The Merger

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

G annon

“Eight.” Clunk. “Nine.” Clunk. “Ten,” I say, groaning as I set the dumbbells on the rack.

I grab a towel and wipe the sweat from my heated face. Despite running five miles and a solid workout with weights to expel some energy, I’m only slightly less exhausted than when I got here. Fuck .

“I need to be done with this,” I grumble, grabbing my water bottle and turning off the light. My footsteps echo down the hallway, my sneakers squeaking against the light-colored hardwood.

The evening light casts shadows through the windows as I enter the living space—the only room, aside from my office, gym, and bedroom that I use in the almost eight-thousand square-feet home. On the far end of the space is a family area. A large, half-circle sofa faces a fireplace with a frame television hanging above it. Across from it is an open kitchen with bright white quartz counters and a chef’s range large enough to prepare a meal for a small army.

When I purchased this house ten years ago, I had big plans. Six bedrooms. Nine bathrooms. Five rolling acres of beautiful Tennessee suburbia. It was the perfect canvas.

Yet I’ve barely changed it, and I can’t find it in me to give a fuck anymore.

I tug open the fridge, grab a meal prep container, and toss it on the counter. I retrieve a glass bottle of water that I filled this morning. As I close the door, my phone rings from the island.

“Who the hell is this?” I stare at the number, but it’s not familiar. I pick it up against my better judgment. “Hello?”

“Hi, Gannon. It’s Thomas Crenshaw. It’s good to hear your voice.”

I groan. Wish I could say the same .

Thomas and I graduated the same year from Waltham. We weren’t exactly close, but because our friend circles overlapped, we spent a lot of time together in various clubs. He was always … energetic.

“You are not an easy man to get ahold of,” he says.

“By design.”

He laughs as if I’m kidding.

“How did you get this number?” I ask before taking a quick sip of water. And why the hell are you calling me on a Saturday?

“I had to do some serious digging since your assistant refused to share it with me. Luckily for me, you donated to the new science building at Crenshaw two years ago and your phone number was in the contact information. It was a pain in the ass to find.”

I lean against the counter, the cool quartz biting into my hip, then glance at my phone. He’s already wasted two minutes of my time, which is two minutes too many. “What can I do for you?”

Thomas carries on about our old prep school and how he’s on the board of directors. His three kids attend there now. What does the guy want? A pat on the head? I half-listen and stroll through the kitchen into a breakfast nook—and then I stop.

The small room is bright and sunny, with three of the four walls consisting mostly of glass. A ledge runs between the bottom of the glass and the top of the brick. Perched in the middle of the table in the center of the room is, of all things, a plant .

Lots of stems and thick oval-shaped leaves are tucked into a small brown pot.

What the fuck?

“What about you, Gannon? Where do your kids go to school? I haven’t seen them around Waltham.”

My jaw clenches as I snap back to the conversation. “What can I do for you again?”

He sucks in a frustrated breath. “Okay, I’ll get to the point. We haven’t received your RSVP to the invitation to speak at the alumni banquet, and we hoped to get that squared away soon.”

“I only received the invitation this week, Thomas.”

“People are usually excited to receive an invitation and get back with us quickly.”

I hum, leaving the plant behind and entering the kitchen.

“Do you think you can make a decision by the end of next week and let us know?” he asks. “We’re unfortunately running on a tight schedule.”

“Oh, is that why I got an invitation a couple of weeks before the event?” I grin, imagining Thomas squirming. I lift my glass. “It seems like I was your last choice.”

“Truthfully, we did ask two people before you, but only because we knew getting you to accept would be nearly impossible.”

“Yet you still asked.”

He sighs. “You were our number one choice, Gannon. You have been for years. But, like I said, you send a check every year to support Waltham but fail to show up to any of our banquets or functions. Tatum said there was no way you’d show up, and we figure she knows you better than any of us.”

My glass smacks the counter, the sound ricocheting through the kitchen. “Tatum said I wouldn’t come?”

“That’s right. She’s on the board this year, too.”

I pace the kitchen as my ex’s name rattles around my brain. I haven’t heard or spoken her name in a decade. My shoulders are heavy with the awkwardness of having her in the conversation.

Yet as I taste her name on my tongue—a name that meant so much to me for so long—the stress in my body fades. Not because it’s familiar. Because I don’t care . It’s been so long since I thought about her, let alone talked about her, that it’s a relief not to feel … anything.

Not about her, anyway.

“If I haven’t heard from you by the end of next week, I’ll give you a call,” Thomas says. “If you don’t answer, I’ll assume that’s a no, and we’ll move on. Fair?”

“Yes, that works.”

“Great. I’ll talk to you soon, Gannon.”

I end the call before he can offer his goodbyes. No need to stick around and let him think we’re friends. That’ll keep him from calling again … I hope.

My mind starts to wander back in time but stops. I take a deep breath and exhale it, waiting to see if I have an internal reaction to Thomas’s conversation—to see if I want to think about her. About the past .

But I don’t.

That life was a lifetime ago, it seems. That Gannon Brewer was a different person.

My phone vibrates in my palm, jolting me from the fog. This time, I know the name on the screen. I’m slightly more interested in answering it than I was for Thomas.

“Hey,” I say, downing the rest of my water.

“Someone else is going to the next charity event.” Tate groans. “You don’t know how tired I am of pretending to care about other people’s lives and kids. I want to be home, caring about my life and Arlo if I need to care about a kid.”

I chuckle. “I take it that Portland is going well?”

“Fuck you, Gannon.”

My chuckle flows into a laugh.

Finally, he laughs, too. “What’s going on back there?”

“Did you call for anything in particular, or are you wanting to chitchat and got my name mixed up with Ripley’s?”

“Do you always have to be a dickhead?”

I grin. “I do. I was born this way.”

“Unfortunately.” He takes a breath. “But I did call you for a reason.”

“What’s that?” I ask, refilling my bottle with water.

“I just got off the phone with Carys and she said you hadn’t gotten back with her about the Plantcy proposal.”

Yeah. About that …

I pop the bottle in the fridge and pace a slow circle around the kitchen island.

I’ve gone back and forth over this since we met three days ago and can’t decide whether to hire her. Because, on the one hand, it’s a terrible idea. My gut tells me to run the other way. I’ve wanted to fuck that woman for years, and unfortunately for me, the more I’m around her, the more I like her.

She’s drop-dead gorgeous. She’s passionate and driven. She’s kind.

Despite knowing that my instincts are always right and they’re screaming at me to tell her no, something inside me clings to the idea. And when I try to shake it off, it claws its way back into my psyche.

“Every time he looks at me, he sees a disappointment.”

Carys’s words echo through my head—words I’ve used when discussing my father.

The look in her baby-blue eyes when she spoke that sentence haunts me. The pain was evident. Her sadness was palpable. I wanted to pull her onto my lap and hold her close until she understands that she’s nothing close to a disappointment.

How could she be?

She started a business. She took her future into her own hands. The woman had the courage to come to me for a job, something that many grown men are too cowardly to try.

“Gan?” Tate asks, prompting me for a response.

“I haven’t made up my mind.”

He sighs. “Will it really hurt that much just to let her work a few hours a week?”

Maybe more than you know.

“I mean, hell. Take her wages out of my check if it’s that big of a deal to you,” he says.

“Why don’t you just hire her yourself? Buy some plants and let her go play with them at your house?”

“That would be charity, and even if she would accept it, I wouldn’t offer because it would kill her. It would make her feel incapable and shitty, and some of us don’t like doing that to other people.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you’re an asshole, but I still have hope that somewhere beneath the ice, you can find your heart.”

He’s not here, so I don’t hide my smile. You might be annoying, and I might give you shit, but you’re a good man, Tate.

“Look, I don’t love the idea of you two knowing each other,” he says.

“Well, you introduced us.”

“Under duress. But, now that it’s done, she needs this, Gannon. She’s trying so hard to grow this business that she believes in, and she just needs some help.”

I scratch the top of my head, my frustration mounting.

“Please, Gannon?”

I roll my eyes and heave a sigh, ensuring my brother knows I’m irritated. “I’ll think about it.”

“You can’t keep her on the line forever. She has to make money for her rent and if you’re going to be a complete dickhead and turn her down, she needs to know so she can find something else.” He huffs. “I’m being beckoned to the silent auction table, so I gotta go. Think about this, Gannon. Do the right thing. I know that you know what that means.”

“Goodbye, Tate.”

“Ugh. Bye.”

I end the call and immediately pull up my texts. I casually scroll through them as if I don’t know what I’m looking for. Meanwhile, my mind races.

If I keep her away from my office—from the executive level altogether— what will it hurt? It doesn’t matter that I think it’s a waste of time. Brewer Group can afford it, and God knows we blow money on more trivial things.

When I put it like that, it sounds selfish not to give in. Although I don’t give a damn what other people think of me, and I can be a selfish prick, it does seem wrong to deny her this opportunity. She’s not even asking for enough money to matter.

Besides, I’ll hardly interact with her. She can do her plant stuff downstairs and report to human resources. It’ll be fine.

It will have to be.

Me: Are you still interested in saving our plants?

Her response comes in right away.

Carys: I’ve worried about them all week.

Me: Then you really need a hobby.

Carys: Why are you texting me at eight o’clock on a Saturday night? Sounds like you need a hobby, too.

Me: I’m working. Working is my hobby.

Carys: That’s boring.

Me: That’s no way to talk to your boss.

Carys: Ooh, does that mean what I think it means?

I grin, my fingers flying over the keys.

Me: I accept your proposal.

Carys: You don’t want to negotiate?

Me: Do you?

Carys: No one ever just accepts proposals.

Me: No one ever argues when you accept proposals.

Carys: I’m one of a kind.

“You can say that again,” I mutter.

Me: Can you start Monday? Be there at nine in the morning?

I have no idea why a date and time are so important because it truly doesn’t matter. But maybe knowing when she’ll be in the office will have some unforeseen calming effect on me for the rest of the weekend. Not likely, but there’s always hope.

Carys: Absolutely. I’ll need to know how many days you want me to come because I gave you two different packages in the proposal—one for two days a week and one for three.

Me: We can hash out the details on Monday.

“No,” I say, but ignoring my sensibilities. “You can’t set this up to be alone with her already.”

Carys: Sounds great. Your office Monday morning.

Me: Yes.

“You damn fool,” I mutter.

Carys: This is so great, Gannon. Thank you SO MUCH. I owe you.

I turn my phone off and toss it on the counter before I can continue this conversation. We need to keep things clean. Straightforward. Professional.

“You should hire me because I’m passionate about what I do, and I’m going to transform the energy in your office for pennies on the dollar.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” I groan, my body tightening.

I grab my water and head back to the gym.