“Dickhead! Let’s go!”
The barked command had Aiden shutting his eyes and desperately trying to remember the serenity prayer.Lord, grant me the wisdom to not murder my fucking brother over the mashed potatoes. Amen.
He headed up the driveway and joined Trip on the porch. “Hey. I’m glad you’re out here.” He wasn’t, but why be truthful? “We need to talk about Dad’s—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
His brother’s snarled words caught him off guard. “What’s the problem?” He kept his voice even, but it was hard, particularly since Trip had blown up at him in front of their employees twice last week.
Trip brandished a handful of crumpled sheets of paper. “What the hell kind of estimate is this? Are we just doing work for free these days?”
Ah. The proposed contract for Thea’s house, the one that cut every possible cost to the bone. He opened his mouth to defend himself, then snapped it shut. Admitting he’d guessed what Trip meant would be the same as admitting that he knew the estimate was abnormally low. So he played dumb. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, man.”
Trip flung the printout at him, but the pages just fluttered to the all-weather carpet under their feet, coming nowhere close to actually hitting him. “What’s this bullshit?” Trip’s thick finger stabbed downward at the scattered pages. “That’s underbid by at least forty percent.”
Aiden counted to five before speaking. He seemed to always be counting to five around his family. Every conversation he had with them these days felt like he was onSesame Street.“Forty percent? Hardly.” He bent and calmly collected the sheets. “It includes material at cost and a slightly reduced amount for labor if she’s willing to let us do the work during our slow days.”
Trip’s gaze sharpened on Aiden’s face.“She?”
Fuck. “Just a friend.”
“A friend you’re banging. Got it.”
Yeah, that was about enough. Aiden’s fist clenched around the papers and he hardened his voice, hating that everything with his brother was a battle these days. “She’s a friend. That’s all. I was just playing around with numbers for the job.”
Trip’s broad face twisted into a sneer. “Gotta use company perks to score a little pussy these days?”
“You jealous?” Aiden lifted his chin and regarded his brother with smug pity. “Almost sounds like you wishyouwere the single one.” He felt sick the instant he said it; his sister-in-law was great, and as far as he knew, she and Trip were happy. He dropped the asshole expression immediately. “Hey, I’m sorry—”
But Trip cut off his apology with a snarl. “Fuck you,Adonis. Like you know shit about commitment. I’d love to see you get a girl to stick around long enough to actually renovate her house.”
The words arrowed straight to the center of his chest, and Aiden’s hands curled into fists. But a rap on the front door interrupted the escalating fight, and they both turned to see their father’s scowling face through the front-door glass. Trip turned on his heel and stormed inside, with Aiden following at a slower pace.
“About time,” Rudy Murdoch grumbled after he stepped over the threshold.
“Thanks, Dad. Nice to see you too.”
He harrumphed at Aiden’s aggressively good-natured response. “Lunch is ready.”
Aiden watched in consternation as Rudy shuffled into the dining room. When had his dad’s mobility gotten so bad? That was an alarming development for a sixty-eight-year-old who refused to even consider slowing down on the job.
His mom planted a kiss on his cheek. “Perfect timing, sweetie. I just pulled the roast out of the oven.”
“Of course you did,” he said. Gloria Murdoch had some kind of second sense for the precise moment her offspring would be arriving and had always just pulled something out of the oven for them. Thanks to her gift of maternal foresight, he and Trip had been blessed with a childhood of still-warm cookies after school and an adulthood of home-cooked Sunday meals still sizzling in the pan.
He slipped into his usual spot at the table next to his mom and across from Trip and Ashley, who gave him a cheerful “hi!” Guilt swamped him again; the cute blonde didn’t deserve to be pulled into his ongoing war with Trip. But his brother’s face was carefully neutral, so hopefully the scene on the porch was the end of the ugliness for the day.
“Did Dale Deavers finalize the paint colors for his new garage interior?” Trip passed the bread basket to Ashley and looked to their dad for an answer, but Rudy didn’t respond as he bit into his roast.
“Yes,” Aiden said after a moment. “It’s in your email. He wants Desert Sand.”
Trip’s eyes cut to him, then back to Rudy. “Okay. I can start tomorrow.”
“You can have this whole conversation tomorrow at work. We’re having a nice family dinner right now.” As always, their mother sounded exasperated at the business talk around the table, and as always the Murdoch men ignored her.
“It’s the only time all three of us are in the same place, Ma,” Aiden said as he reached for a bowl of carrots swimming in gingery butter.
Her cheeks plumped in a smile, and she patted his hand where it rested on the table next to her. “Okay then.”
