headed straight for the sectional that dominated the space in front of the TV. Griffin gestured toward the wet bar tucked into the corner. He nodded to the row of bottles. “What’ll you have?”
Dalton glanced at his watch. “It’s not even noon.”
“Right. After Dad’s little bombshell, I think a drink is called for.”
“Fine.” Who was he to argue a point like that? And maybe a stiff drink would steady the rug that felt like it had been jerked out from under his feet. “I’ll have a scotch.”
Griffin rolled his eyes as if to say he thought Dalton was an idiot. Then he pulled out several bottles—none of which contained scotch—and started pouring splashes into a cocktail shaker.
“Do you have any idea if he can legally do this?”
“Unfortunately, I think he can.” Dalton ran a hand through his hair. “Of course, Mother will still get all of their co-mingled assets—the houses, cars and their money. But all of his Cain stock is his to do with as he pleases. It would have been split evenly between the three of us. Now, who knows what will happen.”
“I figure you have the most to lose here. What are you going to do?”
Dalton slipped out of his jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. Sighing, he sat down and scrubbed a hand down his face. When it came to this crazy scheme of his father’s, he undoubtedly had the most to lose. He’d devoted his entire life to becoming the perfect future CEO of Cain Enterprises. Every choice he’d made from the time he was ten—from his hobbies as a child to his extracurricular activities in high school, to his college education, to the woman he married—had been about Cain Enterprises. He wasn’t going to let his father piss it all away on a whim.
“One option is to wait until the bastard actually dies and then take the matter to court.”
Griffin popped the top on the silver shaker and then gave it a vigorous jiggle. “At which point, all Father’s assets will be tied up in litigation for a decade or so. Good plan.”
Dalton leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “If he wasn’t already on his deathbed, I’d kill him for this.”
“I’d help.” Griffin chuckled as he scooped ice into glasses and then covered the ice with whatever concoction he’d mixed up. “On the bright side, the board loves you. Even if Father’s assets did revert to the state, all his Cain stock would be sold, right? He alone doesn’t even have a controlling majority. The board would most likely keep you on.”
“And then you could keep your job as VP of international relations as well.”
Griffin gave a little chuckle. “Yes. That would be ideal.”
They both knew Griffin’s job was a cushy one and not the kind he was likely to find anywhere else.
Griffin sliced a lime into wedges, squeezed one into each glass and then tossed another on top. “Sure, you’d be less insanely rich, but you’d still be CEO of Cain Enterprises.”
“That would be the best-case scenario, yes.” Dalton took the glass his brother handed him and eyed the pale green concoction. “This isn’t scotch.”
“Two years as a mixologist in college. I think I can do better than pouring you a scotch. This is me broadening your horizons.”
Dalton took a hesitant sip. It was surprisingly good, less sweet than a margarita and with enough punch to knock a grown man on his ass—especially one who’d already been knocked on his ass once that day.
“Yes, the board might keep me on.” In his experience, best-case scenarios were little more than daydreams. Reality was rarely so convenient. “It’s far more likely that one of our competitors would snatch up all that Cain stock and make a bid to take over the company. Sheppard Capital is ideally positioned right now to do just that. In which case, I would most likely be fired and Cain Enterprises would be dismantled bit by bit.”
For once, Griffin’s characteristic charming grin was pressed into a grim line. He raised his glass and said bitterly, “To our loving father.”
Dalton tapped his brother’s glass and then downed a sizable gulp, almost hoping that this drink would do him in. He and Griffin had never been particularly close. Hollister had fostered too much rivalry between them for that. Even now, though they were united in their mutual disgust for their father’s stunt, he had still pitted them against each other.
With the heat of the liquor still burning down his throat, Dalton voiced the question he had to ask: “Are you going to try to find her?”
Griffin made a face like he was about to spew cocktail across the room. “God, no. What would I want with Cain Enterprises?”
“Just had to check.” Another thought occurred to Dalton. “There’s one possibility we haven’t considered. Cooper could find the girl.”
Cooper was definitely a wild card in the equation. Dalton and Griffin had been seven and four, respectively, when Hollister brought home the then five-year-old Cooper and introduced him as his other son. He spent summers with them until Cooper’s mother passed away when Cooper was sixteen. Cooper had lived with them for nearly two years, raising as much hell as he could, before going away to college. They hadn’t exactly bonded.
Griffin tossed back the last of his drink. “Cooper could dismantle the company just as easily as Grant Sheppard could.”
True enough… Dalton stared at the murky green dregs of his drink. If Cooper found the heiress, Cain Enterprises wouldn’t be Dalton’s—not the way it was meant to be.
Griffin dribbled the last bit of the drink from the cocktail shaker into both of their glasses. “So how are you going to find this mysterious sister of ours?”
“That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?” Hollister had been a philandering jerk for his entire married life. “It’s not an issue of finding the mother so much as it is narrowing down the possibilities.”
Griffin gave a bark of laughter. “Who did he meet that he didn’t sleep with?”
“Exactly. When we look at it from this direction, the list of potential mothers has to be—” Dalton just shook his head, not even wanting to imagine how many women his father could have slept with. Hollister had had at least one long-term mistress when Dalton was a child, but he was afraid Sharlene was just the tip of the iceberg.
Griffin must have remembered as well. “She could be from anywhere. Any woman, in any bar, in any state in the country.”
“Or from any number of foreign countries as well.”
Cooper had been raised in Vale, but when Dalton had done the math—which he’d been very curious about at seven—he’d figured his father hadn’t been anywhere near Colorado at the right time. However, he had been skiing in Switzerland. Since Cooper’s mother had been an Olympic-caliber skier, Dalton figured they must have met there.
Thinking aloud, Dalton said, “It would be impossible to track down every woman he might have slept with during the right time, even if we could narrow down the time frame.”
“Did you happen to notice the postmark on the letter?” Griffin
