I wanted to own her. I wanted to have her. I wanted her to be mine.
A ball of rolled-up paper hit my forehead, yanking me from my thoughts.
“Earth to Noah,” Evan said, waving his hand from across the table. “You mind keeping your head in the game and not on the employee you stole from Josie?”
I picked up the ball of paper and threw it back, but he swatted it away before it smacked his face.
“Josie’s just huffing because she has to do her own donkey work.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And I have to listen to her bellyaching about it.”
“She’ll find someone less qualified than Aubrey to boss around soon enough.”
When Aubrey walked back to her desk, my eyes followed. The dress code for our office was casual, but as usual, she wore a long-sleeved sweatshirt and jeans. Despite the temperature outside still somewhere in the mid-nineties, she dressed as if we were in the middle of fall. Why did she hide her beautiful curves away from the rest of the world? Curves I would one day get my hands on.
“Dude,” Evan said, sounding pissed. “Remember when we said we would never date or screw an employee. The crap that went down with you and Josie taught us all a lesson. We don’t need any lawsuits or me-too situations. Not when we’re in the middle of a stock buyback.”
I glared at my younger brother. “Mind your own business. Aren’t you due to get yourself another cup of coffee? It’s lunchtime, and you’ve only had five cups.”
He grinned. “When we’re done here, I plan to.”
I laughed and shook my head. “How many times have you asked Willow out today?”
“A few,” he admitted.
“And how many times has she said no?”
“Every damn time.” He shrugged and smiled. “She might say she doesn’t want to go to the ball as my guest, but I think the lady doth protest too much.”
“Give up already,” Cade said, clicking and unclicking his pen.
“Not a chance.”
“What about you?” I asked our older brother. “Any luck finding a plus-one yet?”
Cade threw his pen onto the table. “Don’t get me started. Mom is doing her best to set me up with the niece of a neighbor. She keeps nagging me about dating again.” His forehead furrowed. “I don’t have the time. Max needs all my attention right now. Transitioning into school hasn’t been easy for him. I need all my focus on my son and not on dating.”
A silent whatever passed between Evan and me. If Cade had his way, he would never date again. He hadn’t forgiven himself for his wife’s car accident and her resulting death. Even now, five years later, guilt hounded him every day.
He still said he should never have let her get in the car on a snowy night, but Claire was Claire, and Claire did what Claire wanted. That was one of the reasons he loved her as much as he did. She was independent and strong-willed, and no one could tell her what to do.
She’d wanted to go pick up a few last-minute baby things.
On the way to the store, she hit some black ice. The car skidded and slammed into a tree. She died instantly.
She was two weeks away from my nephew’s due date. The doctors were able to save Max, and he was born without a scratch. Physically, he was fine, but emotionally he felt the loss of his mom every day.
Early on, Cade had hired nannies, but they never worked out. Our mom had stepped in along with our sister Amelia to help when he had to come into the office. We were both fiercely protective of our older brother and nephew.
Today was Max’s first day at elementary school. Because of what was happening with our business right now, my brother hadn’t been able to drop his son off. We’d had an investor breakfast followed by a shareholder meeting. But he was picking Max up this afternoon. All day, he’d been acting like a wild boar and was attacking us for the slightest thing.
“Who do you think you’ll bring?” I asked Cade.
After last year’s ball, we all vowed we wouldn’t attend again without someone on our arms. The single women were like vultures. I’d had numbers shoved into my hands, my pockets, and the waistband of my pants all night long.
“I’m not taking who mom wants me to take,” Cade said. “I thought maybe I would get an escort.”
“A what?” I was glad I hadn’t been drinking anything because if I had, I would’ve spat it out all over the table.
“As in a prostitute?” Evan looked as shocked as I felt.
“No, not a prostitute, dumbass. I’d pay an agency to provide someone as my date for the night.”
“They’re called prostitutes, dumbass.” Evan guffawed so hard tears trickled down his cheeks.
Cade shot eye daggers at both of us. “The two of you can shut the fuck up. Let’s get back to the business at hand and not about a ball that’s happening in two weeks.
“We now own sixty percent of The James Group. By next Friday, we’ll have another twenty. It’ll cost us a couple of billion, but in the long run, it’ll be worth it. I’d pay every cent in my bank account to have our company back in our hands. We have the majority share right now, but that’s not enough.” He slammed a fist onto the table, and his jaw clenched. “I want it all back. I want us to decide what direction our company will go from here on out.”
Both Evan and I nodded in agreement. Going public might have made us all billionaires, but it also meant we had to give up some control of our company.
Cade pushed away from the table. “We done here? I want to go wait outside the school.”
“But school isn’t over for another couple of hours,” I pointed out. “I’m sure the principal doesn’t want a weirdo hanging around outside till the bell rings.”
He shot me a look. “When you have kids, you can tell me how to parent.”
I opened my mouth to bite back but stopped when Evan gave a subtle shake of his head. Cade would do anything for his son, even if that meant sitting outside the school for three hours in the sweltering heat.
“Sure, bro, do what you gotta do,” I said. “Make sure you FaceTime us later so Max can tell us about his first day. Are you still okay for me to take him to the game on Saturday?”
“He’s talked about nothing else,” Cade said, heading for the door.
Every weekend during baseball season, Max and I caught a game, be it little league, minor league, or major. Cade was more of a soccer man. Evan football. Baseball was mine, and my nephew shared my passion.
After the meeting ended, I went to the floor to check in on my team. Some of our subscribers were experiencing glitches in one of our role-playing games. Their avatars were committing suicide.
“Any luck with the glitch?” I asked Michael.
“All good. One of the new interns hacked his way in thinking he could make some improvements to the code. He fucked it up. He could’ve cost us millions of dollars and months of work.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“It was actually Aubrey who spotted it. Apparently, avatars are her thing.”
Pride puffed my chest. Sexy and smart. That made her a goddess in the gaming world. I wanted to go over and congratulate her, but I also didn’t want to show any favoritism.