AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nope,” I said. “Just a known dickhead.”
We walked toward each other, but each of us stopped a couple of feet away from each other. “You trying to copy me, little brother?” Blake ran a hand over his beard.
Mine was twice as bushy as his. “I think I’ve outgrown you.”
I’d have to remember to ask Sal if she could send my barber in the jet to get me tomorrow.
I shoved one hand in the pocket of my jeans. “Listen, Blake, I’m sorry—“
“No,” he said, cutting me off. Then he walked toward me and pulled me into the kind of brotherly hug I hadn’t known I’d missed until it was here. “It doesn’t matter, Mitch. We all do what we need to do to survive.”
“Hey Winona,” he said when he pulled back.
Winona had stepped out of the car and had a hand up in greeting. “Hey Blake.” She straightened her coat, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Cass in there?”
The passenger door opened and Cass got out. She waved, but walked to Winona, embracing her as if it was totally normal that her plumber had been in my car. But there was something about the way Cass pulled Winona quietly aside that had me jerking my gaze to Blake.
“What’s happened?”
Something was wrong, I knew it.
“Is it Mom?” My chest tightened.
Blake shook his head. “She’s fine. It’s Dad. He’s gone, Mitch.”
Chapter 9
Winona
SIX WEEKS LATER
“Yes, leather seats, pad Thai, a paraffin hand wax and… what else…”
“My god,” Sarah said on the screen. “What else?”
I laughed. “Oh, the fact that I’m video calling you from a kajillion feet up in the sky?”
“Right,” Sarah said. She glanced somewhere off camera. She was on site at the Rolling Hills, and apparently things had been going relatively smoothly for the past few weeks.
I didn’t tell her I’d had a chat with Jamie’s son Seamus a few days after Jamie’s blow-up in her office back in September.
“Everything okay down there?” I asked. “At the reno, I mean. Cher’s told me a little about it, but she hasn’t let me sit in on more than the weekly staff meetings since we started the paperwork.”
“She’s doing that for you, you know,” Sarah said.
“I know.”
Cher had been firm about me stepping back from Heartbreaker.
Just like I’d asked her to be.
And just like Mitchell had suggested.
After the incident in the road, where Cass had explained to me what had happened to his father, Mitchell had parked outside my house.
“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “I just… I need some time to process, and I don’t want… I don’t want our last moments together to be sad, Winona.”
