Chapter 56 - 55: Explosion-proof Kitchen + Hospital Bed
Yvonne Lowell shot him a look, her expression complicated, but said nothing.
[I’m down for that! I’ve never heard their brother sing before!]
[What about his sister? What’s her talent? I wanna see her dance! [drooling]]
[Didn’t someone say she can play the piano yesterday?!! Play for us!!]
[Is it just me, or did she have a weird look on her face when she heard that?]
[I’d advise you not to get your hopes up for the Second Young Master... If he sings, it’s hard to say whether it’s a punishment for you or for him.]
[Seconded!! I had the misfortune of hearing it... It was just too...]
[To the two posters above, elaborate??]
"Nola, do you know how to cook?" Harrison Lowell nudged Yvonne Lowell with his elbow.
Yvonne Lowell put on a professional-looking fake smile. "I do, but only if our kitchen gear is bomb-proof and our hospital beds are near."
"Then what are we gonna do? Our third brother is the only one who can cook, and he’s still at school!" Harrison Lowell collapsed onto the sofa in despair.
"Why don’t we just have a barbecue today?" Yvonne Lowell suggested. "It’s Friday, but who knows if our third brother will be back."
’Besides, for a barbecue, as long as everything is cooked through and you brush on some sauce, it’ll be delicious. Even if it gets a little burnt, you can just say it has a nice char.’
"Hey, you’re right, that’ll work! We can have a little open-air buffet in the garden tonight. Forget five people, I could get fifteen people here. I’ll ask Nanny Warren for the food supplier’s contact info later."
Hearing this, a nearby cameraman couldn’t resist reminding him, "Superstar Lowell, the rules of the task state that you have to prepare the ingredients yourselves."
"I know that. And isn’t this me preparing them?" Harrison Lowell shrugged. "Nanny Warren is usually the one who contacts the supplier. This time, I’m placing the order and paying for it myself. I have to wait for it to be delivered to my house before I can handle the next steps. How does that not count as preparing it myself?"
Cameraman: ...Nice one.
[Uh, when he puts it like that, I guess he has a point...]
["Bomb-proof kitchen gear" and "hospital beds are near"?? Is his sister planning to become a rapper? She’s already dropping rhymes! [peeking doggo]]
[She’s got all her conditions stacked, hahaha...]
[I’m dying! Not a single one of the siblings knows how to cook.]
[I thought he was gonna be more hardcore and say fifty people...]
[I’m so curious who they’ll invite...]
[Probably people from their own circle, right?]
[I’m getting curious about the third brother. Out of the four siblings, we’ve already seen the first, second, and fourth. I really want to see what he looks like...]
"Nola, is there anyone you want to invite?" Harrison Lowell asked.
Yvonne Lowell glanced at the phone vibrating incessantly on the table. She didn’t need to guess who was blowing it up with messages.
She looked up at the camera, a playful smirk on her face. "I’m fine with anyone. You handle it."
"Nina isn’t in Kingsland, so we’ll call Zion. Keith Zane, too. I’ll have our older brother bring Ian Miller with him after work, and there are our two personal cameramen," Harrison Lowell said, counting on his fingers.
"Then, we’ll see if our cousins are free, invite the two from the Crawford family, and lastly, how about the Forrest siblings?"
"That way, we’ll have a few alternates in case someone isn’t free."
Harrison Lowell might be a bit of a doofus, but he had still subconsciously skipped over Leo Grant.
After all, Leo Grant’s wolfish ambitions had been plain to see at the welcome-home banquet. He now ranked number one on the brothers’ list of most dangerous individuals.
’My sister is so pure and adorable, and still so young. I can’t let that old man get his hands on her.’
Seeing that Harrison Lowell had listed all those people but still hadn’t mentioned a certain someone, Yvonne Lowell worried that her goofy older brother would face deliberate retaliation later, so she brought him up.
"What about Leo? Aren’t you inviting him?"
"What do you mean, ’Leo’? You have more than enough brothers in this family to call by name. You are not allowed to call him ’Leo’!" Harrison Lowell shot her an irritated glare.
"But Grandma told me to call him that," Yvonne Lowell said, shrugging innocently.
"I don’t care! From now on, you’ll call him Brother Grant, just like the rest of us!"
"Okay, okay. Brother Grant it is. So, are you not going to invite Brother Grant?"
Harrison Lowell rubbed his nose in embarrassment. "Ahem. Brother Grant is usually really busy. We probably shouldn’t bother him with a small gathering like this."
Leo Grant: *I’m not busy!! I’m completely free!! The internet isn’t some lawless place, stop spreading malicious rumors!!!*
"You should still ask. What if he’s free? Otherwise, it’ll look bad if you invite so many people and he’s the only one left out, especially since we see him all the time," Yvonne Lowell said, shooting him a look. "Besides, this show we’re on right now..."
Harrison Lowell nodded reluctantly. "Fine, I’ll ask. But you’d better not get too close to him when he’s here."
"Okay, I know." Yvonne Lowell found the situation rather amusing. "Oh, by the way, Genevieve said she’s staying over this weekend. Have the driver pick up the second Crawford child while he’s out. You can take care of notifying everyone else."
"Deal. Figure out what you want to eat, and I’ll have someone deliver it later."
[Bro, that’s not fifteen people...]
[Who is this Leo? And who’s Brother Grant???]
[Ahem, I think the CEO of The Grants is named Leo Grant, and the two families are friends from way back. It’s probably him, right?]
[Family friends? Then why does it seem like Lowell doesn’t really want to invite him? It looks like they’re not that close.]
[I don’t think their relationship is bad. It looks more like he’s worried about some other pig coming to root up his precious cabbage.]
[I think so too. Lowell even told his sister not to get too close to him, hahaha.]
[LMAO, he’s treating him like a thief. Won’t even let her call him ’Leo.’]
[That thing his sister said but didn’t finish... Aren’t The Grants the producers of this show? And this so-called "random" task they were just given...?]
[My guy, I think you’ve discovered the key point.]
...
Yvonne Lowell picked up her phone to look. ’Good grief,’ she thought. If she kept ignoring Leo Grant’s messages, was the "typing" indicator in the corner of the chat window going to become a permanent fixture?
Far away at The Grants’ headquarters, Leo Grant watched the girl on his computer screen smiling sweetly at her own phone. He then glanced at his phone, which showed no new messages, a hint of sulky resentment on his face.
’That heartless little marshmallow. She just loves to mess with me for her own amusement.’
DING!
Leo Grant picked up his phone and glanced at the screen. ’Heh,’ he thought. ’So the little devil finally remembered to reply to me?’
Sweetheart: Brother Grant, don’t forget to come tonight~
’And you just ignored every single message I sent before this???’
His fingers tapped away on the screen. He deleted everything he’d already typed in the input box and wrote a new message.
"Got it, Little Sister Yvonne~"
Leo Grant couldn’t help but laugh. This time, she really had him wrapped around her little finger.
...
To make things easier, Harrison Lowell just went ahead and made a group chat.
He sent a message to the group, and it turned out everyone was free except for his second cousin, Stanley Sutton.
Since that was the case, Harrison Lowell asked everyone to post what they wanted to eat so he could prepare everything ahead of time.
He then turned to the camera with a cheeky grin and said, "Is there anything you guys want to eat? I’ll order it all later and eat it right in front of you all."
Yvonne Lowell glanced at the stream of comments. ’Help me...’ From top to bottom, there wasn’t a single suggestion for a normal food item. ’What is this, a smorgasbord of lunatics...?’