Chapter 439: A put off meeting
By July, most of the renovations to the second building were done. At least the cafeteria part was done. The daycare was just getting the finishing touches, as in, the staff were being trained.
Maxwell had Andrew do the taste testing for the cafeteria, and also run through the breakdown of healthy, but tasty food options that would be in the cafeteria. Andrew breezed past the fancier chefs, the ones who were banking on Maxwell just recognising their names and hiring them at absorbent prices. They didn’t know that he was going to release Andrew, and that Andrew was fairly competent.
In another life, Andrew might have been a cook of some kind. Instead, he just liked cooking for the people he love. Those people worked at the company that was hiring a new cafeteria crew. They had no idea that they were walking into a rather serious competition.
It only took a day for Andrew to make a choice, kind of doing it like a competition of sorts. Those who didn’t pass the first round were sent away pretty much immediately. Then he had a few other tasks for them. Making up a menu for a week, costing it out with the program that they planned to use. Making sure it was flavourful but balanced, and then actually cooking it.
Andrew invited a few more people to be taste testers, Maxwell obviously coming by to strike fear into their hearts, and also make sure that everything was going smoothly. It was also a nice excuse to see each other during a busy day, and Andrew appreciated the little visit.
A few others were a select random few who had been picked from a lottery from within the company. They were all stoked to be there. Several were from the top floors, while a few were from the lower levels of the company. More shy, more introverted. Andrew sat in the middle of them, with Maxwell at his side. A bit of a buffer between the hired extroverts and the hired introverts.
Either way, they had two people left that they really liked. Andrew was having a hard choice picking between them, and needed Maxwell’s thought on it. In the end, they went with the single Mom running her own company because then she would be able to get free childcare due to the fact that they would have a daycare just below her.
The other lovely gentleman who applied they still offered a position to, but it wouldn’t be the head chef, it would be second one down. They both accepted the job easily, and the single Mom cried when Maxwell told her that she would also be cooking for the kids. Because there would be two highly skilled people in the kitchen, they could split the load of making two menus every week and managing a team that was probably going to be quite large.
It was a good day.
The contractors at their house had also finished the kitchen renovations, so now they were moving onto the more...esthetic changes that Andrew and Maxwell had wanted.
The better bathroom, the better little spaces, the gym. Things that were going to finish making this house their home.
Maxwell and Andrew had decided on a date for the wedding. They were planning to have it in spring, like Maxwell had suggested early on, but they had finalized the date. Maxwell, it turned out, had booked several dates in advance, paid the booking fees and had been waiting to discuss the dates with Andrew.
They were deciding on a date in May. Late spring, but it meant that the temperature would most likely be warm, there would be no snow, and it was away from Maxwell’s birthday, and Andrew’s.
Andrew was born in June, so it was a smart thing to make sure it wasn’t in either of their birthday months. That was something both Maxwell and Andrew agreed on.
They decided on a nice weekend, the venue was locked in, and Andrew was glad that one major aspect was done. So was Maxwell. After they had made their decision, the two of them curled up on the couch, Maxwell in Andrew’s lap and just...enjoyed each other’s company.
Richard was moving out at the end of the month into his own apartment. He appreciated that Maxwell and Andrew had taken care of him for as long as they had, but he wanted his own space. He hadn’t lived with others since he’d lived with his parents, so it had been a nice situation. A nice temporary situation, but he needed to be on his own again.
Andrew thought it was because he wanted to fool around with Ellis, but he kept that thought to himself. Maxwell didn’t, and both men watched as Richard had turned a bright red before he scoffed at them, pushing up his glasses.
"That’s not-you know what? It doesn’t matter why, I just am." He had pivoted, not denying it, and Andrew chuckled. He then shot a little sneaky text to Ellis, wondering if he was moving in with Richard when he moved out.
They were texting more now that Maxwell was feeling a bit better about it because he was in a relationship. Even if Andrew and Ellis did plot to do things behind Maxwell’s back, Maxwell was more secure in him talking to him because Ellis was the jealous type like Maxwell was. He wouldn’t do that to Maxwell.
He wouldn’t dare to. He liked his job too much, and Andrew couldn’t cheat on Maxwell. He simply did not see other people as options.
Maxwell had watched it happen at a gala that they had attended together with Maxwell’s family. Several rather prominent omegas, and ones that Andrew didn’t know personally, had surrounded the man when Maxwell was off socialising. Maxwell had been enraged. Not at Andrew, but at the fucking audacity of those fucks, but he’d stopped in his tracks when he realised how easily Andrew navigated them.
There was no malice, no intent, but Andrew just simply...brushed off everything that they were doing. They would try to touch him, Andrew would shift to the side slightly. They would laugh loudly at his jokes, and Andrew would laugh loudly as well. Making it slightly awkward for them to flirt with him. Andrew was great at blowing people off without making them angry or frustrated, so when Maxwell came in and wrapped his ringed left hand around his thick biceps, the omegas knew that they had been caught by the more dangerous predator.
Maxwell had felt a lot better after that. He knew that Andrew was loyal. It wasn’t anything that Andrew did that made Maxwell doubtful. It was his own issues, and Andrew was happy that he had been able to alleviate them just by being himself.
Either way, Andrew was just happy that Maxwell felt better, and that he could count Ellis as another friend that he had gained. Another friend that...may or may not join the Gates family, and therefore be a brother-in-law.
There was one other big thing that was happening in July that was something that was getting on Andrew’s nerves. He was anxious about it, and so was Kim.
The Proctor family, the head family, had demanded to meet Andrew. They had sent a nice letter, been rather formal and kind about it, but Kim had spelt it out for him.
She had come over about two weeks ago, letter in hand, looking a little disheveled. It was clear that she had just gotten home, noticed that Andrew and Maxwell were home, and had come over. She looked like she wanted to give them anything but this letter in her hand, but Andrew just invited her in, gave her some snacks, and let her take her time.
She eventually handed the letter over and told Andrew that they had been hounding her about him since his interview. They had wanted to meet him since, and had been getting less and less kind about asking her to introduce them. Kim thought that Andrew didn’t owe them anything.
They were not better than the Abraham family, they were just not as vocal about their beliefs. Yes, they had ’allowed’ Kim to marry Jenny, but only because they didn’t lose their top breeding horse, she just also brought in a profit. Kim was under contract to let their eldest, Alyssa go and ’hang out’ with her family on the estate one weekend out of every month and she always came back a little...different.
She had some fucked up questions when she first started coming back, but now that she was older she understood what the Proctor family wanted from her. As a newer true alpha, they wanted Alyssa to ’fill the shoes’ that her Mom had left behind. They wanted her to do what Andrew’s father had done.
Become a breeder. Sow her seeds. Alyssa would never do what they wanted, especially after having so many wonderful true alphas around her who proved that they were capable of loving just one person for their life. Even if they had dated before, like Andrew, they were capable of being loyal.
That was something that they had tried to teach her. That true alphas weren’t capable of being loyal. Kim had to detangle those twisted thoughts on her own. She had to hide that her daughter was going to therapy from her family otherwise it would turn into an even bigger thing.
The therapist came to the house with a massage table to make it seem like she was a physical therapist, but it worked. Kim even told him that it got easier because Andrew was around. She had more examples, and Andrew was so warm as a human.
Andrew had melted at that compliment. He was glad that he was a force of strength for her. Which meant that Andrew had to go meet the Proctor family. They didn’t feel as much like a final boss as the Abraham family. They kind of felt like old news.
A problem from his Mom’s era.
That didn’t mean that Andrew underestimated them. An old group of true alphas who still had their hooks in Kim of all people told him that he shouldn’t do that. Especially when Maxwell was a little nervous to send him to the house on his own.
It was part of the letter that Kim had eventually handed over.
Andrew had to go alone, without his fiancé, without his aunt, without his support systems. They made it very clear that they were only inviting him. Maxwell had pondered out loud, when Kim was around, if they would be the kind of family that would facilitate a meeting between Andrew and his birth family.
Kim hadn’t denied that that could happen, but she did say it was highly unlikely. For several reasons. One, that would take away from their power. Two, to have to rely on another family to get one person into their territory would make them look weak. Three, they were trying to stake their claim on Andrew, not trying to grow the claim that Andrew’s father had on him. Four, the head of the house had a beef with the head of the Abraham family. So, it was unlikely, unless someone from the newer generation had suggested it.
Kim couldn’t see it happening, but she did warn Andrew that it could be a possibility, especially because they wanted him alone. They could also attempt to jump him with omegas in heat, and Andrew needed to be careful. They had done that to Kim on several occasions, and if it wasn’t for Jenny’s scented items, she could have been in a lot of trouble.
Maxwell was furious hearing that, for both of their sakes, but that also meant that when Andrew prepared to go to this meeting, Maxwell was making it very clear that Andrew was a marked man. Even if it wouldn’t stick for both of them.
Andrew was not single, he was not up for sale, and if anyone attempted to try to take him, Maxwell would show them that the mob was only one generation away.