by Lee Kilraine
Margo blinked, looking around at each of them. “Damn, lined up in a row like this, you Thorne brothers sure are good looking sons of bitches. Now scram.”
“Not until Sam tells us what happened. Because Beck’s back to his serious and grumpy self, and I’m guessing it’s connected to Sam,” Gray said. “Is this because of the way you stood him up for Thanksgiving? And then bailed on him for three days? That was a bad move. Kind of hit him in his Achilles’ heel with that.”
“She didn’t bail on him, you pompous ass,” Margo growled. “She left to go help Jane, her little sister.”
I placed my hand on Margo’s forearm, forestalling her with a quick shake of my head. It was pointless at this point. Not when everything was ending anyway. After the gala tonight, we’d go our separate ways.
“Everything looked fine between you two yesterday at the open house.” Gray sent a frown in my direction.
Eli released a scornful snort. “Right. Says you, the expert on relationships. I swear, Gray, I think you’re even more clueless than Beck half the time.”
“Everything is fine. We’re just…” I pressed my lips together for one second to stop them from going wobbly. I refused to cry in front of Beck’s brothers. “…done.”
“Your brother is not an easy person to be fine with, you know.” Margo leaned forward, my protective guard dog of a best friend jumping into the fray. After crying over chocolate last night, she knew how much he’d hurt me by even considering the job with Devine and Sons. “He’s an aloof, distant man. He’s shut down, cut off from his feelings, and doesn’t let anyone in. He’s an emotional wasteland is what he is. Talk about The Iceman Cometh… He’s got a heart of stone.”
All three brothers sat back in their chairs, crossed their arms over their chests, and frowned fiercely enough to make me sit back. That was a lot of pissed off Thorne brothers to deal with.
“I’m beginning to think you don’t know Beck at all.” Eli sounded extremely insulted and disappointed in me.
How was this my fault?
“Have you met our receptionist?” Wyatt asked, his gaze the calmest and coolest of the brothers.
“Sister Mary Teresa? Sure.”
“Sister M.T. isn’t a nun. She’s a sweet old lady who keeps slipping out of the nursing home a few blocks from our office. They used to have Silver Alerts for her on a weekly basis. Drove the facility and her family crazy with worry because they couldn’t keep her safe,” Wyatt said.
Gray jumped in, apparently to get the story moving. “Wyatt hired her—long story—needless to say, things seemed off with her on her very first day. It only took a bit of checking to discover the Silver Alert out for her. The nursing home came and picked her up. Closed case. All done. Goodbye sweet Sister M.T., right? No, because she was back the next day.”
“She escaped again?”
“No. Beck went over to the nursing home later that afternoon to visit her. He found out Mary had always wanted to be a secretary. Ever since she was a little girl. And now that she’s got the beginnings of dementia, sometimes she thinks she is a secretary. And a nun. So Beck worked it out with the facility and her only family, a grandson living in Nevada. That’s how we came to have a seventy-six-year-old, legally blind nun, who has no clue how to answer the phones or work the computer, as our part-time receptionist for two mornings a week. We pick her up and drop her off.”
“Don’t forget about the new one that showed up this week.” Eli looked at his brothers and they all smiled. “Grandpa Joe.”
“Who’s Grandpa Joe?” Margo asked.
“Not sure, but the man looks like Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He’s got to be at least eighty. He just showed up one day, said Beck had invited him, and now he makes furniture legs in our woodshop once a week.”
Wyatt nodded slowly. “Sweet old man. Beck’s like the Pied Piper of lost souls.”
“Grandpa Joe makes a damn fine cup of coffee too,” Eli added.
Mr. Truitt? I sat back, stunned at the story. Yet not. I thought about his volunteering with the foster kids. Other than avoiding commitment, he really was a nice guy. One you could lean on. Count on, even though he might deny it.
“That’s not to say Beck didn’t do something idiotic,” Gray said. “But he’s not an emotional wasteland.”
Margo leaned forward, staring Gray in the face. “He didn’t just do something idiotic, buddy. Your caring brother stabbed Sam in the back.”
The brothers looked at each other, sudden awareness with a tinge of guilt splashed across their faces. “You’re talking about the job your father offered him.”
“You know, it doesn’t matter. I hope he enjoys working for my father.”
“How could he? When there’s no way he wants to work at Devine and Sons.”
“Then why didn’t he tell old D.U.D. to stuff it?” Margo didn’t mince words. Especially when she was looking out for me. “Why’d he say he was interested? Maybe you’re the ones who don’t know Beck.”
“Our brother takes being the oldest very seriously. Maybe too seriously. Suffice it to say, a few years ago, SBC took out a loan,” Wyatt said. “Your father just bought it up.”
“If Beck takes the job with your father, your daddy has promised to tear up the loan and Six Brothers Construction can go on—only without Beck.” Gray’s eyes narrowed on me. “If he doesn’t take the job—your father will call in the loan and SBC is done.”
“That’s unbelievable,” I said. My brain was trying to wrap my head around the whole crazy situation. I couldn’t.
“Believe it. Or don’t.” Eli pushed away from the table, anger on his face. “I’m out.”
I watched him walk out, the front doors clanging noisily behind him.
“Let me guess, you can’t believe your daddy would do something like that.” Gray stood too, pulling Wyatt along with him. “Well, now you know. Come on, Wyatt.”
Wyatt hesitated a second or two, his gaze sharp as he considered me. “Sam, Beck isn’t trying to hurt you; he’s trying to save us.”
Chapter 30
Beckett
“So explain this one more time, Beck.” Ash sat in Wyatt’s chair, his booted feet resting up on his desk while Wyatt paced the room, tossing a distracted look at Ash’s boots every so often.
“No. I went over it all last night. We’ve all had time to think it over. Repeating it isn’t going to change what he offered.” Like I hadn’t already turned it around and around in my own head.
“Offered? Pretty sure the word you’re looking for is threatened.” Eli was the weathervane of all the brothers. He was the most laid back and easy-going. So if he was pissed, it meant everyone was pissed, and Eli was pissed.
“The point is as of right now, it’s the fastest way, if not the only way, out of this.” I sat back in my chair at the conference table, tensely waiting for my brothers to get on board. “I think this is the best plan moving forward.”
“Slow the fuck down, Beck. You don’t need to jump on this so quickly. You’re almost too damn eager to my mind,” Gray said.
“Eager? Why the fuck is everyone acting like I’m happy about this? If it were just me, I’d already have told Devine to shove it.” My brothers needed more time to wrap their heads around this. Totally my fault. Got it. But the loan was big and getting bigger in our rear-view mirror every day. “The thing is, it’s not just me. And right now, this is the only way out I see that will protect you and keep SBC intact.”
“I don’t like it,” Eli said. “Not one bit. I don’t like the idea of you leaving. In fact, I think we should vote.”
Gray nodded. “I second a vote.”
“A vote for what? At some point we have to deal with this.” Yes, I realized the irony. I knew I’d hidden this, kept my brothers in the dark on this for too long.
“Ya think, bro?” Eli did
n’t pull punches. Ever. You knew where you stood with Eli.
“I’m sorry.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I can’t say it enough. I fucked up. And even if my heart was in the right place, it was an idiotic move. In all honesty, though, I can’t say I’d do it any differently. Ugly as that loan is—it’s what helped get Six Brothers Construction off the ground and helped us grow our business.”
“Fair enough,” Ash said. “None of us were in your shoes, so this isn’t a judgment, Beck. Hell, maybe we were all too young and immature for you to consult us back then, but that doesn’t change the fact that we wish we’d done this together. So you didn’t have to face it alone. And that’s the problem with you keeping up this solitary role of bearing all the weight of our success. That shit’s got to stop right now.”
“I second that,” Gray said.
“You can’t second something that wasn’t up for a vote,” Eli said.
“I just did, so I believe I proved you wrong.”
“Fine, then I third it.” Eli nodded at me. “You’ve got to let go, Beck. You can’t control everything. You’ve got to trust enough to share the burden, bro.”
“I get it. I do. It won’t be easy, but I’m going to make a concerted effort to be more open about everything. No more handling things on my own. But—”
“No, Beck. There’s no exception this time either.” Wyatt shook his head. “You can’t take the job with Devine. I don’t care what he threatens you with, but we’ll think up some other way to deal with this.”
Something loosened in my chest. The tight coil of steel wrapped up around my lungs, pulling tighter and tighter the last few months as the due date on the loan loomed closer, finally snapped and I could breathe.
“Some other way like letting me use some of my money?” Ash moved his gaze around at all of us, thinking he could intimidate us into accepting it this time.
“No,” Eli, Wyatt, and Gray all chorused. I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t willing to let Ash make that sacrifice. Hell, Ash had already had three concussions in his career. One more and his career could be over.
“You know, after the way Lila’s place came together and the buzz I heard around the open house yesterday, it’s very possible we’ll get enough exposure to help us out of this,” Ash said. “This fundraiser tonight draws in some high-rollers. You could walk away with a few jobs as big as Lila’s, if not bigger.”
“That’s the hope. The only thing is any profits from future jobs won’t help make the first six months of payments,” Wyatt said. “And I feel the need to point out if a rumor got out that SBC was in trouble, nothing scares away customers faster.”
“Right. Plus I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to call the loan due.” Gray ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “We need a solution now.”
I hated the timing of it all, but no sense getting excited about something only to have a cold bucket of reality thrown in your face.
“Okay, so, we’re agreed. I’ll put Devine off for as long as I can and hope to hell we find an undiscovered or creative way out of this.” This whole thing couldn’t be off all our shoulders soon enough. “I vote we’re done talking about it for now.”
“Seconded!” Eli agreed.
“Gray, how did the meetings with potential clients go this week?” It felt good to get back to our regular routine. Here’s hoping we’d get to keep the business we’d worked so hard for.
“Holy shit, Beckett. Lila’s job can’t wrap up soon enough, so you can take your job back. I hate sales.” Gray shoved his chair back and stomped over to the window before turning back. “Tell me you turn some jobs down when you go to these things.”
“Sure.” I raised my eyebrows at his over-the-top reaction. “Occasionally a potential client raises a red flag, and I don’t bid for a job. But there has to be major red flags, like they’ve taken a builder that I know is reliable to small claims court. Or they’ve been through more than one other reno firm on the same job. Or they come off as just plain crazy. I usually try not to turn away people wanting to pay us money though.”
“There you go. One woman was plain crazy.”
Eli grinned. “Cat hoarder? Nudist? Wanted everything white?”
“No. None of that, but I just know she’s a ball-buster,” Gray said. I doubted Gray would know from a one-hour sales meeting that a woman was a ball-buster. More likely she didn’t fall for his renowned charm, and it threw him off his game. Gray liked easy women. I’m not talking about women who sleep around, although he does like them too. I’m talking about women who are easy to get along with. No conflicts, no friction, nothing that makes you engage your emotions. Yes, we Thorne men were a piece of work.
“Did you put in a bid?” Wyatt asked.
“Nope. She said she wanted to talk to a few other construction companies first. And by ‘a few’ I’m guessing she means thirty. If she calls back, she’ll be your problem, Beck. I recommend we pass on that one. Contessa Madigan. Mark her down as a hard pass.”
“Me thinks the man doth protest too much.” Ash laughed. “Did you already shag her in the sales pitch?”
“Fuck off, Ash.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll make a note of it,” I said, trying to control my laughter. “Anything else we need to discuss?”
“I picked up everyone’s tuxes for tonight,” Wyatt said. “They’re hanging up in Gray’s office closet.”
“You got me the baby blue tux, right? I’m going retro.” Yes, Eli was uniquely comfortable in his own skin.
“Thanks, Wy.” I gave him a nod. “Tonight’s the big payoff, so it goes without saying, try to talk to as many people as you can tonight. Okay, if that’s it—”
“We ran into Sam this morning at breakfast,” Gray threw out casually. “Why didn’t you tell us you two were no longer an item?”
“First, Sam and I were never an item. Second, I didn’t realize I needed to make an announcement. I don’t recall getting informed about your last break-up, Gray. Or Ash’s. Or even Eli’s. Wyatt doesn’t even let us know when or if he dates, so excuse me if I didn’t let you know about something that never was.” Yes, I was being a jerk, but in my defense, I still got a sharp slicing pain in my chest when I thought about Sam.
“Whoa, sounds like you hit a nerve, Gray,” Eli said. “For not being an item, there’s a lot of passion in that denial. Plus I ate one coconut custard pie that says otherwise.”
“Aw, hell. Leave him alone,” Gray said. If any brother was going to back me up when it came to clinging to the single life, it was Gray. “He can figure out his own damn woman problems. Besides, if they were never an item, he won’t care that Sam disappeared because her little sister, Jane, called crying, so she dropped everything to go help her. It’s a nothing-burger to Beck.”
“Excuse me?” Why the hell wouldn’t Sam have simply told me she needed to help her sister? “I need details.”
“So you do care?” Thank God Ash skipped the I-told-you-so speech and moved on. “Don’t know any more details, but I figured someone who puts family first—who’s there for a sister when she needs it, willing to drop everything on a moment’s notice to help—that sounds a damn lot like my big brother.”
Sam hadn’t abandoned me on Thanksgiving. She’d disappeared to take care of her little sister. She’d put her sister’s well-being before her own. I understood that. That was love you could count on. Love I could count on if I was brave enough to take the risk.
My whole adult life, I’d avoided taking risks. I calculated and thought through everything before I made a move. The only time I’d leaped was with the damn loan, and that sure seemed like a modern-day fable on playing it safe.
The more important question was—did I want to live without Sam in my life? Hell, no. The last five months had been damn excellent. Even in the early days when we sparred and traded barbs on a daily basis. I smiled, rememberin
g those days. Things got sweeter when we’d taken it to the next level. And it wasn’t just the sex. It was the time in between. The laughter, the late-night conversations, the companionship, the feeling of sharing a journey with someone I really, really liked. Maybe more. Probably more. Okay, definitely more. I felt my grin slide into a smile.
“Aaaand… I believe we have liftoff,” Eli said off to my side. “You going after her? I’ve got a blanket you can use to throw over her head so we can take her up to the mountains until the pass opens in spring.”
“What the fuck, Eli?” Wyatt blinked over at him.
“That’s my fault,” Ash said. “I made him watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers last week.”
“Great date movie,” Gray said. “But back to Beck. Want my advice?”
“Sure.” Not really. Gray was worse than I was when it came to women, so I couldn’t imagine he had much to offer me in this situation.
“Stop playing it safe. If you were willing to take a risk for us, then for God’s sake take a risk for yourself. I like Sam. I like how you are around her. It’s like you finally let go of all your worries around her, and Lord knows, you do like to worry. You relax around her and let yourself have fun. So I vote you go after her.”
“Seconded.” Eli grinned and winked at me.
Maybe I needed to widen this whole trust thing my brothers were insisting on. Maybe it was time to open up and let Sam in past the protective wall I’d built around myself.
Take a risk for yourself. I needed to talk to Sam.
“I’ll see you tonight at the gala.” I pushed my chair back abruptly, almost upending it.
“Are you going after her or not?” Ash asked.
“I’m just going to talk. But in case I make things worse, get the wagon and blanket ready.”
Chapter 31
Samantha
It was an hour before the gala started, and it felt like someone was making taffy in my stomach, pulling in every direction. I couldn’t stand in one place either. I’d walked through Lila’s house twice now, looking for anything out of place, rearranging cut flowers, and buffing fingerprints off any glass surface they dared to show up on.
