with acid in his voice, said, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Gracie was typically nonconfrontational, and tried to stay out of family spats, but she was feeling particularly snarky today. “Grow up, Brooks.”
Her sisters both turned to her, looking as if they couldn’t believe that had come out of her mouth. Brooks looked a little taken aback himself, but he recovered quickly.
“So the spoiled little heiress has a voice.”
“She does,” Gracie said, and though she had never been comfortable using profanity, she calmly, but forcefully, said, “and she’s sick of your bullshit intimidations. This is a special day for your family and your inability to behave like an adult does a great disservice to your brothers and disrespects your mother’s memory.”
He obviously didn’t like being called out as the immature, narcissistic ass that he was. “Your father is the one who disrespected my mother,” he said smugly, with a top-that look.
So she did. “And that makes you no better than he is.”
Brooks blinked, and she could see that the comment stung. Well, good. She hoped it would make him stop and think about his actions.
She could see the wheels in his head spinning, but before the situation could escalate further, Carson appeared at his brother’s side.
“We’re getting ready to start,” he told Brooks.
Brooks looked at Gracie and her sisters, as if he wanted to say something more, but then turned and stalked away.
“Everything okay here?” Carson asked his half sisters.
“Fine,” Gracie said. “Brooks was just being Brooks.”
Carson shook his head sadly. “I wish I knew why he’s so bitter. I understand his anger toward Sutton, but there’s no reason to drag the three of you into it. I’m sorry if he upset you.”
“I think I speak for me and my sisters when I say we’re over it,” Gracie told him.
“You’re my family,” Carson said. “I don’t want Brooks’s behavior to have a negative impact on that.”
“Brooks’s behavior has no bearing on our connection to you,” Nora told him. “Family is family.”
Gracie figured that they had proved that by accepting Carson as their sibling, despite the extramarital affair that was responsible for his existence. Sutton’s actions were in no way Carson’s fault, and it wasn’t fair to blame him for their father’s poor judgment.
“I have to go,” Carson said. “Maybe we can talk more afterward.”
When he was gone, Eve looked at Gracie and asked, “Wow, what’s gotten into you today?”
Riding on the edge of a guilty conscience, Gracie asked, “Was it wrong of me to stand up to Brooks?”
Nora laughed. “Heck no. He expected you to defend Sutton, and when you didn’t he had no idea what to say.”
“You blindsided him,” Eve said. “And it was thoroughly amusing.”
Gracie’s phone buzzed with a text. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw that she had a message from Roman. She was almost afraid to open it on the chance that he would say their encounter had been a mistake, and there was just too much bad blood between them to make even a sexual relationship work. Because she saw no harm in occasionally having a warm body to cozy up to on cold nights. She had needs and Roman was pretty damned good at fulfilling them.
Occasionally.
Her heart pounded as she punched in the code on her phone and the text popped up on the screen.
Dinner at my place? Then a little dessert?
She couldn’t suppress the smile curling her lips. She’d been worried for no reason. He obviously was still interested. As excited as she was, and as much as she wanted to see him, she had the distinct feeling that her life was about to get very complicated.
* * *
With the guarantee that Sutton was about to reveal information about the identity of their real father, Roman finally talked both Graham and Brooks into a meeting with the dying tycoon. Which was how, the following Friday, Roman found himself back at the Winchester estate. Once again against his will and better judgment. He just hoped that Sutton would actually deliver this time. According to Grace he hadn’t been out of bed in days and she was worried that the cancer, or the treatments, or a combination of both, had begun to affect him mentally. She’d been visiting him daily, and he’d been alternating between being himself, sinking into a deep depression and experiencing fits of irrational anger at the drop of a hat. She said it was a little like Jekyll and Hyde.
Roman didn’t even know why he had to be there. When he’d asked Sutton, all he’d gotten back was a very cryptic To keep the peace. But if tempers flared and Graham took a shot at his brother, it wasn’t Roman’s responsibility to stop him. As far as he was concerned Brooks could use a little sense knocked into him. And though Brooks was nothing more than a thug in an expensive suit, he was still a client—and a very lucrative one at that—and Roman was under contract to find their birth father. As far as he’d found, it was as though their mother, Cynthia, in the time before she moved to Chicago, hadn’t existed.
Gracie had wanted to join them but her father had forbidden it, and of course she’d backed down instantly. It had always fascinated Roman, the control her father had over her. Gracie on her own, in any other element, was one of the toughest, brightest, most capable women Roman had ever met. She’d certainly never taken any crap from Roman. But bring Daddy into the picture and her backbone mysteriously dissolved.
She’d certainly been aggressive Saturday morning. And Saturday afternoon, and most of Saturday night. He drove her home Sunday morning so she could get ready to attend the hospital reception, then she came back Monday evening and he’d made her dinner. He had talked to her every day since then, but they hadn’t seen each other since she left Monday night.
Clearly the fire that burned between them seven years ago had never gone out. But he could feel her holding back. And he understood. He couldn’t say for sure that he was still in love with her. But he couldn’t say that he wasn’t in love with her, either. Not that it mattered. She’d made it clear that it was just sex to her. That she could never trust him with her heart again. But they could still be friends.
Friends with benefits. He could live with that.
When he arrived at the Winchester estate Brooks and Graham were already there, and he was surprised to find Carson, their youngest brother, and Sutton’s recently confirmed son, standing by his bedside. Sutton held the meeting in his personal suite from his bed. Though Roman had thought he couldn’t look much worse than the last time he saw the man, he’d been wrong.
Brooks and Graham stood far from each other, at opposite ends of the room.
“It’s about damned time,” Brooks snapped at Roman as Sutton’s nurse showed him into the room, then reclaimed her seat just outside the door. According to Roman’s Rolex he was a minute early.
“Forgive my brother,” Graham apologized, looking
