Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 83070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
“Wait,” I say before he can flee.
I grab one of Tate’s business cards and a pen off his desk. I scribble my name and contact information on the back and hand it to Gannon.
“When you have a moment to consider my offer and inevitably change your mind, call me. Email me. Text me,” I say. “I’m here for you.”
He doesn’t look at the slip of paper before shoving it in his jacket pocket … of the suit he’s about to have laundered. Then he looks over my head.
“Tate, I’ll add the new operations meeting date to your calendar.”
“Fabulous,” Tate says.
“Don’t you want to leave your clothes …” I call out, but the door slams before I’m finished.
Dammit.
There goes solving my problem this afternoon. But if his smirk earlier was anything to go by, I’ll take a note from the Brewer playbook.
I’ll change tactics and press on until I get what I want.
I might be down, but I’m not out.
Chapter Three
Gannon
“You need to ask Jason to set you up with a loyalty rewards program,” I say, sorting the mail Kylie dropped off while I was in meetings this afternoon. “Ghana last month. Ireland next week. You’re quite the little jetsetter.”
Mom laughs through the speakerphone on my desk. “There’s nothing wrong with living your life. I just wish I would’ve started sooner. Hint. Hint.”
“It loses its subtlety when you say hint hint.”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”
I smile. “I live my life, Mother. Just because I’m not flying across the world on fancy vacations doesn’t mean I don’t have an enjoyable existence.”
“When’s the last time you took a vacation, Gannon Reid?”
“Ooh, middle name. You’re serious.”
“I am serious,” she says. “You’re forty years old, and all you do is work.”
“Hmm. I wonder where I learned that from?” I pause, listening to her groan. “That question was rhetorical, by the way.”
As the eldest Brewer son, I was born with a particular set of expectations. And if I forgot them while riding bikes or playing with action figures, my father was right there to remind me that I was failing him. Not failing the expectations. Failing him.
All I wanted to do was please the man. I played baseball because he did. I learned everything I could about cars because that was the only thing we could discuss that didn’t involve business. I combed my hair to the right despite my cowlick all through elementary school and joined the math club despite hating math—I even tried to make myself left-handed like my dad.
But the older I got, the more I realized that being like Reid Brewer wasn’t a compliment, and I tried to erase all the traits I purposely tried to attain. Some of them stuck. One of those sticky habits is working too much.
“Are you coming back to Nashville any time soon?” I ask.
“Yes, of course. I need some baby Arlo snuggles.” Mom laughs. “Who would’ve thought Renn would be the first of you to have a baby?”
“Me.”
“Really? I thought it would be you.”
I ignore the twist in my stomach and, instead, chuckle for her benefit. “That shows how little you know your children.”
“That’s not very nice.”
I leaf through a finance report. “Renn was a professional athlete. He was fucking women on different continents for years. You’re lucky he doesn’t have a dozen offspring scattered across the planet.”
“Don’t say fucking in a sentence with your siblings. It’s … disturbing.”
“Although with all your traveling lately, you could continent-hop and visit your grandchildren.”
“Gannon, that isn’t funny.”
“We must have different senses of humor.” I pause to study last month’s payroll numbers. “Is this what you called for? To tell me you’re heading to Ireland and will only come back home to see Arlo? If so, noted.”
“No, you little shit. I called to check on you. To see how you’re doing.”
“Same shit, different day.”
She sighs. “Gannon, please humor me.”
“What do you want from me?” I sigh, setting down the report. “I had an omelet for breakfast. Traffic was congested on Franklin Avenue this morning, so I was six minutes late for a call. My favorite socks didn’t come back from the dry cleaner last week, and I’m still pissed about that. But now I have to stop there on my way home and drop off my suit because one of Tate’s friends spilled a drink all over me this afternoon.”
Though I fight it, a grin slips across my lips.
“Do you want to see my cleavage?”
Carys Johnson, you little minx.
I’ve had my eye on that woman since the first day I saw her. Tate was home from college for the weekend and brought Carys along. I happened to pop by Mom’s while they were there—and then went straight home to jack off.
She has curves that I want to sink my hands into. Lips that I want to kiss. I want to devour every part of her body and then do it over and over and over again.