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He cut me off with a chuckle and said, “I can see that’s what you want me to believe, Row. We’ll end it at that.”
Maybe it was because the three of us had been inseparable as kids.
Maybe it was because when my parents had fought—and they’d fought a lot—the only thing we had was each other.
Maybe it was because as we’d gotten older, we were more than just family; we were best friends.
But Rhett was looking right through me.
And there was nothing I could do to stop him.
“I—” My voice cut off once again, this time from the sound of the door opening, my father walking in with our assistant.
She placed my coffee in front of me while my father took a seat at the head of the table, the door then closing behind her as she left.
Dad’s hands landed on the wood with a sharp, almost-startling bang. “We have a problem.”
He looked at Rhett, then Ridge before his eyes landed on mine.
They didn’t move on.
They stayed locked.
And as the silence thickened in the room, so did his stare.
It grew more intense.
He wasn’t looking through me, like my brothers. He didn’t have that ability.
What he was doing was letting everyone in this room know that the problem—somehow, someway—lay within me.
It felt like an eternity before the wrinkles around his eyes deepened, the ends of his fingers turned white, and his lips finally parted. “And it’s a big fucking problem.”
NINE
Cooper
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ford asked the second I answered my phone, his calm voice coming through my speakers as I weaved my way through the thick LA traffic.
Talk about it, talk about it, I silently repeated in my head.
“I have no idea what the hell you mean,” I told him.
“You told me you were going to call me back seven hours ago. You’re normally a one-hour-tops kind of guy”—he laughed—“and since it’s been so long, I figured I’d give you a call and see if you were alive and if you were all right and if you wanted to talk about it.”
The youngest Dalton brother was one of my closest friends and golfing partner. There was just something about Ford that I really dug. He had this cool, chill demeanor. He wasn’t hotheaded or conceited, which I appreciated, given how successful he was. He knew his worth and what he could bring to the table, and he felt no need to broadcast it.
“Fuuuck,” I groaned. “I sent that text seven hours ago? I honestly just forgot.” I sighed. “Yeah, it’s been a hell of a day.” Iturned at the light. “But it was my first day back at the office after my trip, so I assumed it was going to be a bitch, and I was proven right.” I flipped on my blinker and switched lanes. “Things good with you, my man? What did you want to discuss anyway?”
“All is good. I called to see how you were doing now that you’re back. I was disappointed you weren’t at Jenner’s on Christmas Eve. So was Everly—she loves having all her uncles around. And I know we texted a bit while you were in Canada, but I wanted to see how things went since we didn’t get to discuss it in detail.”
Ford worked with Jenner at The Dalton Group, but each brother—along with their cousins, Hannah and Camden—focused on a different kind of law. Ford was an estate attorney, and he managed my will and trust. And even though he saw Jenner multiple times a day at the office and was in with the Spades, that didn’t mean he was privy to what was going on in our professional world.
When it came to the Spades, Jenner said nothing to his family unless it was absolutely necessary.
“On a personal front, things went well,” I told him, pausing. “Ford, I met a woman.”
“You’re shitting me?”
