Page 21 of In the Heir (Westerly Billionaire 1)
Just two more days.
Feels like forever.
Organizing his office and global teams so all would run smoothly while he stepped away for a week kept him busy enough that his day passed quickly. When he finally looked up from his computer, after answering the last of his e-mails, the sun had already set.
He stood, stretched, and walked to the window of his office. The Boston skyline at night was impressive, but he was lost in thought.
He’d never needed to pursue a woman, so it was difficult to judge how he was doing. Alisha had liked his gift enough to thank him for it. He’d expected her to agree to have dinner with him. His plan was to take her on a couple of dates, the last of which ended with her spending the night at his place, and then surprise her with the fact that he was going away with her. Her refusal made his booking the suite adjoining hers a little less romantic and a little more stalkerish.
She’s interested. I can’t be wrong about that. What did she say? Sleeping with me was the only way she could make things worse?
Because she feels guilty about something that wasn’t her fault. His family was imploding, but it wasn’t by her hand. There has to be a way to make her see that.
To make everyone see that.
So far, he wasn’t impressed with how his family was handling the fallout from the other day. His father was in stoic denial that anything significant had happened. His grandmother saw the event only in terms of how it affected her. Eric’s return was delayed by an unavoidable filming issue. His mother and younger siblings had circled their wagons as if they’d somehow been threatened. And Spencer was doing his best to follow in their father’s footsteps, by hiding at work.
Really, how could sleeping with me make anything worse? It’s already a shitfest.
“I told you he’d be here,” Victor Andrade’s voice boomed through the doorway even before he entered it.
Brett turned from the window and groaned. Victor and his brother, Alessandro, were his father’s age and friends of the family, but they’d chosen the wrong time to visit. “Gentlemen.”
Alessandro crossed the office and hugged Brett. “Is that any way to greet family?”
Brett had never been, and would never be, someone who hugged other men, but these two old coots had broken him down over the last thirty-two years. There was no family tree that linked the Westerlys to the Andrades, but that fact was lost on them. Their mother had been a good friend of his grandmother’s and that was enough by their definition. Victor was next, with a loud backslapping embrace that always left Brett wondering if muggers used the same technique to disorient their victims.
When Victor stepped back, he was beaming with pride. “I still picture you hiding behind the couch in diapers, but you look good in your father’s office.”
Brett shook his head at the image.
“You’re embarrassing him, Victor,” Alessandro said, as if Brett needed his support. “He’s a man now.”
“What can I do for you two?” Brett asked. The Andrades were like a summer storm. There was no avoiding them; all one could do was buckle down and hope they didn’t last long.
Victor made himself at home in one of the chairs in front of Brett’s desk as Alessandro followed suit in the other. “We’re here to see how you’re doing,” Victor said.
“Just checking in,” Alessandro added.
“My grandmother called you,” Brett said dryly.
Alessandro shrugged. “She worries.”
Brett sat on the front edge of his desk and folded his arms across his chest. “She’d have less to worry about if you kept more of your advice to yourself.”
The brothers exchanged a pained look. Alessandro waved an expressive hand in the air. “Love is always the answer.”
Victor slapped a hand on his thigh. “Unless it involves your brother’s fiancée. What is this nonsense we’re hearing about you squabbling over the same woman?”
Brett looked skyward for assistance but received none. When he looked down, they were still there. “I’m not discussing this with you.”
“He doesn’t look guilty,” Victor said.
Alessandro rubbed his chin as he studied Brett. “So Delinda was right, and it wasn’t a real engagement?”
Brett said nothing.
Victor went back to waving his hands as he spoke. “You have to admire Spencer for finding a fiancée that fast, even if it wasn’t for real.”
“Delinda says she’s a spitfire. My Elise is never afraid to say what she wants. I love that in a woman.” Alessandro’s expression turned dreamy.
Brett closed his eyes and counted to ten. There were few people he tapped into his patience reserve for, but Victor and Alessandro had always been good to his family, good to him. Loyalty like that gave them a special place in his heart. Still, he didn’t want to imagine either of them with their wives. He shuddered. “I hate to cut this visit short, but it’s been a long day and I’m beat.”
Neither man moved to leave.
“So tell us about this Alisha Coventry,” Alessandro said.
Never going to happen. Brett pushed off the desk. If he walked out of the office, they might follow him.
They didn’t.
From the other room he heard Victor make a tsk-tsk sound. “He thinks we’re too old to remember what he’s going through.”
“Or that he knows women better than we do.”
“Who understands women better than men who have been happily married for over thirty years?” Victor chided. “Our résumés speak for themselves. What’s your track record, Brett?”
Brett walked back into his office. The Andrade storm was not yet abating. “Although I appreciate your concern, I don’t need your help.”
Alessandro smiled. “We’ve heard that before.”
Nodding, Victor said, “We sure have. How do you feel about this woman?”
Brett kept his silence, which did nothing to break their stride. Alessandro leaned forward in his seat and spread one hand in the air, then the other as he spoke. “Are you at the pop-the-question or the make-up-after-the-breakup stage?”
“Neither,” Brett answered abruptly.
Victor said, “He doesn’t look excited or nervous enough to be about to propose.”
Alessandro shook his head in confusion. “He’s not sad, so he’s not fighting with her.”
Victor’s eyes rounded, and he slapped his knee. “She turned him down. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Brett sat in the empty chair across from them. Their slow torture techniques should be registered with the government.
Alessandro’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “She did? This is worse than I thought.”
There was an irony to his claim that Brett couldn’t let pass. “Worse than when you thought I was stealing Spencer’s fiancée?”
“We never really believed that,” Victor said. “We’ve known you your whole life. You’re a good boy. That’s why we’re here. We want to see you happy.”
“Who is ever really fucking happy?” Brett countered.
Victor frowned. “I am.” He looked to his brother. “Alessandro, are you?”
&nbs
p; “I have my health, a beautiful wife, grandchildren, and good people who are family through love if not through blood. What do I have to be unhappy about?”
This wasn’t the first time Victor and Alessandro had shared their view of the world with him, but it was the first time Brett didn’t dismiss it as utter bullshit. They weren’t feeding a teenage boy an unrealistic version of life in an attempt to cheer him up. They genuinely were that fucking happy.
“Nothing, apparently.” If they were comparing personal lives, theirs were, in fact, better than his. What did he have to lose? “You’re right. She turned me down.”
Alessandro clapped his hands together. “So? What did you do?”
“I sent her luggage.”
Victor made a face. Alessandro waved him off and encouraged Brett to continue. “Maybe it’s not so bad. Was it full of jewelry? Flowers? Expensive dresses? Did you include an invitation she couldn’t resist?”
“No,” Brett said and began to wonder if he’d missed the mark with his gift. “It had flowers on it, so I told her to consider them the first flowers I gave her.”
Seesawing his hand back and forth, Victor said, “That’s not horrible. But luggage?”
“She’s leaving on a cruise on Sunday.”
“That you bought for her?” Victor continued his interview as Alessandro sat back and listened intently.
“No.”
“That you’re going on together?”
“No. Yes. It’s complicated.”
Alessandro cut in, “I have a feeling you need to start from the beginning for us to be able to help you.”
“I don’t need—”
“You do, Brett. You gave her luggage,” Victor said blandly.
Touché, old man.
Touché.
Brett got up and poured them all a glass of scotch. Then he sat back down and began to tell them about the time Alisha walked into his office.
Chapter Twelve
The next day Alisha was on her way home from leaving the engagement ring, tucked into a handwritten apology, with Spencer’s secretary. She didn’t know if he’d actually not been there or if he simply hadn’t wanted to see her, but either way it was over. She couldn’t go back in time and stop him from hearing the truth about his parentage, but she did let him know how much she regretted the way he’d learned about it. She wished she could have spared him that.
