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“I’m hardly likely to kick over the traces with my family. Well, except with Grandda. He’d no doubt manage something that would land us behind bars.”
Logan grinned. “True enough. Then go to a party or spend a night out with your friends. You do have friends, right?”
“I’ll have you know that I have at least one friend, possibly two. And speaking of Angus, I assume he’s been complaining about me again.”
“They’ve been here for over a week, Braden,” his brother gently replied. “And they’ve hardly seen you.”
Braden winced at the dead hit. “I’m sorry about that. I promise I’ll spend more time with them over the holidays.”
“I’ll hold you to that promise, if for no other reason than to get Angus off my back. The old fellow’s bored, I reckon. Joseph is hard at work at his studies, and even Pippa can’t keep him amused all day. You have to do your bit, old son, before he drives us all demented.”
“Perhaps I can take him to a nice dissection.”
His brother laughed. “He’d probably enjoy it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. So I’ll take him for a tour of the college library. There are some fairly gruesome medical exhibits there that should satisfy his bloodthirsty tendencies.”
“We would all be in your debt.” Logan started to flip through the ledger. “Now, what have we here?”
“Financial records for the Penwith Charitable Foundation.”
Logan brought his spectacles down to his nose. “And why am I looking at them?”
“Because there’s something wrong in there.”
“Can you elaborate?”
Braden rubbed his jaw. “Actually, I haven’t a clue.”
Logan shut the ledger. “I think you’d better start at the beginning. Why do you have these in the first place?”
Braden had prepared for this question, of course. “Lady Samantha Penwith fears that someone, either a staff person or a board member, has been less than honest when it comes to foundation business.”
“That’s helpful,” Logan sardonically replied. “Since you just joined the bloody Penwith Foundation, why the hell areyoudoing this?” He took off his spectacles. “Braden, what aren’t you telling me?”
Naturally, he’d been prepared for that question, too.
“If it seems like I’m withholding information—”
“You clearly are.”
“It’s because I promised Lady Samantha that I would be discreet.”
“Are you seriously saying that you don’t trust me?” his brother demanded.
“Dolt, of course I’m not. But much of this involves Samantha’s—”
Logan’s eyebrows shot up.
“Lady Samantha’s personal life,” Braden corrected. “Despite my absolute trust in you, I’m not at liberty to divulge as much as I would obviously prefer.”
His brother had a remarkable gaze—a clear, penetrating blue that Braden swore could almost drill a hole in a man’s brain. Logan had reduced any number of blustering, arrogant fellows to babbling incoherence with that gaze alone. It was an ability he shared with Nick, and they’d used it to extract legions of embarrassing admissions from their younger brothers over the years.
Now that lethally sharp gaze was trained on Braden. Keeping secrets was practically a mortal sin in the Kendrick family, because long-buried secrets had inflicted a great deal of damage on all of them over the years. As a result, family members now did their best to be honest with each other, sometimes ruthlessly or even comically so.
Still, there were secrets that he wasn’t ready to share, including Samantha’s.
“You can leave off at any time,” Braden said. “Unlike most of the blockheads you deal with, I’m immune to your attempts at intimidation.”
