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Chapter 1
Cameron
Maybe I had a hero complex—some white knight syndrome bullshit that had always been ingrained in me, or maybe I shouldered more weight than necessary—but I could not physically imagine anything worse than having to let down the women in my life.
And I had a lot of them.
No wife or girlfriend, which was probably for the best. But I had a metric fuck ton of sisters (I had four, but it felt like three times as many most days), and they kept me on my toes just enough that it was impossible to make room for anyone else who might make a greater claim on my already massive sense of responsibility.
The street corner outside my hotel in Portland bustled—cars and people and the energy of a larger city that usually made me avoid them. At that moment, though, I wanted those city noises to be just a bit louder.
Maybe they’d drown out all the shit in my head.
I stared down at my phone with a grim set to my mouth and an imaginary elephant crowding to make room on my shoulders. Two elephants, actually.
In fact, I’d prefer if someone popped in front of me and took a crowbar to my junk so that I could have a pleasant distraction from the task that awaited me.
Maybe I wasn’t the eldest son in the family, but I was the one running the family business, the one proclaiming our last name proudly, and I just lost us a massive contract that would’ve kept us busy for at least eighteen months.
If I thought too hard about all the jobs we’d said no to for this one…
No.
I couldn’t go there.
Waiting for my business partner—and sister—to pick up the phone, the elephants gained a few friends until I couldn’t believe I was still standing for how they pressed down all around me.
Greer picked up on the next ring. “Sorry, I was finishing up on the other line. How’d the meeting go?”
I rubbed my forehead. “Not great.”
Loaded silence greeted my tight response.
Greer and I had worked together for too long for me to fake any sort of pleasantries—we’d been running Wilder Homes since we were in our early twenties. She handled the design side of things, most of the initial client interactions that locked in the schedule, and kept the communication flowing while I oversaw the construction crew, managed all the subcontractors, and built the damn houses.
And in rare cases like this, I attended an important client meeting that was about to blow the foreseeable future to fucking pieces.
“What happened?” she asked.
Before answering, I pushed my tongue into the side of my cheek and stared up at the long stretch of windows covering my hotel from the night before.
Greer booked my travel, picking an older hotel with interesting architecture, curved stonework around the windows, and eclectic decor inside. She picked it, no doubt, because she knew I’d stay somewhere cheap and nondescript, and then I’d be annoyed when I had to drive farther through downtown traffic for my meeting.
Well … I was already annoyed because a few short days ago, newspapers across the Pacific Northwest broke with the story that our client was facing allegations ranging from tax evasion to sexual assault.
Not the kind of person I’d willingly enter into business with.
But it wasn’t just about me.
And because I was a masochist, I dredged up the faces of every person who worked for us, my mind racing of how we could make this right for them.
You know, considering I didn’t know how to give them work.
Greer wanted to know what happened? I blew out a harsh breath.
“Our schedule is suddenly wide open,” I told her.
“Shit,” she muttered. “So the story was true?”
