Heartbreaker

by Claire, Grahame

  “I thought you’d brought a trailer full of Christmas presents,” Granddaddy teased.

  My face fell, horror struck. “I left your gifts at home,” I whispered.

  “This is your home,” Ruby corrected immediately.

  “In Houston. At the condo.” I’d put them in the hall closet because I didn’t have a tree this year. It never occurred to me to load them that morning.

  “Damn cheapskate. Mulaney makes more than all of us put together, and she didn’t even get us anything,” Stone said, breaking the tension and saving my ass from further embarrassment. I thanked him with my eyes before punching him in the arm. “What? You are cheap.”

  “This, coming from Hollywood’s highest paid actor. I saw it in Forbes last week. I think I’ve got the issue with me claiming your great wealth.” I easily fell back into the harmless sibling aggravation that was as much a part of this family as the house.

  “Oh, so you brought that with you, but no Christmas presents.”

  “Stone, you aren’t going to win this one. Remember a few years back, before anybody knew your name, and Mulaney gave us all mineral rights for Christmas? You could live a fine life on that gift, without ever having to work again,” Mitch pointed out.

  “I never would have given it to him if I’d known there was that much oil there,” I said in exasperation, though it was a lie. That year, I’d handpicked some of the best prospects I owned and gifted them to my family. “Hell, she owns half the mineral rights in Texas,” Stone exclaimed.

  “Oh, that’s not true. Only about forty-five percent,” I said, and Stone gave everyone a vindicated look. I did own a lot, but nowhere near the figures we were joking about. In college, I’d borrowed money from Grandmama and Granddaddy. We’d become partners, them backing me when I found property I liked. It had been a learning experience over the years, and we were still partners. A lot of what we owned, I’d discovered for Carter Energy, but some of it was too small to hold any interest for the company. Mr. Carter had no issue with me buying the rights to minerals the company didn’t want to pursue. I enjoyed the hunt and striking a deal; it was a fun way to make money.

  “We’re just glad you’re here, baby,” Daddy said. He and Granddaddy had made me feel like a princess my entire life, never treating me like one of the boys even if they did expect me to work hard. I was delicate to them. Precious. No one else made me feel that way.

  “Now that we’re all here, let’s sit down for supper,” Ruby directed, everyone immediately moving toward the dining room to the buffet of dishes on the counter.

  I opened the oven for the main dish, covering both hands with mitts before I removed a foil-covered platter. “This smells delicious.” My stomach growled, the Dairy Queen I’d stopped for hours ago now long gone.

  I lifted the foil and steam wafted off the platter piled high with rib-eye steaks nestled in their juices.

  “Can you be trusted with that?” Mama teased. “You look about ready to inhale all of them.”

  “I’m starved.”

  “Please. Let me get that,” Carlos said, attempting to take the platter from my hands.

  “Will you take this one instead, honey?” Mama pointed at a serving dish filled with twice-baked potatoes.

  He gave her a polite smile. “I’d be glad to.”

  “Nice to see you again,” I said to Carlos as Mama darted to the dining room.

  “If we’re not careful, celebrating special occasions might become a habit,” Carlos said evenly. It was hard to get a read on him, whether he saw that as a good thing or not. But something I didn’t question was his love for his sister. With Stone and Muriella’s wedding a few weeks ago and now spending Christmas together, it seemed he was right.

  “I’m afraid you don’t have any choice. Ruby’s decided you’re officially family now.”

  His cheeks stained as his gaze darted to my grandmama.

  “Then I’d better be on my best behavior so it stays that way.” He thought that now, but what he didn’t know was that once the Jacobs claimed someone as family, anything could be forgiven. That’s what family did.

  Chapter Ten

  Easton

  Easton

  The call went straight to voicemail.

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time about Christmas,” I said to the machine. “I need your help.”

  I’d tried to log in to Mulaney’s bank access for the company without success. It didn’t make sense our access would be declined so quickly. How had it been revoked so fast? When I asked Dad about this again, he refused to discuss it, which was more abnormal behavior on his part.

  I then attempted to access the EXODUS financial systems, and noted data hadn’t been updated in eighteen hours. Weird. I needed to review the up-to-date figures to see where the cash flow and liabilities were at. Only Drew really understood the complexity of the program, but he wasn’t answering my calls. Had a script been written to transfer customer accounts or was that part of the twelve-month changeover? I hated not knowing any of the answers. The somebody who did get how this stuff worked was Drew. Only he wasn’t answering my calls.

  I sat on one of the twin beds in our room at Grandma Carter’s house. We had matching bedspreads she’d made us as kids. Drew’s was blue and mine red. There were still posters of baseball heroes on the walls and even the lamp on the nightstand had a base in the shape of a glove. The old trunk in the corner held toys from our childhood we’d played with for hours on end. Maybe we’d outgrown the decor, but I never wanted to change it. This was a piece of our innocence before life taught us it wasn’t always summer days spent at our grandparents’ house.

  I wanted this for my kids someday. A safe place, full of good memories, where they could just have fun. Grandma Carter had another bedroom next to this one she’d converted to a sewing room a million years ago. If I ever had kids would she let me change it back so they could make it theirs, just like Drew and I had done in here?

  A glance at the clock revealed I was running out of time before we had to leave to go to Smokey’s. The Christmas Eve tradition had started sometime back during the depression. All the folks in Burdett gathered at the bar, bringing whatever they could manage and ending up with enough for a meal for everybody. The get together had continued over the years, and this was the one night the whole town came together. Pastor Adams from the Baptist church usually made an appearance too.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. The Jacobs would be there, and even though I’d hung up on Mulaney like a juvenile when we’d spoken, I was ready to see her. We had things that needed straightening out and watching Mama at what could very possibly be her last Christmas Eve meal had intensified my sense of urgency.

  I hated thinking like that; not that my mother’s illness was anything new, but something about being isolated here without as many distractions brought home a lot of things I’d taken for granted.

  A shrill ring pierced the air of the small bedroom.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said before I answered the call.

  “Is she—okay?”

  For the second time in the span of only a few hours, I’d worried someone needlessly about Mama’s condition.

  “Yeah. That wasn’t why I called.” I could almost feel Drew’s relief through the phone. “We’d all be better if you were here, but I promised you I wouldn’t bother you about it.” This was the first Christmas he’d ever missed. Things weren’t the same without him. Did he feel the loss too?

  “Shouldn’t you be at Smokey’s?”

  “We’re headed out soon.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You know what? I am going to say it. There’s still time to make it here by tomorrow—”

  “I knew better than to fall for this shit. Did Dad put you up to this?” Drew’s anger reared its ugly head. I couldn’t figure out why he was so hell-bent on staying away. The company was important, but him working an extra two days in New York seemed extreme, even for him.

  “No. I can’t log in
to the accounts directly anymore, and I need access to the information. None of the numbers have been updated in EXODUS,” I said before the conversation escalated into something I preferred it not.

  “I did some maintenance yesterday, but everything should be up and running. Let me take a look,” he said as a keyboard clacked in the background. The tapping grew more intense. “The servers haven’t been communicating for some reason.”

  “Would they just stop on their own?”

  “It’s possible I guess, but I did set an alarm to trigger if that were to happen so I could quickly fix it. Something’s not right here.”

  “The alert would go off under any circumstances, right?”

  “Well yeah, unless somebody bypassed it,” he concluded. More rapid keystrokes sounded. “I can’t get in to the accounts directly either. What‘s going on?”

  “When’s the last time you tried?” I grilled, as frustration and anger built up inside me. Someone was obviously attempting, rather successfully, to keep us in the dark.

  “Before now? I usually check every morning, but I guess it’s been a couple days.”

  I could picture him scratching his head, giving me that sheepish look he got when he knew he messed up.

  “A couple days? Damn, Drew, I need those figures,” I said, shooting to my feet. “That’s where the answers lie.”

  Silence spread between us to the point I thought we’d been disconnected.

  “Want me to check Dad’s laptop?” he asked hesitantly.

  “How are you going to do that when it’s here and you’re wherever?”

  He cleared his throat. “If you can turn it on and make sure it’s on the Internet I can remote in with no problem.”

  I frowned. This was beyond deceptive and not how our family did things, but Dad hadn’t helped matters. If he’d just been more forthcoming, I wouldn’t have had to consider this.

  “There might not be anything on there,” Drew continued when I didn’t respond.

  “There will be.” Nothing escaped our father when it came to the company. He had his fingers on the pulse of every facet, which made the entire situation even more mind-boggling. “He had to have seen this coming,” I said, more to myself than Drew.

  “Do you think he wanted to sell to SPE?”

  “You’re asking questions I don’t have answers to.”

  “If one of us had been in charge instead of Mulaney, this wouldn’t have happened.” There was a vicious edge to his tone I didn’t like one bit.

  I resisted the urge to break something. “That’s not true. She’s done as much for Carter Energy as anyone, and she deserved to be interim CEO.”

  Drew snorted. “Whatever you say.”

  I took my wallet out of my back pocket and toyed with it for a moment before I laid it on the nightstand. Looking at the photo of the four of us from a few years ago made me realize just how frail Mama had become. No wonder Dad wanted to step back. This was his wife who was ill. I wanted to shake Drew. He should be here, but there was no point in trying to reason with him. Something wasn’t right, and he was lashing out even more than normal. “I’ll text you when I’ve got his laptop connected.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I don’t have another choice.”

  I slid into the driver’s seat of Grandma’s truck and reached for my back pocket. “I must have left my wallet upstairs,” I said. “Be right back.”

  I shut the door before Mama, Dad, or Grandma Carter could respond and jogged back into the house. Instead of going straight upstairs, I moved to my grandfather’s old office and found Dad’s laptop exactly where I thought it would be.

  I opened it, made sure it was connected, and fired off a text to my brother.

  It’s done.

  I retrieved my wallet and was almost out the front door when my phone chimed with an incoming text.

  Welcome to the dark side, brother.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mulaney

  All seventeen of us piled into two Suburbans. Even my teenage nieces came along. There were no rules at Smokey’s. Well, minors couldn’t drink, but they could come in with their families on Christmas Eve. Gabby and Leona ended up being our designated drivers, despite only Leona having her license. Hell, we’d all learned to drive well before the legal age. I’d been letting Gabby drive around the ranch from the time her feet could reach the pedals. In a few years when she got her license, she’d be ready.

  There were a couple empty parking spots in the barely lit gravel lot outside the bar. One spotlight shined on the sign above the door, otherwise it was hard to see much else. This place looked better in the dark than it did in the daylight. I’d wondered every time I saw the bar how in the world it was still standing, though the state of disrepair gave it character. No telling what all these walls had seen. Deals had been brokered, important town decisions made, even marriage proposals had taken place here. Come to think of it, a few divorces had been caused by this place too.

  We stepped inside, and it was exactly what a Texas saloon brought to mind. There was sawdust on the wooden floor. The walls, chairs, tables, and bar were made of wood. Old neon signs gave an ambient glow, and country music played on the jukebox. Couples swayed on the small dance floor, and loud chatter filled the space as Smokey’s son and grandson served the familiar patrons.

  People rearranged chairs and tables for our big group as we greeted our neighbors and friends. Once the dust settled, I went to the bar, Stone right behind me, to order our first round of the night.

  “You’re worrying me.” That was all my brother had to say.

  The weight of everything felt like a full press on my shoulders. “I need to talk to you and your wife.”

  Stone’s lips thinned into a frown. Smokey’s grandson approached and took our drink order, setting six glasses on the bar and pouring a generous amount of whiskey in each.

  “Let’s take these over to the table, and then we’re going to talk,” Stone said authoritatively, like he was the older sibling instead of me.

  We delivered the drinks, and Muriella joined us to find a table with a little privacy. It was scarce in this bar, and everyone had radar ears and eyes, greedy for any kind of gossip. There was a little table near the back door that was out of the way, so we made ourselves at home.

  I swigged my drink and set it on the table. “This isn’t the ideal time or place to discuss this, but I don’t really have the luxury to find another one.”

  “Are you in trouble?” Stone asked. Muriella covered his hand with hers to calm him. I was envious of their relationship. Since I’d last seen them, they appeared more in tune with one another and more in love.

  I wished Muriella had grown on me, like she had the rest of my family. They adored her, and she seemed nice enough, but I was wary of her. She’d strung my brother along and eventually hurt him pretty badly before they got together. “I told you I was fighting like hell to keep Carter Energy afloat. We’ve been taking on water faster than we can bail. Long story short, Mr. Carter sold to another company yesterday in a last-ditch effort. The new headquarters is in New York, and I have to report for duty on Monday.”

  “You’re staying with us.”

  I nearly choked when my brother’s wife spoke like she was laying down the law, essentially saving me from having to ask to impose on them. I let go of a little of my dislike for her. She knew how I felt about her and was still welcoming me into her home.

  “I—hell, you’re newlyweds, and the last thing you want is someone else living with you.”

  “You aren’t living out of a hotel when we’ve got more than enough room,” Muriella insisted, and I studied her face to see if she was for real. Nothing but sincerity reflected back at me. “You’d do the same for us if we were moving to Houston.”

  Actually, I wasn’t so certain of that, and her confidence in me was a little unnerving. I hadn’t earned her faith, any more than she’d earned mine. “It’ll just be until I can find so
mewhere else. Holly has agreed to come, and I want to get her and Gabriel settled first.”

  “Who are Holly and Gabriel?” Muriella asked.

  “Mulaney’s assistant and her son. How old is he now?” Stone turned his hand over to clasp Muriella’s. The tender gesture stabbed at my heart. Living with them, being all lovey-dovey, was going to be no picnic, but I hated hotels.

  “He’s five. I need to help her find a good school, but this was all thrown at us so suddenly, we’ve had no time to prepare for anything. She only agreed this morning to come with me.”

  “I’ll send you a list of the best schools in the city. Although the private school at my church is small, it’s a good one. It might not be as overwhelming for Gabriel. They’ve got a waiting list, but I think I can help with that since I’m a teacher’s aide. When will Holly be joining you? I can set up a few visits if you like.” I stared at the woman who’d claimed my brother’s heart, beginning to understand exactly how that had happened.

  “You don’t have to do that.” I waved dismissively, though I longed to take her up on her offer. It would be a tremendous load off Holly and me.

  “I know I don’t. I want to.” So she wasn’t a fragile butterfly. The woman had spunk.

  “She’s booked her flight for Sunday. I’ll need her help this week, but the most important thing is getting the two of them settled.” We’d spoken on my drive to Burdett. Holly already had her arrangements made and had managed to pack up the things I’d left behind in Houston.

  “Are they staying in a hotel?” Muriella asked, appearing perturbed at the thought.

  “Yes. Stone always liked the Four Seasons, so I told her to get a suite there.”

  “No way. They’ll stay with us too.”