Cody didn’t like this at all. It was uncomfortable, and honestly, he preferred the discomfort of having nearly kissed his employee and making an ass of himself.
“Mom had it hard enough without her own kids talking about her like this.”
“She’s dead,” Walker said. “And yeah, you’re right. She did have it hard enough. But so did we. And some of that was because of her.”
It was the weirdest thing to Cody, because between himself and his brother, he would’ve said that he was the least forgiving, most rigid of the two of them, but for some reason on this… Walker was set. And unkind.
“Oh, you know who wants to have her wedding here?” Walker asked.
“Who?”
“Addison Carey. Can you even imagine? She was so awful back in the day. She still is, I’m pretty damn sure. But now she wants to get married on our ranch. When she wouldn’t even make eye contact with me in the hall during high school.”
“Yeah. Their whole family is kind of a piece of work. Wasn’t her dad one of Dad’s good friends?”
“The very same. Because they’re basically timber barons and have all that lumber money. Anyway, as much as I don’t like her, I can’t say no to the wedding being on the property. Not when it would benefit us so much.”
“Well, you could say no if you wanted to.”
“And admit that she gets under my skin? Hell no. By which I mean, it annoys me. Nothing more to it than that.”
Cody was enough older than Walker, and by extension Addison, to not have a clear picture of her. He had an awareness of her family, but not really of her specifically.
However, what he could remember from the times he had seen her around town recently was that she was beautiful. Hard for him to call it up now, since his body was so obsessed with Marlowe, but he had a feeling that she got under his brother’s skin in more ways than one.
And probably, was one of the few women that he’d never managed to charm.
It was good for him. Speaking of egos that needed to be uninflated.
“Oh, hey,” Walker said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Someone’s on the main road headed toward the resort.”
“Probably the moving truck.”
Walker had a security camera feed that went straight to his phone, Cody couldn’t be bothered with anything like that. If somebody was going to drive up on the property without his knowing, he would deal with it if he had to. If they were a friend, he’d offer them a beer. If they were a foe, he would offer them the end of his thirty-aught-six. Either way, he had it covered. And he wasn’t especially worried.
He just thought Walker liked tech. Walker’sfinancial indulgences were different than Cody’s. Walker had a new truck with all the special features, a new phone, a new computer even though the only thing he did on it was work on spreadsheets and scheduling. Well, and monitoring his security system.
“Do you think she needs some help?”
What he thought was that Marlowe would probably benefit from him staying away from her. Because obviously, where she was concerned, his guard was a little bit low.
“I’m sure she can handle it.”
Walker chuckled. “You definitely think she’s hot. Or you would be over there.”
“Wouldn’t it be the opposite?”
“Not with you. Because you know exactly how you want to conduct yourself. You’d never put yourself in the potential path of temptation with an employee.”
“Again, I’m also not our dad.”
“Yeah.”
Silence stretched between them.
“But this is it, you know.”
“What is?” Walker asked.
