Page 3 of On One Condition

And he’s right. We bought the old hotel to upgrade it into a S.I.N. property in Dad’s honor. A place we could all take our families someday and give them the same experience we had as kids. Nature. A different perspective. Time to unplug for a while. Unplug? Jesus, the thought of going for more than an hour without my phone gives me the hives. Somewhere my brothers and I could be a family instead of work partners and remember what it was like to be a kid.

But who knew the one town where we spent a few months each summer was going to make it so hard for us to do so?

“Can somebody tell them that we’ll make good on our promises?” I ask. “Can’t that be enough? Two months in that Podunk town is enough to drive a grown man crazy.”

“Yes. We forgot. You were the only one not thrilled with the idea,” Callahan says with a roll of his eyes. “Pretty-boy Ledger is too good for the country now.”

“Not too good, but Jesus, couldn’t we have picked a more contemporary location? One with more places than Main Street as the big attraction?”

“Montana is hot property right now,” Ford says with a shrug.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I wave a hand his way, knowing he’s right. “But . . .” It’s not New York? It’s too far away from everything? My last time there was an experience I wish to forget?

“Dude, you loved that place when we were teenagers,” Ford says.

He’s right.

I did.

Right up until I didn’t.

“Hell, it was the only place Dad let us be teenagers instead of his Sharpe protégées.” Callahan crosses his arms over his chest and clears his throat. The pang is there for all of us. Our father’s absence is still monumental.

I smile at my early memories of Cedar Falls. The long days outdoors and the late nights necking in the woods. How our father, Maxton Sharpe, would release his tight reins on the three of us because it was a small town, and he thought trouble wouldn’t find us. It still did. The freedom we were given there was unparalleled to the rigors of prep schools and the pristine reputation necessary back home.

The reputation that had us rushing out of there fifteen years ago and never looking back.

Not that my brothers knew otherwise.

“There was fishing and hiking and beers—”

“Lots of beers,” Ford says, and I know we’re all thinking about how we bribed Dad’s staff to buy them for us.

“And who could forget all those small-town country girls,” Callahan adds with a cocky smirk. “They were desperate for boys from anywhere but there, thinking we were way more sophisticated than we really were.”

“Ah, the good old days,” I murmur.

“Maybe that one girl,” Ford says. “What was her name? Ashlyn? Ashley?”

“Asher,” I murmur and run a hand through my hair. Asher Wells. Another pang but for very different reasons. “God. That’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”

But I lie.

Isn’t that the first person I thought of when my brothers approached me with the idea of buying the hotel? Asher, the girl who handed me my first real heartbreak. The first real scare. And to this day, it’s still one of the only secrets I’ve kept from my brothers.

A secret that’s so old and buried that it does no good to bring it up now.

Jesus.

Asher. My lavender girl.

I can still see her sitting beneath the willow tree with leaves tangled in her hair and fire dancing in her eyes.

“Asher. That’s it.” Ford snaps his fingers. “The only female I can remember who gave you a taste of your own medicine by breaking your heart before you could break hers,” Ford says. “Or maybe you learned it from her. The art of not getting too attached.”

“Whatever.” I roll my eyes. “Just because I choose to date and not get tied down like you,” I say to Callahan, “doesn’t make me an asshole.”

“Not an asshole. Just . . . perfectly Ledger.” Callahan chuckles. “Why’d she break up with you again? Your dick too small?”