Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Cody couldn’t shake the intensity that he still felt from the simple act of his fingertips brushing against Marlowe’s.
Why was he getting so damned worked up over her?
There were beautiful women everywhere. Beauty was a feature of all women, in his opinion. He liked them in all shapes and sizes. He was a big fan in general.
But there was something about her. He couldn’t believe that her husband had done that. Abandoned her like that. He had been concerned about the hotel initially, but now he was thinking more about her. Now that the shock had worn off. He would pay her what he had promised. He was certain about that.
He didn’t even need to review anything to know that she didn’t deserve to be penalized just because the man she was married to turned out to be a dick.
It was weird because he had gotten the impression when he had done the phone interview that they’d been together for a long time. They’d seemed solid. Like two people on the same page.
Not that he knew anything about marriage, dysfunctional or otherwise. He didn’t know the kinds of things that people in long-term relationships did. The ways in which it drove them crazy. He was chronically single, and not by accident.
He tromped up the front steps into the house, which was blessedly empty of his siblings.
That meant he could grill hamburgers in peace.
He smiled just slightly as he took the patties outside to cook them on the grill. He could remember doing this back when Lila and Walker were small. He wondered if they remembered it.
Lila had been so little. They would get home from school, and their mom wouldn’t get home from work until so late that it was up to Cody to make sure that everybody was fed.
He had a basic but solid repertoire. Hamburgers, hot dogs, hamburger helper, and tuna melts.
He had expanded since then, but there was nothing quite like old comfort food when the mood hit.
And a cheeseburger would always be comfort food to him.
By the time he finished grilling and went back inside, the front door opened and slammed shut behind him.
“I quit.”
Cody looked up and saw Walker, hat in his hands, his hair sticking up at all angles, like he’d been pulling it.
“Sorry,” Cody said, voice monotone. “You can’t quit. You swore me a blood oath.”
“This is ridiculous. The specifications that these people have.”
Cody frowned. “Which people?”
“People who are getting married. Brides, yes, but not just the brides, the mother of the bride. The mother of the groom. The groom himself. It’s a lot. I had to have a lot of information on hand when all of this is theoretical.”
“Well, if you made promises, they better be promises that we can keep.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I just can’t believe this is my lot in life.”
“It’s what you’re good at,” Cody said. “And anyway, if things go wrong, you’re the one I want in that role. I don’t need it to go perfectly, I just need you to be able to smooth things over, and we both know you’re great at that. It’s actually the real reason that you aren’t in prison.”
Walker grinned, and for a second, all Cody could see was ten-year-old Walker looking up at him like that. Glittering blue eyes, mischievous.
Walker was the only one of the Graysons with blonde hair.
After doing Punnett squares in high school, Cody had come to the conclusion that Walker probably didn’t have the same dad as Cody and Lila. Though their mother had always claimed that David Reynolds was the father of all her children.
Given their dad hadn’t been involved in their lives, it hadn’t mattered much. They were their mom’s kids, they were siblings. None of them had a present father.
It didn’t make a difference whether they were half-siblings or not. Didn’t change what they had been through.
Hell, it was just like with Nolan. Nolan wasn’t related to them by blood, but he had spent most days in their little apartment, eating the same sorts of food as the rest of them. He’d had a distant grandmother who didn’t really want to deal with him, and nobody else.
No wonder they had all been practically feral.
They came by it honestly.
Whether Walker and he shared a father or not, their bond couldn’t be any stronger.
“Remember, you used to shoplift and then talk your way out of having the cops called on you. A couple of times, I remember they just ended up giving you whatever it was you took.”
“I’m persuasive,” he said. “I know. If we’d had a different life, maybe I would’ve been a lawyer.”
Looking at his brother in his dusty jeans and shirt, it was almost funny, except it was true.
If they had access to their dad’s money before he had died, when they were younger, maybe they all would’ve made different decisions.
As it was, they had done what they needed to do to survive.
They had gotten into ranching. Both he and Walker had taken jobs at one of the local cattle ranches early on.
It had given them both a passion for it, then Cody had gone into the rodeo, and five years later, just like clockwork, Walker had followed behind.
Lila had gotten into horses because of a friend and would never admit that it had anything to do with her brothers, or what they liked, or what they did, because she would never admit that she was influenced by them at all.
“Lila and Nolan are working together today.”
“God help us,” Walker said. “I didn’t hear any ambulances, so I assume Nolan is still in one piece.”
“Never make assumptions. Not where Lila is concerned.”
As if on cue, Lila and Nolan burst through the front door, doing their best impression of…well, themselves.
“And when I say fuck you,” she was saying, “I mean fuck you.”
“Charming. Classy. A real lady, you demonic hell spawn.”
“Can you be a lady and be demonic hell spawn?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to decide.”
“What seems to be the issue?” Cody butted in to their banter.
“There’s no issue,” Nolan said, his hard glare at Lila suggesting otherwise.
“Pull it together,” Cody said.
“You tell this chowderhead to pull it together,” Lila said. “I can’t do a goddamn thing without him telling me what to do.”
“You needed to be told what to do. I have experience trailblazing, and you don’t. I don’t know why you find it so painful to take direction from somebody who has more experience than you.”
“I’m your boss,” she said.
“Your brother is my boss, and even then, I would tell him to fuck off if I felt like it.”
“Okay,” Cody said. “No one is anyone’s boss.
Nobody. Why? Because I couldn’t fire anyone here without having to hear about it for the rest of my life.
It wouldn’t be worth it. I would rather keep you miserable assholes on payroll for the rest of my days than deal with the fallout of firing you.
That means I can’t really be your boss. Also, Lila, he’s right.
He has more experience with that kind of thing than you. You should’ve let him help.”
“You’re saying that without having witnessed how condescending he is. If he had been talking to you that way, you would’ve punched him in the face.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Possibly. But he wasn’t talking to me that way, and I wasn’t there, oh, and I don’t care. Pull it together.”
“So, how was the hotel thing?” Walker was clearly ready to leave the petty disagreement behind them, too.
“Well, her husband left her.”
“What?” At the same time, Nolan said, “Whose husband?”
“And, Nolan,” Lila said, “not only were you condescending –”
“Hang on a second,” Nolan said.
He grabbed hold of Lila, bumped her over his shoulder, and stood upright, clinging to her calves like she was a bag of feed, and then he walked straight into the living room and dumped her over the back of the couch while she screamed bloody murder.
“The adults are talking,” he said.
“FuuuuUUUuuck you,” she shouted, her middle fingers held high over the back of the couch and swirling in circles, the only visible part of her.
“Anyway,” Nolan said, his expression bright. “I’m sorry, start the story over.”
“I’m going to poison your food!” Lila shouted.
“Fine, if you shut the fuck up for a minute, you can poison my food later, you ungodly porcupine,” Nolan said. “Please go on.”
“I hired a couple, a married couple, to run the hotel. Plus, I hired the husband’s sister to run the bakery.”
He might have gotten into the middle of Lila and Nolan’s fight, but it was just a regular Tuesday with the two of them, so there was no point inserting himself, or even really remarking on it.
They were oil and oil, that was the problem. Not opposites, so much as way too much alike. That had always been true. They’d been at each other’s throats since Lila was so small she shouldn’t have been able to have a mortal enemy yet.
But she’d made one out of Nolan from moment one.
“Anyway, they showed up, it was just the two women. Turns out the guy asked for a divorce after they got all packed up to come out here.”
“Shit,” Walker said.
“What an asshole,” Lila said, clearly forgetting her rage at Nolan for a moment, because there was another man who deserved it even more.
“What are you going to do? Do you have to hire another person?” Nolan asked.
“We’ll see. But I didn’t really feel like I could throw her out on her ass, first of all because we need somebody, and I don’t have the luxury of waiting around to find a new candidate, and second of all because… I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t. “
“Why? Is she hot?” This question came from Walker, and Cody found that he wanted to punch his brother in the face.
“What do her looks have to do with anything? I wouldn’t feel right about putting anybody out in the cold in this situation.”
“Liar,” Nolan said at the same time Lila said, “Lies.”
“No,” he said. “You make it sound like I am a raging tyrant. I’m not. We just went through the fact that I would never fire any of you, but you think that I would throw a woman out into the cold when her husband just left her?”
“So, she’s hot,” Walker said.
“What makes you think that?”