Chapter 4
Zander stared at the phone on his desktop, a hot dose of dread slipping slowly over his skin. Perry, Duke’s irresponsible public relations rep, had sent Zander two texts earlier that day, five minutes apart, no less.
Text 1:Call me as soon as you get this.
Text 2:Your brother’s gotten himself into a sticky spot. Please call immediately.
Zander didn’t call Perry. He did, however, call Duke. It was no surprise that he didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop the onslaught of worst-case scenarios from flooding his mind.
Heck, within the last seven years, the Bentons had lost a brother, their father, and their grandfather too. Only Zander was certain Duke’s sticky spot, as Perry put it, was far from fatal. The truth was, Zander had an inkling as to what the trouble might be, which was probably where the dread came from.
His office phone let out a beep. “Mr. Benton?” Linda said through the line. “Perry did say it was urgent. You’ll be picking up soon, right?”
Zander groaned. “Right.” With that, he reached across the desk and tapped a finger on the flashing dot. “This is Zander.”
“Oh, man. Thank you for taking my call, man. You have no idea what Duke’s gotten himself into.”
“I think I do,” Zander interrupted. He stood to his feet in the quiet pause, tucked a hand into one pocket, and circled the desk. “Does it have something to do with a social experiment?”
A chorus of crickets would have been more comforting than the silence that followed Zander’s question.
“Let me guess. He got picked, and now he has to marry some woman he’s never met. Am I right?”
“He told you about it?”
Zander stopped pacing, clenched his eyes shut tight, and stifled a curse.
“Hello? He said nobody knew about it.”
He shuffled back to his desk and sank into the chair, giving into the heightened pull of gravity—a force that threatened to plunge him into dark places.
“We knew about the show, the fact he tried out for it a long time ago. He sounded shocked every time he made it to the next round…” Zander’s words died off as he considered the last time Duke texted him regarding the show; it was moments before the pretty chemist walked through his door.
He sighed, forcing his mind back to the issue. “Last I heard, he had one final round of eliminations to go through. So they picked him?”
“They picked him. They notified him. And I think he’s in denial or something.”
“Probably,” Zander said. “Who wouldn’t be? It was a crazy thing to sign up for.”
The magnitude of the situation hovered beyond a mound of thinning denial. Having money did that to a person—made them feel as if they could get out of anything. But that wasn’t always the case. And as much as he’d teased his twin for signing up for the TV show, Zander knew how binding those contracts could be.
He pictured Grandma Lo and her determination to hold up the Benton name after Dad and Grandpa died. The last thing the Benton Family needed was a fresh scandal on their hands. And hadn’t they had enough media attention over the last few years? Duke signing up for the reality wedding TV show—whatever it was—would bring on a whole lot more.
At once Zander’s shoulders lifted. Duke might have beat him out of the womb, but Zander had played the part of the oldest for as long as he could remember. And it was his job to fix this.
“I’ll talk to him,” he said. “In fact, I’ll head over after my three o’clock and—”
“He’s in Nepal.”
Zander shot to his feet. “What!” The single word rumbled the glass walls surrounding his office, but that was nothing compared to the trembling within him.
On the family’s TV show, Zander was often introduced as the lion with the loudest roar. The truth was, he’d only lashed out twice during production, and both incidents were within the first year of filming—a time Zander was trying to cope with his father’s death.
And though he’d learned to control his temper since then, the perfect storm—passion, frustration, and outright fury—gave life to that roar even still.
“I, uh…” Perry squeaked through the line. “He went to Mount Everest.”
Linda came rushing down the hall in long, desperate strides, her gaze catching his through the glass.
