunt Priscilla’s door and made the after-you gesture.
My aunt smiled at me. “Jensen. What a lovely surprise.”
I chose the floral visitor’s chair on the left across from the desk, leaving the chair on the right for my mom.
After we were settled, my aunt said, “We can skip the usual chitchat and get to the point, since I doubt this is a social visit?”
I appreciated Aunt Priscilla’s directness. She’d always been the aunt who organized formal outings for the Lund kids, forcing us to wear matching T-shirts if we were going to a populated place. She defined organized, so it wasn’t nepotism when her son, Ash, the COO of Lund Industries, named her head of Lund Cares Community Outreach. Both my mother and my other aunt, Edie, devoted time to LCCO, but it was Priscilla Lund’s baby.
LCCO had expanded in recent years. Given the staggering amount of money at her disposal and her husband’s status as a billionaire heir to the Lund family fortune, Aunt Priscilla could’ve been a snotty, snooty socialite. But she used her powers for good, not evil, and she always put family above everything else.
“Astrid indicated you were swamped today, so I’ll give you a brief rundown. My neighbor is a single mother and she’d set her summer schedule around a dance camp that her son attended last year. My understanding is the program strives for economic and ethnic diversity. But the program either lost funding or lost their venue and it’s displaced thirty kids whose parents had counted on this camp. So I thought I’d ask if LCCO could step in.”
“This is late notice, Jensen.”
“I know. It’s late notice for the families since school gets out in three weeks.”
My aunt’s gaze turned shrewd. “Is everything else in place? The staffing, et cetera, and you’re asking LCCO to provide the facility?”
I shook my head. “My neighbor suspects this organization knew at least a month ago they wouldn’t be able to host the camp this year.”
“So no facility and no staff?”
“No, ma’am.”
She removed her neon-pink reading glasses and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “It’s a tight spot, Jens. If the administrators for the company needed a physical location to hold the camp, I’d have no problem issuing a check today.”
“But . . . ?”
“But while LCCO supports the local arts community, we don’t fund anything at one hundred percent. The organization is considered a partner, even if the financial split isn’t fifty-fifty. They have to be invested some way, and it sounds to me as if there is no organization any longer.”
I scratched my cheek. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“Did the defunct organization require deposits to hold the kids’ place for the camp?”
“Yes. I wanna say it was a hundred bucks. Nonrefundable.”
“So thirty kids at a hundred bucks a pop . . .” She shook her head. “The organization should’ve charged double that. If they didn’t have a financial cushion, there’s no alternative but to pack it in. I’ve seen this happen too many times recently.”
Not what I wanted to hear.
My mother sighed. “My heart hurts for the children. It is not their fault.”
I remembered Calder’s glum body language yesterday.
Dammit. There had to be a solution.
Aunt Priscilla asked, “How many hours a week were the kids scheduled to be at camp?”
“Eighteen hours. Monday, Wednesday and Friday from nine A.M. until three in the afternoon.”
“Not full-time.”
“That’s the issue with the parents trying to find an alternative. Most places require the kid to be enrolled full-time.”
“Do you know the weekly camp fees per child?” my mother asked. “That income could cover some of the program, so it wouldn’t be fully funded by LCCO.”
I took my cell out of my jacket pocket. “Give me two seconds to fire off a quick text to Rowan.”
Me: Financial breakdown questions ahead.
RM: Hit me.
I typed in the questions and read Rowan’s text responses out loud. This went on for ten minutes.
My aunt said, “Last questions. Staffing, food service and medical.”
All of which I dutifully texted.
Me: How many staff members for thirty campers?
RM: Six. All six were there every day.
Me: Did campers bring their own lunches?
RM: Yes. The camp supplied the snacks.
Me: Thanks for all the info. That’s it for now. I think.
RM: Rocketman, I’ll give you whatever you want if you can actually help us with an alternative solution to this
I grinned. No mistaking that; the woman was flirting with me.
Me: Whatever I want? Don’t you think that’s a little . . . reckless?
RM: I’m due for reckless behavior and I’d owe you BIG TIME
Me: I’m holding you to that.
“Jensen,” my mother said sharply.
The little sneak had been reading over my shoulder.
“So, here’s what I found out,” I said quickly shoving my phone in my pocket and filling them in.
After I finished, Aunt Priscilla looked thoughtful. “That does change a few things. The staffing issues aren’t nearly as impossible when the attendees are expecting intense master classes. But we’d still have to find someone to oversee the camp and coordinate—”
“I’ll do it.”
My mother actually gasped after I said that.
I faced her. “What? You don’t think I’m capable of doing this?”
“If you are capably overseeing it, when will you train?”
“Whenever I want. Just like now. Official training camp doesn’t start until July. If I get the right people to help with this camp, someone can take over for me.”
“Sounds like you’ve already thought about who you’re hiring,” my aunt said.
“The only staff that gets paid are the dance and music instructors. Everyone else will be strictly volunteer. I plan to put the Lunds back in LCCO.” I smirked. “Lots of talent in this family.”
My aunt smirked back at me. “You’re finally getting even with my daughter for making you play dress-up with
her when you were kids?”
“Yep. Dallas will say yes without question when I tell her Rowan is in a bind.”
“Rowan,” she repeated. “That name didn’t register until just now. This Rowan is—was—Dallas’s cheer coach at U of M?”
“Yes. She and her son, Calder, live across the hall from me. Rowan’s brother is Martin Michaels . . . remember Axl’s groomsman with the dreads?”
“Of course,” my aunt said. “He was certainly the life of the party.”
I grinned. “That’s Martin. He and his girlfriend are traveling through Europe, and Rowan is subletting the apartment this summer.”
“How old is her son?”
I felt my mother’s gaze boring into me, but I ignored it. “Calder is six.”
“Almost the same age as Mimi. This kind of camp would be good for her.”
I kept it to myself that I’d planned to ask Lucy, Mimi’s mother, to help out. “So what’s the next step? Do I get my volunteers lined up while you secure the venue?”
“That’d be best. Swing by at the end of the week and we’ll see where we’ve gotten to.”
I stood and skirted the corner of the desk, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Aunt Priscilla. You put the awe in awesome.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome. Now shoo, you charmer. I’m behind schedule.”
Out in the hallway, Mom had me by the arm again and towed me into the conference room. She planted herself right in front of me. “You tell me everything about this Roman, Jensen Bernard Lund.”
“Rowan. Not Ro-man or Ro-nin. Her name is Row-an.”
“Fine, yah, whatever. This Row-an. Did she demand you help with this camp?”
My tiny bit of amusement vanished. “No. I offered to help her.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way you raised me.”
“Do not.” She paused and exhaled, but her laser-focused Mom gaze never left mine. “Do not treat my concern for you as a joke.”
“I’m not. But don’t assume that I’m a sucker for every beautiful woman with a hard-luck story either.”
She blinked as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “I’m sorry.” She placed her hand on my chest. “Ever since you were little boy you have a soft heart. Now grown man, hard body, but still soft heart.”
“Softhearted doesn’t mean I’m soft in the head,” I said gently. “Trust me, okay? Rowan and I are friends. She’s raised Calder on her own and done a great job because her son is a sweet boy. I saw how much he looked forward to the camp and knew I could help them and the other families who were affected.”
“So you spend time with them?”
I’d opened myself up for that one. “Occasionally.”
“Because you are . . . friendly with her.”
“Yes. And she’s a Vikings cheerleader.”
“Which one?” she demanded as if she knew them all.
“She has red—”
“The redhead high kicker is your Rowan?”
I really had to watch the stadium tapes and see Rowan in action if my mother was aware of her cheerleading skills. “She’s not my Rowan.”
“But you want more than friends with her?”
“She breaks all my rules.”
“Rules,” she scoffed, “are made to be beaten.”
“You mean broken.”
“Yah. Whatever.” She smirked at me. “You didn’t deny the desire to be more than friends because you cannot lie to your mother.”
I had lied to her more times than I would ever admit, but that wasn’t the point. “It doesn’t matter what I want. Rowan doesn’t date athletes.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“Calder’s dad was a football player. He’s not in his son’s life at all. So Rowan has rules too. Can we please drop this?”
“For now.” She offered me a dazzling smile.
My gut clenched. That smile meant she was up to something. “What else?”
“I wish to meet this Rowan the redhead and her sweet son.”
If she thought I’d argue about that . . . she’d be wrong. What better way to prove Rowan and I were just friends than to act like introducing her to my family was no big deal?
You are kidding yourself. It is a huge deal.
Shoving that thought aside, I said, “Sure. Next time you come over we’ll wander across the hallway for introductions.”
Another suspicious Mom laser-eye probe.
I smiled at her. “So we’re good?”
“Yah.”
“I’m off to start recruiting volunteers. But don’t warn any of the Lund Collective I’ll be hitting them up for this favor, okay?”
“Surprise them like Jack-in-box—popping up at worst time?”
“Something like that.” I kissed her forehead. “Later, gator.”
“Bison.”
I laughed because my sweet, slyly funny, meddling mother also put the awe in awesome.
As I approached the receptionist’s desk, I realized Astrid wasn’t scowling at me for a change. “Hey, Astrid. I need to make an appointment with Aunt Priscilla on Friday.”
“Already done.”
“Thank you. Sorry if I messed up the schedule today.”
“I shifted a few things around. Not a big deal.” Then she smiled at me.
What the hell? I’d never seen that before.
“But if you’re truly feeling bad, I’ll let you make it up to me.”
Not this. Before I pulled out the standard “I’m one hundred percent focused on getting my career back on track with zero time for dating,” she spoke—but it wasn’t to hit me up for dinner.
“I overheard what you’ve got cooking with this camp thing, and I want in.”
“Excuse me?”
“The camp. I want in. I want to help.”
“What about your job here?”
The annoyance returned to her face. “It’s an internship, so I’m done in two weeks. I start training my replacement next week. And if I don’t have anything lined up regarding my major? My parents will expect me to come home for the summer.”
“You don’t get along with them?”
“I get along with them fine, it’s the rest of the people in my small hometown that I don’t want to be stuck with.” She peered down the hallway and then refocused on me. “It could be an extension of my internship. Hands-on experience in addition to administrative experience with a nonprofit like LCCO will look great on my résumé.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m listening.”
“I’m an organizer. I could be there during all of the camp hours. I’d be good at herding little people to where they needed to