Especially with Boone.
“How do we feel about this?” Holt asks, his gaze settled on our youngest brother. “Anyone heard from Dad?”
The other four of us shake our heads.
“Our parents’ marriage is between the two of them,” Wade says, his voice characteristically even-keeled. “If they want to end it…fine.”
“Do you have no heart?” Boone asks. “Good Lord, Wade. That’s cold even for you.”
Wade makes a face at Boone. “Please.”
“I mean, that’s our mother,” Boone continues on as though he’s five seconds from losing his cool in a childish spiral. “She—”
“She is going to be fine,” Wade says. “I wasn’t finished.”
Boone crosses his arms and sits back in his chair.
Holt gives Wade a side-eye, silently asking him for the floor. Wade nods and looks at a piece of paper in front of him.
“I think we’re all worried about Mom,” Holt says, his tone soft thanks to Boone’s temperament. Normally called a tantrum.“We’ll rally around her, and she’ll be fine. I hate to say it, but this is probably good for her. Dad holds her back.”
“Good for her or not, I’ll be seeing Dad,” Coy says, his lips pressed in a thin line. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“Make that two of us,” I say. “I’m curious about what’s happening in that man’s head.”
Holt sighs. “I think we all want to know. But as Wade said,” he says, carefully, “this is Mom’s business. We have to make sure we don’t overstep too much. We can’t smother her. That’s not her love language or whatever she calls it. Give her some space but make sure we check in and are there when she needs us. Okay?”
“Naturally. I’ll be there for Mom, but I have no plans on talking to Dad.” I’m still too angry with what he said about our family—especially considering what Mom heard him say about her. She’s strong but not impervious. Especially to someone she’s been married to for nearly forty years. “Someone can fill me in if they do.”
“I’ll call you,” Coy says. The look he shoots me is in stark contrast to the ease of his words.
I nod.
Wade coughs. “Now that we have the emotional reaction done and over with, let’s discuss how this might affect our business.”
“It won’t. It shouldn’t,” Holt says, picking up his cup of coffee. “He’ll still have an advisory position, but we—meaning mostly Oliver and me as co-CEOs—only have to take anything he brings before us under advisement per his retirement contract. We aren’t required to do anything other than read his emails or take a meeting with him here and there.”
“We just keep paying him his retirement, and that’s it?” I ask.
“Basically.”
I nod. “Isn’t it great that meeting with the advisory board falls under your CEO-ship?” I ask with a grin.
Holt laughs. “We’ll see about that.”
“The important thing here is that we continue with our work and day-to-day activities,” Wade says. “I know things might be a little different on a familial level, but that choice isn’t ours. We have to make the best of it.”
“Heartless,” Boone mutters. “You’re heartless.”
Wade rolls his eyes.
Holt sips his drink and then sets the mug back on the table. I watch him glance around the room at our siblings, quickly assessing each one. It’s one of his strengths—to read a room in an instant and know how to proceed. He’s especially good at it with our brothers.
He engages Boone and Coy, bringing up Coy’s new agent. Coy loves Anjelica. I like her too. She’s smart as a whip and thinks well on her feet. Boone, on the other hand, is terrified of her. It’s the perfect way to defuse the emotions in the room and work the conversation away from our parents.
It also gives me a moment to catch my breath.
The afternoon has been a whirlwind—an unexpected one, at that. It was hard to focus on my call with Greg and my meeting with Holt—the middle of which Mom decided to swing by the offices to tell him her news. Then I got to sit in my office with Shaye and Holt and go over the Jewell file and try not to pull her onto my lap or think about the heat of her skin.
Or the way her lips tasted.
Or the softness of her inner thighs.
I had to stay focused and try not to tip off Holt that things between Shaye and me are anything more than employee and employer—a task that was as easy as threading a needle with a cow’s tail. A task that I’m not sure we successfully completed. It’s hard hiding things from Holt. I’ve struggled with it my entire life.
But this time it’s important.
I don’t want to defend my relationship with Shaye to Holt before I know how to define it myself. I’m not even sure it is a relationship. Maybe it’s a fling. Maybe it’s going to blow up in my face, and I’ll be looking for another EA soon.