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“At least the good parts,” Zac said.
Dare snickered under his breath. “I’ve seen him at the negotiating table, Z, he’s got some of Dad’s tougher qualities too.”
“So? I pair it with Mom’s charm,” Logan said.
“Or try to,” Leo added.
“Are you looking for a fight?” Logan asked.
“Yes. I’m not you. I can’t go out there and be all broody, I have to be the one who’s smiling and friendly. But I don’t want Nick Williams as a brother. The man has a reputation that’s almost as bad as yours, Logan.”
“Now we know why,” Dare said. “He’s a victim just like us. From what Zac said, Nick seemed blindsided by the announcement too.”
“This is a complete cluster f—”
“Watch your language, boys. There’s a lady in the room,” Mari called out as she entered. Their sister wore her blond hair flowing past her shoulders to the middle of her back. She looked like she’d just stepped off the runway at Fashion Week instead of the ferry, and the smile on her face was genuine and not forced the way it used to be before she’d fallen in love with Inigo Velasquez.
Everyone turned to greet and hug her. Logan went last. He and Mari had always been close due to their relationship with their father.
“So, Dad did it again,” Mari said. “I knew that affair he got busted for before I was born couldn’t have been the only one.”
“Yeah, so what are we going to do about Nick?” Dare asked. “Carlton and Mom and Dad will deal with the outside world.”
“I had dinner with Nick the other night. I’ll be the one to feel him out and see what he wants,” Zac said.
Yeah, of course, they’d have to see what Nick wanted.
Logan had arrived on Nantucket prepared to play nice all weekend with his business rival and archenemy Nick Williams. Only because the bastard was marrying Logan’s cousin by marriage, Adler Osborn. She was his mom’s only niece. Adler’s mother had died when she was a toddler—and his mom had assumed the role of mother to her. He adored his cousin, but thought she had horrid taste in men.
He was still reflecting on her horrid taste in men three hours later in the bar at the hotel. The wedding guests were gathering on the beach for a clambake with all the wedding attendees for the weekend’s festivities. Apparently, the wedding was still on. Logan sat sullenly in the bar—he could admit when he was being a brat—until he saw Quinn Murray walk through the lobby.
His college lover—and the producer in charge of filming Adler’s celebrity wedding for a television network. He hadn’t expected to feel anything when he saw her. But there she was walking through the hotel like she owned the place. There was no mistaking her long red hair and her brown eyes, which had a way of boring past the bullshit he used to charm most people to the truth beneath his comments. And of course, that petite, curvy body of hers that no matter how many lovers there had been since they’d been a couple, he couldn’t forget.
She was the one woman he’d never been able to charm or figure out. There was something about her that mesmerized him. And he hated that. He prided himself on seeing a problem and solving it. And tonight, when his entire world was off its axis, he could use the distraction that Quinn would provide.
He wasn’t kidding himself that she’d fall back into bed with him—that wasn’t Quinn’s way—but she’d give him the distraction he needed. He told the bartender to put his drinks on his tab and followed her out into the summer evening.
Quinn was already on the path that led down to the shore, moving quickly, as if in a hurry. When wasn’t she? She was just as ambitious as he was and had never let anything throw her off her path—even their brief love affair. She’d said he was too driven for her, but she had always had the same drive.
When he got to the beach, Zac and Nick were drunkenly singing and looking over at Adler and Iris. The last thing Logan wanted to do was get to know his new half sibling. He and Nick were business rivals of the worst kind, both always trying to one-up the other. Zac had somehow come back from Australia, where he’d been training for the America’s Cup to start his own team and raise money to fund his next Cup run, and, in the course of a week, managed to start dating Iris, who was smart, sophisticated, and seemed to enthrall his normally free-spirited brother. He shook his head.
The Nick thing.
How the hell was he going to be cordial to a man whose business he was planning to undercut? How the hell was he going to convince everyone that he’d put those plans in motion a long time ago and that they couldn’t be stopped? How the hell—
“So, you’ve got a new brother,” Quinn said, breaking into his thoughts. “That must have thrown you for about half a second.”
He glanced over at her. In the shadowy light from the clambake he could barely make out the freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose and her cheeks.
“Yeah, not what I was expecting to deal with today,” he said acerbically.
“I figured. You probably were coming in all magnanimous and then—wham! Your enemy is actually your brother.”
“Is there a point to all of this, Quinn?”
“Nah, just seeing if you are rattled or ticked or have already figured this out and made a plan to manage it,” she said. “Plus, you looked a bit like Heathcliff staring broodingly over at Nick and Zac.”
“You like Heathcliff,” he said. She liked books with angst and drama in them.
