4. Aaron
4
AARON
T here were a lot of things I detested about this city—little dogs in restaurants, people who rode their bikes on the sidewalk, the bizarre amount of art galleries featuring god-awful but expensive paintings.
The worst?
Happy hour.
“It’s happy to see you!”
Spencer waved a watered-down old-fashioned with a shriveled cherry garnish at me. The third-oldest Richmond brother, he had the obnoxious tic of trying to make people laugh.
I didn’t have the patience today.
“You’re just in time.” Graham threw an arm around my neck. My next youngest brother was way too enmeshed in the nonprofit world. He constantly asked me for donations, which I refused to give him. I always reminded him that he ran a very profitable data analytics company and could bankroll his own guilt. Then came Finn—quiet, impartial, perceptive, hopefully secretly judging the happy-hour clown car with the same derision I was. Connor, the baby, who had flunked his senior year at Harvard and was pissed that we were making him retake it, beamed at the waitress when she came over, clicking her pen.
Unbidden rose the image of Daisy Coleman. Did all food service workers believe that clicking a pen was the only way to go about your day?
“—and a lavender sunrise,” the waitress was saying as she finished rattling off the happy-hour offerings, which were anything but.
“Can I have a non-happy-hour cocktail?” I asked the waitress.
She gazed back at me blankly. “The happy-hour specials are—”
“Could you just bring him a scotch, neat?” Grayson, the oldest, interrupted her smoothly.
“I don’t need you to order for me. I’m not a child.” The words came out harsh. A challenge. After the day I’d had, I’d love a fistfight just to blow off steam and release my pent-up anger.
“You’re acting like you’re about to throw a tantrum because you can’t have your favorite juice,” Spencer teased cheerfully, messing up my hair.
Grayson automatically reached out to smooth it down, like we were little kids again and he was taking care of me, like the last two decades of estrangement had never happened, like I was really going to forgive and forget that easily.
He pulled his hand back, apparently thinking better of it.
Damn right.
I marginally tolerated Grayson.
Spencer said I was breaking his heart, but he was dramatic and had a Netflix addiction.
“Thought you were normally busy Friday nights,” Finn remarked before he took a sip of his own happy-hour drink and made a face.
The waitress slid an amber-colored scotch in front of me.
Finn immediately took the cup and poured a quarter of it in his glass. “Ahh! Much better.”
“I’m not here long.” I picked up my glass and downed it. “I have business to discuss with you, Grayson.” I spat out his name.
I winced as Graham immediately started banging his spoon on my glass.
“No business during family time. Ow!” he complained when I grabbed the spoon and threw it at him.
“I need another scotch.”
“I’m not lactating alcohol here,” my brother said.
The waitress was busy.
“I hate happy hour.” I slammed my briefcase on the table, unclicked the clasps, then set the contract in front of Grayson.
To his questioning look, I said, “You ever thought about buying a coal company?”
“I don’t deal in coal power.” He slid it back to me. “I kill coal power. Nuclear energy, renewables, and natural gas are the future.”
“I don’t care as long as you pay your insurance premiums on time and don’t blow up half of Atlanta with one of those shitty-ass nuclear power plants,” I shot back.
“But…” He decided to course correct, placing his hand back on the leather book, as Spencer, damn him, started singing, “ We are Family! ” into his glass. “I’m sure I could take a look at the numbers and make something work if it’s important to you.”
I grabbed the book. “Don’t bother. I know you’re not Graham. You’re not running a charity.”
“Fuck you.” Graham snatched the contract from me.
I could go back to Wolf and tell him Grayson said no way in hell and that we just needed to eat the costs. Maybe I could just set the Zhukov Syndicate on the Colemans. But the thought of those men around Daisy? I couldn’t stand her, but she was mine to hate. No man would ruin her life except me.
Graham flipped though the aged papers.
Finn rested his chin on Graham’s shoulder to read, triggering a memory drenched in grime and fetid damp in me.
“What the fuck? You’re getting married?” my younger brother demanded.
“No. I’m not taking over Coleman Mining if I can’t chop-shop it to Grayson. Wolf can eat the costs. He’ll be a dick for the next eight months, but he’ll survive.”
“Stock goes up. Stock goes down,” Finn said sagely.
“I’ll work something out,” Grayson said, eyes soft. “It sounds like you need this.”
“Why? Because now you want me to owe you?” I intended for the words I spoke to stab.
Grayson didn’t take the bait.
“Send over all their municipal contracts to Richmond Electric. If I am able to absorb those and convince the municipalities to lock into a twenty-year term, I can make it work.”
“They fucked up their pension fund,” I warned him.
“An ownership transfer lets me convert those all to 401Ks and buyouts. Svensson Investment is looking for more business after last winter. They’ll give me a good rate. Honestly. Finance people think what they do is so difficult,” Grayson sneered.
“Building things,” Finn said sagely, “takes actual skill. Finance is just numbers and market manipulation.”
“Exactly right.” Grayson gave him an easy, familiar smile.
And suddenly I knew: they’d been meeting without me, rebuilding the brotherly bond without telling me.
Well, fuck them.
Graham flipped through the contract.
“We have a wedding to plan!” Spencer kissed me dramatically on the cheek.
“My little boy is all grown up.” Connor dabbed at pretend tears.
“Wear a blue suit,” Finn joked.
Grayson frowned. “Is your mom going to be okay with that?”
“A blue suit? Probably not. She’s very fashionable,” Graham said.
“No, with you marrying one of the Coleman girls. I thought—”
“Don’t act like you know me,” I snarled at Grayson. “My mother will be fine with this. She’ll be happy, because my mother loves me and wants the best for me, and I’d do anything for her.”
It was a low blow.
I knew.
“Someone’s triggered into next Tuesday.” Connor snickered.
Graham dragged me out of my seat and to the side hallway by the restrooms. Lines of people stood waiting to piss out their crappy watered-down drinks.
“Fucking hate happy hour,” I grumbled.
Graham sighed heavily. “I thought you were going to try and be nicer…”
“I would if I didn’t have to marry a Coleman.”
I wasn’t even going to say her name out loud, wasn’t going to make it real.
“There are worse things in the world. Can’t think of anything right now,” he said sarcastically.
I shrugged him off. “I have to go. I’m late.”
I didn’t have to drive to the Hamptons tonight. I could have gone tomorrow. But Bill had thought it was important enough to actually address me at Friday night dinner, to acknowledge my presence beyond craning around me to ask Natalie to pass the dinner rolls.
He’d been drinking, which was probably the only way he could grit his teeth to make the request. He must want this deal to go through.
Daisy’s bedroom was dark when the car purred into the carriage house. She had left a book out on the soft chair on her balcony. The rain that was coming in the next few hours would ruin it.
Spoiled little rich girl. She’d just ask her daddy to buy her another book.
Even though I didn’t want to go inside, the melodic sounds of the waves, the salty warm air, and the cooing of nesting birds caused my shoulders to relax as I walked through the silent rooms.
Normally, the house felt too cramped when I forced myself to attend family gatherings. But without the oppression of the forced togetherness of the Ragnor family, it was almost peaceful.
The small bedroom that I despised almost as much as the cellar or the hospital suite was a stifling bright blue when I turned on the light.
Out of habit, I gazed out the window and into hers.
The balcony was occupied, though, and Daisy stiffened, fury on her face.
How dare I disturb her.
She settled down when I quickly switched off the lamp, her bare sandy feet curling up under her as she absently petted her flat-faced cat.
I stood there in the dark, watching her.
If she hated me now, she’d be plotting my execution tomorrow.