I took a drink of my coffee. “Well, if you recall, we talked right before I headed to Lush for the night, so when I told you I needed to chat, it was to tell you the details from the evening I’d spent there. Walker, it was a wild one.” I wasn’t one to kiss and tell, but I knew he’d get a kick out of the threesome. “And why I brought it up again last night is because that episode at Lush is suddenly relevant.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“That night at Lush, I had a threesome. It went on for hours. It wasn’t the kinkiest time I’d ever had there, but it was the most memorable. One of the women—the blonde—fuck, she was something else.”
“Colson, I’m not sure why you think I’ll find this funny. Or why you’re telling me this story now when we have much more pressing matters on our hands.”
I chuckled. “The blonde was Sophie Rivers, the Gordons’ attorney. I had no idea. I figured it out when I walked into the meeting at the Daltons’.”
“What? You’re fucking kidding me.”
“And I happened to run into her again yesterday at Ellie’s gymnastics class. Our daughters are best friends.”
“Can this work to our advantage in any way?”
I placed the coffee in the console cupholder and stretched my arm across the empty seat next to me. “What do you mean?”
“Now that you’ve been with Sophie, is there a conflict of interest in her representing the Gordons?”
I considered the layers, peeling back each one. “Even if there is, they’d hire another attorney, and we’d be in the same situation. The only difference is, I know what their current attorney tastes like.”
And that taste was fucking exceptional.
“Jesus,” Walker groaned.
The two of us went silent until I broke the quiet with, “We don’t have much time left. We have to choose one of their options. You’re the only one who has the power to make an entirely new menu. If you think that’s possible, we’ll do it. If not …”
“I refuse to give them a fucking dime.”
My brows lifted. “What are you saying, Walker?”
“I’m in my kitchen right now. I’ll have a sample menu curated before dinnertime. Alivia’s going to help me. This might be one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever come up with. And there will be fallout because we won’t have time to test, but we’ll deal with it.”
“I’ll be at your house in ten minutes.”
“You’re going to help? You don’t know a thing about cooking.”
Paul looked at me from the rearview mirror, and I mouthed,Walker’s house.
I then said to my brother, “I don’t know how to cook, you’re right. But I know how to eat, and I have one hell of a palate, and I refuse to let you two do this alone.” I smiled. “Fuck the Gordons.”
“Daddy, I’m going to bed, and Mommy said to call you and say good night.”
I held the phone to my ear as I stood on the far side of Walker’s kitchen. We’d been at this for hours, playing with concepts, melding different dishes. My entire family, minus Beck, was here. The progress we’d made was mind-blowing.
“I’m so glad you called, baby. I miss you.”
But I was glad she was at her mom’s for the next few nights because I would be living at Walker’s until the menu was finished.
“Daddy, I want Abbi with anIto come over. Can she come over this weekend?”
If my shirt wasn’t already unbuttoned and untucked, I would have torn the buttons from my throat. “Have you talked to Abbi with anIabout this?”
“Yesss. We decided at gymnastics. Daddy, shehasto come over.”
I glanced at Walker as he held a spoon in front of Eden, having her taste a sauce he’d just made. “Did Abbi ask her mom?”
“Daddy, call her mom and tell her it’s okay.”
