Aw, heck. Emilia had caught wind that the board was getting approached about adding high-level positions and she was readying herself. Why couldn’t she see what it was doing to her family?

“Bye, Grams.” He clicked off and tossed the phone aside. Scrubbing his face, he muttered, “I shouldn’t have answered.”

In all the years I’d witnessed him giving one thousand percent to that company, I’d never heard him say that. That he’d said it in regard to his grandmother was depressing. “How’d she hear of it?”

He reclined on his hands. “Kendall sent the agenda out yesterday, hoping Grams would think about it over the holiday before she bombarded us. We didn’t want the board to think we were jumping them with this request. We want to be transparent.”

“And what is your grandmother’s problem with taking a day to think about it?”

He gave his head a little shake. “Unfortunately, they’re valid concerns. Not insurmountable, but valid.”

“Okay?” I took a seat next to him.

“How are current employees going to feel about new positions with market-comparable wages? New hires making more is never good for morale. Even if all current positions get the same bump, there are still those employees who will point out how much less they made when they started. Then there’s the promotions. Could any in-house promotions cause declines in morale? Competition in the workplace can be good to a point, until an employee feels like they’ve lost a chance for upward mobility, or that the promotions weren’t fair. If we hire outside of the firm instead of promoting from within, how will that look to lower-echelon employees? We could have a mass exodus, which would increase costs as we recruited, filled, and trained those positions.” He dropped his head back. “I haven’t even run the numbers for the meeting yet. It’s in two weeks. I was going to do that today.”

“Violet and I will stay out of your way.”

“I know. I just wish…” He rolled to his hip to face me. “Why have we never had sleepovers?”

The sudden change in subject made my head spin. Sleepovers? “I don’t know, but I’ve been wondering that. You were working. And I guess if you weren’t, I wanted my time with you.” I picked at the comforter. Brushed off invisible lint. I’d been greedy about my time with him, wanting him to myself for the scraps I was given.

He frowned and sat up. “Damn, Kate. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. They’re welcome whenever you want. I’ll try to carve out time—” His frown deepened. “We haven’t talked about kids since before we married.”