Carson returned the elbow, making his brother howl and scramble to the far side of the couch. He was used to the physical and mental bullying that being the younger brother entailed, but he’d learned to fight back a long time ago. Now that they were in their thirties, it hadn’t changed much. “You said to find the money. You didn’t say where. Now, will you let it go so we can watch the movie?”
Graham scowled and picked up his beer from the coffee table. “Fine.”
Brooks grabbed the remote from Graham and hit the play button. As the opening credits were still playing, Graham studied his bottle and said, “You know, Gerty would whup our asses for drinking this highbrow beer.”
This time, Carson snorted aloud. He was right. Gerty preferred to watch her movies with a plain Hershey’s bar and a can of classic Budweiser. If she’d still been alive, she’d have given them a hard time over their fancy new lives, including the small-batch artisanal brew they bought downtown.
“I miss Gerty,” Brooks said, pausing the movie just as the grainy black-and-white images of San Francisco came onto the screen.
“I miss Mom,” Carson added.
The three brothers sat together in silence for a moment, acknowledging everything that they’d lost. Their mother’s death had been so sudden, and their lives so busy, that they’d hardly had the time to sit and let the reality of her death hit them. They were alone now, except for each other. It was a sad thought, one Carson had tried to avoid. It sent his mind spiraling down into rabbit holes.
“When are we going to clean out her house?” Graham asked.
That was a task they’d also avoided. They’d had their mother’s housekeeper throw away all the perishables and close the house up until they were able to deal with her things. Eight weeks had gone by and none of them had even set foot in their mother’s home.
Brooks sighed. “We have to do it eventually. We can’t leave her house sitting there like some kind of old shrine.”
“I’ll do it,” Carson volunteered. The words slipped out so suddenly he surprised even himself. “Just let me take care of this land deal first. I have a feeling I’ll have my hands full with Sutton for a while.”
“Are you sure?” Brooks looked at him with his blond brows furrowed in concern. “You don’t have to do it by yourself.”
Carson shook his head. “You two don’t have time. Besides, I want to. Maybe being around her things will make me feel less...”
“Alone?”
He turned and looked at Brooks. “Maybe.”
“Do you think...” Graham began, then hesitated. “Do you think we might find something about our father among her things?”
Carson had wondered the same thing several times, but hadn’t allowed himself to speak the words out loud. “Mom wouldn’t want us to find him.”
“Mom doesn’t get a vote anymore,” Brooks argued. “Our father might be the royal bastard she always told us he was, but he’s not the only one out there we might find. We might have siblings, cousins, grandparents... It’s possible that we have a whole family out there that would be worth the effort to track down. Don’t you want to know where we come from? We would finally be able to fill out our family tree. I know Mom tried to keep us from finding out the truth, but with her gone, I don’t think she’d want us to feel as isolated as we do.”
“We can at least try,” Graham added. “If we find something we can use, great. If not, well, at least we can say we tried. It might be a stupid move that we’ll regret, but at least we’ll finally know for ourselves, right?”
His brothers were right. Carson knew it. They all felt a sense of not belonging. Finding where they came from, even if they didn’t get the happy family reunion they all secretly hoped for, would give them closure. They’d always wonder if they didn’t find out the truth. Since their parents hadn’t married and his name was left off their birth certificates, cleaning out their mother’s house might be the only chance they had to uncover a clue. After that, their only leads would be in the landfill.
“I’ll keep my eyes open, okay?” Carson finally agreed. “If I find something we can use, I’ll let you know.”
The brothers nodded in agreement, and Brooks picked up the remote again to start the movie for the third and final time.
“Mr. Newport? Miss Adams is here to see you, sir.”
Carson reached out to his phone and hit the button to respond to Rebecca. “Please send her in.”
The door to his office opened a minute later and Georgia stepped inside. Her platinum-blond hair was pulled back into a bun today, highlighting her high cheekbones and sharp chin. She was wearing a pewter pantsuit that very nearly matched the color of her steely gray eyes.
Carson had tried not to pay that much attention to how Georgia looked most days, but he usually failed. She was a fashionable woman who knew exactly what she should wear to highlight her outrageous curves. As her boss, he shouldn’t notice she was built like a brick house. He shouldn’t care that she wore a shiny lip gloss that made her pouty bottom lip call out to him.
And yet he couldn’t stop himself. Kissing her in the field the other day had made it that much harder. Now he knew how those curves felt beneath his palms and that the lip gloss she wore was strawberry flavored. The feeling was ten times worse than it ever was before, and if there was a time he needed to focus on work and not on how badly he wanted his director of public relations, it was now.
“Any word?” she asked as she came across the room and settled into his guest chair.
“I spoke with the sellers directly this morning. They’ve still not made a decision. I told them to give us the chance to counter their offer before they choose someone else. That doesn’t mean that Winchester won’t do the same thing, bidding us up to well outside our top price.”
“I hate this waiting game,” Georgia said.
Carson sat back in his leather executive chair and brought his fingertips pensively to his lips. “Me, too. What other avenues can we pursue while we wait?”
“Well,” Georgia began as she lifted her tablet and started tapping on the screen. “First, I think we should try talking to Winchester.”
Carson put his coffee mug back down on his desk, happy he hadn’t had a mouthful of steaming hot liquid to spit out when she made her suggestion. “Talk to Winchester? Are you serious?”
Georgia shrugged. “Why not? Surely the man can be reasoned with. This project is to help sick children. How could he possibly be against sick children?”
Carson chuckled and shook his head. “You obviously haven’t met the son of a bitch yet. Did you know he refers to himself as the King of Chicago? A man with that kind of ego isn’t going to back down for anything. Contacting him will just tip him off to the fact that we’re his competition. He’ll drive up the price just to watch us squirm.”
“You don’t think he already knows?” Georgia asked. “If we know he’s bid, I’m sure he’s got enough spies to know we have, as well. What he may not know is what we plan to do with the land. That might make a difference and get him to back down.”
Carson put his elbows on his desk, leaned forward and gave her a wry smile. “You really are an optimist, aren’t you?”
An odd expression came across her face, her brows pinching together in thought. “I guess you could say that. Sometimes there’s nowhere to go but up,” she responded cryptically.
He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, but he knew she was right. It