“Play to your strengths, Kyle. You’re the face of Hunt Club. Do you think for a second that if I had the clock-stopper you wear every day, I’d want to do what I do? Hell no. You’ve always been the beauty. I’ve always been the brains. Do you think the public wants to see this ugly mug when they think of an adult lifestyle brand?” He pointed to his own face. “We need your billion-dollar abs. Leave the desk-jockeying to me and enjoy the good life as nature intended.”
“The good life? Hmm. Funny, it didn’t seem so great when that redhead—what’s her name?”
“Kate? From the New York agency.”
“She tried to set me on fire.”
Nate followed up his breathy snort with a shrug. “Redheads.” He ran a finger inside the neck of his tie, loosening it a few inches. “Kyle…the deal.”
“The position is yours.”
Nate smiled in that lippy, gaping way he did that always reminded Kyle of a filter-feeding whale shark, only instead of krill, his gaping maw collected entrepreneurial opportunities. He had to hand it to his brother—what Nate lacked in attractiveness, he made up for in cunning. Could premature hair loss be triggered by a hot-running brain?
“I’ll call the transition team and have them prepare the necessary documents for overnight delivery.”
“Two things. One, Dad’s still alive. Two, we are in the middle of nowhere. Unless you plan to go medieval and have the lawyer send the papers by carrier pigeon, it’s going to have to wait. Relax. There’s no hurry.” Hell, the tiny town of Red Grove had one grocery store, and it doubled as a bait and tackle shop.
“It won’t be long, though. The doctor said any minute now.” Nate’s brown eyes shifted, fixing on their father’s lumbering chest. “We should get the paperwork started.”
Although the lip-smacking and carcass-circling didn’t exactly surprise Kyle, his patience with his brother waned. Unrestrained ambition made for hasty decisions in the heat of the moment. Kyle preferred a more deliberate approach. Estranged or not, the man between them shared their DNA—one of the few things Kyle had in common with his brother. He deserved respect.
“I’d like to experience these last moments with our father minus the paperwork. It. Can. Wait.” After everything, he couldn’t exactly muster true grief for the loss of this man, but he did feel…something, if only regret that they’d never been a real family. He would have liked that. He wanted that.
Nate shifted in his chair. “Why do you think he chose to come out here to die anyway? I didn’t even know this town was on the map. What’s it called again?”
“Red Grove. I didn’t know it existed either, but I think that was the point. He didn’t want the public to see him like this.”
“His will says no funeral. Nothing public. Does Red Grove even have a crematorium? What do we do with the body?”
Kyle nudged back his chair, the legs protesting with a rumbling screech against the wood floor. The dog lifted its massive head, brown eyes tracking Kyle as he circled to Nate’s side of the bed. Despite his brother’s considerable size, Kyle fisted Nate’s collar and lifted him from his seat.
“I’m not going to say this again,” he said in a low voice laced with menace. “Dad is still alive. As far as we know, he can still hear us. We’ll handle the arrangements when the time comes. Until then, unless you want to talk about what few personal memories we have of him, shut the fuck up.” He released his brother, who dropped into his chair as if his knees had gone out. Kyle returned to his own chair, his eyes shifting back to his father.
Nate spread his hands and shrugged. “Sorry.” He did not sound sorry. Annoyed, but not sorry. Still, he hushed. The cabin grew quiet, aside from the deep, wet rattle of their father’s breathing and the occasional whine of the four-legged beast lying at his side.
“Am I allowed to ask what we should do about the dog?” Nate tugged at his pant leg, clearly perturbed by Kyle’s restrictions on the conversation.
Kyle reached out and stroked the dog’s head. “His name is Milo.”
“I can’t have a dog. I’m allergic,” Nate said. “We’ll have to take him to the humane society.”
“He’s a 160-pound mastiff. No one is going to adopt this dog. Three-quarters of the population doesn’t have a house big enough for this dog. Frankly, one fart and he could knock down the walls of this cabin.”
Nate snorted. “Youcan’t keep him. You’re barely home. And I don’t need to tell you the staff is not going to want to deal with a dog like this.”
“Dad loved Milo.”
“More than he loved either of us.” Nate’s nostrils flared. “Just another way for the old man to deliver one last jab to the balls.”
“I’m keeping him,” Kyle said definitively. The decision came as a surprise even to him, but it seemed right somehow.
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll never let you on the plane with that thing.”
“I’ll drive him back in my rental.”
Nate scowled. “This is a bad idea, Kyle. You don’t adopt a dog to fill the absentee-father-shaped hole in your heart.”
Kyle let his eyes drift over his brother’s stocky frame. “Better than filling it with peanut butter.”
