I stared at the door as it fell shut behind Dad, dumbfounded. My brothers had been stalked by wedding bells since college, and I was getting a bachelorhood hall pass?
That’s just not right.
“Maybe you should leave early today,” Sterling suggested as he strode toward the door himself. “Go out. Celebrate your office.”
“Why?” I watched him curiously, wondering what the hell was going on. “Areyouleaving early?”
He let out a bark of dry laughter. “No, I wish I could, but the baby will be here soon, and I’ve got too much to do. But you? You’re young. You have the freedom to go day drinking on a Tuesday. I don’t.”
“I did plenty of day-drinking in college. More when I was in Europe over the summer. I’m ready to get to work.”
His head tilted slowly, his piercing gaze on mine. Sterling was our family’s bulldog. A legendary negotiator who hadn’t met a deal he couldn’t close. I respected the hell out of him, but I wasn’t backing down about this.
“Maybe you should ease into it,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him use that tone on me. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d heard it with anyone but his wife, Laney. “You really are young, Harrison. There’s nothing chasing you, so why are you so keen to run?”
“I happen to like running.” I lifted my chin slightly. “You didn’t ease into it. I might not have been around the office back then, but I was still living with Mom and Dad. I heard them talking all the time about how worried they were you were going to burn out.”
He sighed and slid his hands into his pockets. “If that’s true, then Dad was just pretending to be worried. Don’t get me wrong, I love the man, but he’s had me jumping through hoops for myseat at the head of that table since the minute I first walked into this building after I graduated.”
I nodded, because I’d known that. It was helping me prove my point. “What about Jameson? Did he ease into it?”
Sterling chuckled. “Does Jamie even know what it means to ease into something? I don’t think so. If I recall, he called half of his department idiots on the first day, fired them, and told them to reapply for their jobs when they figured out what the fuck it means to be in finance and liquidations.”
“Callum?”
“Oh, that was interesting.” Sterling let a rare grin slide across his lips. “After he convinced Dad to let him start an in-house marketing department, he showed up sometime after ten am looking like he’d just rolled out of bed, but had slept in a five-thousand-dollar suit, then he chose where he wanted his department to be, made everyone else clear out of that space, and started calling down employees who had any kind of background in marketing.”
I nodded slowly, more in awe of my brothers right now than I had been in a long time. “On your first day in acquisitions, you closed a deal Dad had been working on for months. No one could get the owner to budge, but you walked into the conference room, uninvited, and told him pointblank what the next year of his life was going to look like if he didn’t play ball.”
“Yeah, I did. I’d forgotten about that, actually.” Sterling chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “What’s the point of all this, Harrison?”
“You guys didallthat, and you want me to go day drinking?”
For a moment, I thought I had him, but then he opened the door and waved me toward it. “Exactly, because that’s what all of us would’ve wanted to go do on the day we got our first offices here. We just couldn’t. You can.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but before I could get a word out, his phone rang and he took the call, his features immediately hardening back into stone as he barked instructions into the receiver and disappeared out into the hall.
I watched him go. Honestly, I didn’t understand what was going on with my family. When I’d asked Mom to set me up so I could get a head-start on my quest finding a wife, she’d sent me a date with arelative. Distant, but still.
Now, Dad had straight-up told me he wasn’t going to be breathing down my neck about it and Sterling, who had finally given me a chance in his department, was telling me to go day-drinking. Something I didn’t think he’d ever done in his entire damn life because he took work too seriously.
Exasperation sat like a hot coal in my gut, but I planted my ass more firmly in my chair. If they weren’t going to push me into either marriage or closing deals, I’d prove myself another way—and I’d do it by staying right here.
Pulling a thick leather file closer, I flipped it open, gaze skipping across a modest property portfolio inside that wasn’t actually modest at all. This was a billion-dollar acquisition wrapped in failure.
There had been a time when the family this company belonged to had been banking royalty, their wealth rivaling even our own. Unlike what had happened in our family when my dad had taken over, however, their heir had fumbled the ball so badly that they were now desperate enough to sell out completely.
Which was great news for me, since it meant I could swoop in, Westwood-style, picking the bones clean before Jameson liquidated what was left. This was my chance to prove to Dad, Sterling, and myself that I was more than just the baby.
I spread the contents of the file out across my desk like a chessboard, the pieces already moving in my head. Properties in San Francisco, New York, and Colorado, all of it prime parcels ofland that could’ve been a gold mine until the heir had gambled it all away.
But it left space for me to slide into the vacuum. I felt for the heir, really, but I grinned once I had my ducks in a row and punched in the number for his attorney. After I introduced myself, I got straight to the point. “Westwood and Sons is prepared to move fast. Let’s set up a time and place for your client to sign the papers.”
The attorney cleared his throat. “We have the greatest respect for W&S, Mr Westwood, but I’m afraid there’s another bidder in play. My client intends to meet with them this afternoon.”
“Cancel.” I smiled into the phone. “I have an offer your client can’t refuse.”
“Unfortunately,” the man said, not sounding like this was unfortunate at all. “The other bidder is insisting on a face-to-face meeting. It’s happening at the St. Regis at three o’clock. I’ll get back to you about a meeting after that.”
