"Well maybe that means that you should be second-guessing yourself honey. Do you think if your dad saw how good you are he would change his mind about insisting that you join the company?”
"Honestly, I doubt it. Sky, I have been groomed to join the family business from the day I was born. There's no getting out of it, this is what I have to do.”
"Okay, just hear me out on this. What if you invite your parents to a show in the city one Friday night so that they can see you and the band perform, do you think they would come?”
"I've never really given it any serious thought but, if my mom says yes then my dad would definitely say yes, so I guess, yeah, maybe they would show up. You really think I should invite them to a show?”
“I really do. I think it’s important for them to see not only how much you love singing but also how incredibly talented you are Jonathan. You probably don't realize it but when you are on stage you transform into a different person. You are so immersed in the music and you really feed off of the energy from the crowd, it’s a really cool thing to see, and I think that they need to see that. I don’t think any parent would want to crush their child’s dreams, I really don’t.”
He sat there for a minute and I could tell that he was letting my words sink in.
“I’ll think about it, I really will. Maybe I’ll talk to them about it before the weekend is over.”
“I think you should.”
“Okay, we should probably get ready, the guests will be arriving soon. I’ll swing by your room and pick you up.”
“Okay, see you soon.”
Chapter Five
We went downstairs at around 2:15 and Jonathan’s cousins Emily and Jeremy had arrived and there was a really cute guy with them. Emily had graduated from a top design school in New York the year before and had an internship at a fashion magazine. Jeremy’s parents had allowed him to take his first year of college off to travel around Europe for six months and then he worked at Hunter International for the remaining six months. He was going to enter our university as a freshman the following year and, like Jonathan, he was being groomed to take over the company one day. Jeremy was the spitting image of Jake and all of the Hunter men were undeniably gorgeous.
“You guys finally made it and graced us with your presence!” Jonathan walked over to his cousins and gave both of them a big hug.
“Yeah, we thought we’d stop by.” Jeremy joked with him and Jonathan lightly punched him in his arm as they both chuckled.
“Whatever. So who is your friend?”
Emily spoke up. “This is my boyfriend Jax.”
Jonathan reached out and shook his hand. “Jax it’s nice to meet you. Guys, I want you to meet my girlfriend Skylar Miller. Sky, this is my cousin Emily, my cousin Jeremy and Emily’s boyfriend Jax.”
“Hi, it’s nice to meet you guys.”
“Nice to meet you too, Skylar. Where are you from?” Emily’s gorgeous blue eyes were focused on me. She was really pretty.
“I’m from Chicago.”
“City or suburbs?” Jeremy could have easily been Jonathan’s younger brother, their looks were so similar.
I couldn't help but laugh at his question and he had a puzzled look on his face.
"Oh no, don't look like that, it's not anything bad! It’s just that Jonathan asked me the exact same question the first day that I met him.”
“Oh, okay.” He had a look of relief on his face.
“And to answer your question, I live in the city, right in the middle of it all. Do you guys also live in Manhattan?”
“Yep, not too far from aunt Sarah and uncle Joshua. That’s pretty cool that you live in a big city too.” Emily smiled at me and I felt the same way about her that I felt about Claire when I met her, I instantly liked her.
Just then Bunny came out of the kitchen where she was monitoring the chef and his staff, I’m sure the chef loved that, and she told us it was almost time to sit down to dinner.
The doorbell rang and a gorgeous, tall, dark-haired, clean-cut guy walked into the room a few seconds later. Claire ran up to him and gave him a quick kiss and a huge hug.
“Hey gorgeous.” His words were deep and sexy as they rolled off of his tongue.
"You barely made it, but I'm happy you're here! Come on, let's go put your stuff away really quickly and then we need to get back downstairs. Nana Bunny will kill us if we’re late for dinner. I’ll introduce you to everyone when where back downstairs.”
She grabbed his hand and basically tugged him up the stairs and they were back down in less than three minutes.
Jonathan was standing right beside me with his hand resting at the small of my back and he leaned down to whisper in my ear. “As you can see, the holidays can get really crazy around here. Ready to go eat?”
I smile at him and nodded. “I’m starved.”
We all gathered around the enormous dining table a few minutes later, after Claire introduced Keegan to everyone. Jonathan was on my right and thankfully Claire was on my left, but after I sat down I realized that Abby was sitting directly across from me, and right next to her was Barbi. Great, this is exactly what I don’t need.
After Mr. Hunter said grace and we went around the table and said what we were thankful for, we enjoyed a really nice dinner. Claire was just finishing up telling everyone about her next performance with her ballet company and I thought I would try to be nice to Abby and ask her what her next performance was. Little did I know that would be a big mistake.
“Abby, what is your next performance? I would love to go see both of you guys in your next productions.” I genuinely smiled at her as I took a sip of my water.
Her eyes glossed over with instant dislike as she raised them from her plate to look at me and plastered a smile laced with saccharine on her face. “My performance will be the exact same performance that Claire is performing, except as usual, I bet I won’t be performing.”
I looked at her thoroughly confused and furrowed my eyebrow. "I don't understand, if you're both in the same performance why aren’t you also performing?”
The table was eerily quiet as she spoke and I realized that I had unintentionally hit a very sore spot with Abby.
Abby turned to her sister and was clearly glaring at her while she answered my question. “Because my dear sister is always the star of the show, she never gives me a chance to shine.”