Chapter 5
FIVE
COLSON
Once I got into the back seat of the SUV, Paul pulled out of my driveway to head to the office, and I stared at the screen of my phone.
The notifications were heavier this morning, and most were from my family.
It was obvious that none of us had slept last night after Walker and Alivia’s grand opening.
Dozens of texts had gone back and forth between all of us.
The only sibling who had reached out beyond text was Walker. There were four missed calls from him, starting at five this morning, the latest round only a few minutes ago, when I’d been busy giving Ellie breakfast.
I pressed his number and held the phone to my ear. “Walker …”
“Jesus Christ, Colson. Why haven’t you been answering my calls? I know you get up at the ass crack of dawn—that’s why I’ve been reaching out to you nonstop.”
Thanks to my daughter, sleep wasn’t something I got a lot of anymore.
Not when she came into my room in the middle of the night with her arms full of stuffed animals and slept horizontally so her feet kicked my face a few times an hour.
It didn’t matter how many times I repositioned her; she always ended up in the same spot.
“My phone was on silent,” I admitted. “I just needed a fucking minute.”
“We don’t have a goddamn minute.”
I glanced out the window. The winding roads of the Hollywood Hills didn’t offer much of a view from the street, just mostly tree coverage and massive mansions. “I know.”
“I’ve been thinking …” He paused. “The recipes we use at Horned and the ones that have carried over to Charred, they’re solid.
Sure, I could alter a few ingredients to make them different, but I don’t think that would satisfy the Gordons.
Those motherfuckers want total change, they don’t want tweaking.
” His exhale almost sounded like a growl.
“You know, I didn’t want to buy Horned in the first place.
I thought we had too much on our plates.
Hart and Beck, they were all about it, and now this happens and … ”
My eyes closed, and I remembered the moment Hart and Beck had pitched us the idea. “We can’t fix the past, Walker. It is what it is at this point.”
“No, but we can sell Horned.”
My eyelids flicked open. “Is that what you want? We already have contracts signed on two more buildings. That would be quite a loss, although the sale would make up the difference.”
“I know I don’t want to redo a whole menu, and I don’t want to spend twenty million for the one we have now after we already spent seven figures on purchasing Horned.”
I banged the back of my head against the cushion behind me. “Troy and Jenner said they can get that number down.”
“To what? Eighteen? Come on. I don’t want to give them a fucking dollar. Eighteen million isn’t going to sting less than twenty.”
My brain was spiraling, reaching for anything to grasp, the same way it had been doing all night and morning.
“If we sell, the Gordons are still going to want to be compensated for the period in which we used their partial recipes. There’s no escaping this.
We’re going to have to give them something—it just depends on what that something is. ”
“I wish there were a way out of this.”
I laughed. “Do you want to hear a funny coincidence?”
“I’m not in the mood to laugh.”
I wasn’t sure my brother was ever in the mood to laugh, but I still said, “You’re going to have to hear it anyway. Do you remember a few months back, when I told you I had one hell of a fucking story for you and I wanted you to call me?”
“Are you forgetting that at the grand opening last night, you gave me shit for not calling you regarding that situation? So, yeah, of course I remember.”
I took a drink of my coffee. “Well, if you recall, we talked right before I headed to Lush for the night, so when I told you I needed to chat, it was to tell you the details from the evening I’d spent there.
Walker, it was a wild one.” I wasn’t one to kiss and tell, but I knew he’d get a kick out of the threesome.
“And why I brought it up again last night is because that episode at Lush is suddenly relevant.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“That night at Lush, I had a threesome. It went on for hours. It wasn’t the kinkiest time I’d ever had there, but it was the most memorable. One of the women—the blonde—fuck, she was something else.”
“Colson, I’m not sure why you think I’ll find this funny. Or why you’re telling me this story now when we have much more pressing matters on our hands.”
I chuckled. “The blonde was Sophie Rivers, the Gordons’ attorney. I had no idea. I figured it out when I walked into the meeting at the Daltons’.”
“What? You’re fucking kidding me.”
“And I happened to run into her again yesterday at Ellie’s gymnastics class. Our daughters are best friends.”
“Can this work to our advantage in any way?”
I placed the coffee in the console cupholder and stretched my arm across the empty seat next to me. “What do you mean?”
“Now that you’ve been with Sophie, is there a conflict of interest in her representing the Gordons?”
I considered the layers, peeling back each one. “Even if there is, they’d hire another attorney, and we’d be in the same situation. The only difference is, I know what their current attorney tastes like.”
And that taste was fucking exceptional.
“Jesus,” Walker groaned.
The two of us went silent until I broke the quiet with, “We don’t have much time left. We have to choose one of their options. You’re the only one who has the power to make an entirely new menu. If you think that’s possible, we’ll do it. If not …”
“I refuse to give them a fucking dime.”
My brows lifted. “What are you saying, Walker?”
“I’m in my kitchen right now. I’ll have a sample menu curated before dinnertime. Alivia’s going to help me. This might be one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever come up with. And there will be fallout because we won’t have time to test, but we’ll deal with it.”
“I’ll be at your house in ten minutes.”
“You’re going to help? You don’t know a thing about cooking.”
Paul looked at me from the rearview mirror, and I mouthed, Walker’s house.
I then said to my brother, “I don’t know how to cook, you’re right. But I know how to eat, and I have one hell of a palate, and I refuse to let you two do this alone.” I smiled. “Fuck the Gordons.”
“Daddy, I’m going to bed, and Mommy said to call you and say good night.”
I held the phone to my ear as I stood on the far side of Walker’s kitchen. We’d been at this for hours, playing with concepts, melding different dishes. My entire family, minus Beck, was here. The progress we’d made was mind-blowing.
“I’m so glad you called, baby. I miss you.”
But I was glad she was at her mom’s for the next few nights because I would be living at Walker’s until the menu was finished.
“Daddy, I want Abbi with an I to come over. Can she come over this weekend?”
If my shirt wasn’t already unbuttoned and untucked, I would have torn the buttons from my throat. “Have you talked to Abbi with an I about this?”
“Yesss. We decided at gymnastics. Daddy, she has to come over.”
I glanced at Walker as he held a spoon in front of Eden, having her taste a sauce he’d just made. “Did Abbi ask her mom?”
“Daddy, call her mom and tell her it’s okay.”
“But did she ask her mom?”
“I don’t know.”
How the hell was I going to get out of this?
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, baby. Her mom might say no.”
“Mrs. Rivers is sooo nice. She won’t say no. She loves me.”
I laughed. “Everyone loves you.”
“If her mom says no, then I’ll go to Abbi with an I’s house. Okaaay?”
I needed a fucking drink. Something strong that would wipe Sophie from my brain.
It didn’t matter how much I couldn’t stand her; she still had a front-row seat in my mind with her legs spread and my face between them.
“Ellie, tell me something—why do you call her Mrs. Rivers and not Miss Rivers?”
I was playing with fire … I just couldn’t stop myself.
“I dunno, Daddy.”
“Do you know that Mrs. means she’s married and Miss means she’s not married? So, by calling her Mrs., you’re saying she’s married.”
“Huh?”
Why am I asking this? Why am I getting my daughter involved? And what makes me think Ellie will understand what I’m even asking?
“What I mean is, is Mrs. Rivers married? Does Abbi with an I have a daddy at home?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask Abbi—”
“You do not need to ask Abbi.”
Everyone had a different reason for investing in a Lush membership. I didn’t know what had driven Sophie, but if she was married, that would certainly make for an interesting reason.
Not that it would be any of my business, but, damn it, I wanted to know.
“Daddy, can Abbi with an I come over? Pleeease? She’s my bestie!”
“Let me think about it, baby.”
“Ick. That means no and—”
She was starting to get emotional. We were seconds away from tears and possibly a hardcore meltdown.
“That doesn’t mean no. It means I want to think about it.”
Walker was plating another dish for us to try, and given that time was something we didn’t have a lot of, I had to wrap this up.
“Are you done thinking yet?”
I laughed. “You might be the best saleswoman I’ve ever met—you know that?”
“He-he.”
“I love you. Sleep tight, my baby girl. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
“Night, Daddy.”