Authors: Theodora Taylor
Chapter 27
B
y the time Max came barging into the common room full of Benton Group executives eating breakfast, he was no longer in a mending-fences kind of mood. In fact, his fists were both clenched in anticipation of what he expected to find. Gus wanted the woman he loved? Then he’d better be prepared to fight for her, because Max had come back to Utah fully prepared for battle.
However, Gus was nowhere to be found in the designated breakfast area. “Where’s Gus?” he snarled at one of the execs he vaguely remembered as being in charge of human resources.
“I—I’m not sure,” he answered.
“Take a guess,” Max said between clenched teeth.
“I think he’s still in his room with...” The executive trailed off, his cheeks reddening, as if he’d belatedly put together a possible cause for the dangerous look on Max’s face.
That was all Max needed to hear. He headed toward the rooms at the back of the lodge and burst into Gus’s without knocking.
Only to find him sitting on top of his bed with Cole seated across from him in a small desk chair.
They both looked up when he came into the room, surprise written across Gus’s face and guilt on Cole’s, which was shocking. Max had seen Cole look guilty only once before, when his relationship with Sunny had imploded in a bomb of secrets revealed.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Max asked, carefully closing the door behind himself.
Gus didn’t answer, just stared at Max. His eyes searched Max’s face as if he were seeing him for the first time.
Weird
, Max thought. He noticed Gus wasn’t the clean-cut Southern gentleman version of himself that Max had become used to. Today, his hair looked as if it had been styled with a lawn mower, and there were dark circles under his eyes, as if he’d been up all night. With Pru? Max wondered, his gut going cold.
“Where’s Pru? Jake said she was here.” Max stared at Gus hard and added, “With you.”
“She is here,” Cole answered in Gus’s stead. He stood up to face Max.
Cole paused, studying Max closely with a quizzical expression. Max guessed it was because they hadn’t exactly parted on great terms.
“It’s also true that she came here to see Gus,” Cole further explained.
Cole stopped, watching Max closely.
Max’s eyes stayed on Gus. “So she was with you last night?”
Before Gus could answer, Cole once again interrupted. “The real question is, why do you care that she was with Gus last night? It’s not like you have to pretend to be in love with her anymore.”
Max’s jaw set. “I wasn’t pretending,” he admitted quietly. “Not about that.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “Is this another trick, Max?” he asked. “Because if it is...”
Max cut him off. “Don’t bother threatening me, Cole. I’m not here for you. I’m here for Pru and Pru only. Because I love her, and unfortunately I didn’t realize that until it was too late. But believe me, I get it now, and I’m here.”
He then turned back toward Gus. “And I plan to take out anyone who tries to get between us.”
Gus stood up, shaking his head. “Look, normally I’d be down to scrap with you over this. But not this morning, man. Not after the night I had with Pru.”
Max started to advance to Gus, but Cole got in front of him, his hands raised in the air. “Understand that Gus is extremely tired right now. In this case he’s being serious, not trying to bait you. Pru’s made two breaks on the case. First she figured out it wasn’t Gus sabotaging the business, but Harrison, and she needed Gus to help her get the proof she needed. He has access to all of Harrison’s work accounts, thanks to the training they’d done all summer. That’s why he and Pru were up all night. They were here together, but as far as I know, nothing happened.”
Max looked to Gus. “That true?”
Gus shrugged. “Yeah, it’s true. Nothing happened, unless you call me watching her on my computer all night, something.”
Max’s shoulders sagged with relief. “And what was the other thing?”
Cole looked from Gus to Max. Then from Max to Gus. “She also figured out why Granddad took such an early interest in Gus. She followed a hunch and got a few strands of Gus’s hair from a hairbrush and a few strands of yours and had them analyzed by a friend of hers who works in forensics. Apparently, Gus is your brother.”
Max blinked. Then blinked some more. Then said, “What do you mean, my brother? You’re my brother. My only brother.”
“Not
our
brother,” Cole said, as if reading his mind. “Pru thought so at first, and she came up here to break the news to Gus and get some of my DNA for analysis, too. But the more she looked into it, the more she became convinced he was only your half brother. Gus was born less than five months after your mother left you with Gran and Granddad.”
Every thing became clear to Max then. Why his mother had so abruptly dropped him off with her in-laws. Why she hadn’t come back for so much as a visit until nearly a year later.
She’d seemed different the next time Max had seen her. Unsteady. As if the prescription drugs she consumed by the handful, tossed back with wine, were the only things keeping her together. This would become her MO over the next few years. Coming to Las Vegas for visits, all smiles and bearing gifts, only to become more and more frantic over the course of her stay. Until one day, he’d wake up and there’d be a note slipped under his door, about how she’d decided to go meet friends or a lover in a place that wasn’t Las Vegas. In a place that wasn’t anywhere near Max.
Max stared at Gus now. Apparently he hadn’t even gotten that. Their mother had abandoned him from day one with a heart condition and a father who would eventually die, leaving him with no one.
Gus took the story from there. “Pru put all the clues together. I don’t like to talk about it, but I had a pretty hard upbringing, with occasional windfalls of luck. An anonymous donor paid for my heart surgery when I was a kid. And I got the Benton Foundation scholarship, even though my grades weren’t all that great...and I didn’t apply for it. Back then, I figured it was because my guidance counselor liked me—she was always telling me I could be so much more if I just applied myself.”
Max lifted an eyebrow. He’d had similar conversations with his own guidance counselor. Apparently they’d had a few things in common as teenagers despite growing up worlds apart.
“When I got that scholarship, I figured she must have been the one who put me up for it—maybe even fudged my grades so I’d get it. And I didn’t want to get her in trouble, so I went on ahead and applied to Cornell. I was as surprised as anybody else when I actually got in. But back then I thought it must have been because I already had the scholarship. Same goes for when your grandpa recruited me for the Benton New Orleans. I thought it all went together.”
Cole stepped in then to explain, “And that’s why he didn’t brag about the scholarship or being recruited by Granddad. He didn’t necessarily deserve the scholarship in the first place.”
“That’s also why I worked so hard when I got to the Benton New Orleans,” Gus told them. “Trust me, I know where I was headed before that scholarship came along, and it paved a new road for me.”
Max nodded, believing Gus’s story and putting together his own conclusions about his grandfather’s actions. Yeah, that would have been Granddad’s response to finding out Max had a half brother in New Orleans. He was too stodgy to take in a kid who wasn’t related to him by blood, but too sentimental not to help the kid out when he could.
“So...” Max said, sizing up Gus in a new light. “You’re my brother.”
Gus also seemed to be sizing him up. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
Max suddenly found himself smiling. Smiling bigger than he would have guessed over the prospect of having another half brother. All this time, he’d been resentful of being Cole’s little brother. Now he was going to get to be someone’s big brother.
“All right,” Max said, slapping his hands together. “First things first. We find Pru and tell her that we both obviously have good taste. But I’m the brother she’s going to need to choose because I’m in love with her.”
Gus nodded, a tired but game smile lifting his lips up. “All right. I guess I can play a part in this rom-com you’ve got going on with her.”
Max grinned back at him. “Awesome, glad that’s settled.” He then strung an arm around his little brother’s shoulders and led him toward the door. “Second thing we need to talk about is you coming to work for me in New Orleans at the hotel I’m putting together. This trip has made me realize that I’ll probably be needing a partner to run the hotel’s day-to-day business, and I think you’re just the guy.”
“Wait, what?” said Cole behind them.
“Seriously?” Gus asked at the same time.
“Yeah, seriously, man,” Max answered, opening the door and leading Gus out of the room. “I mean, you took a hit on that first presentation, but then you came back and killed it. I need someone like you. Someone who knows how to take punches and get on board with new ideas.”
“Max, what hotel?” Cole demanded behind them.
“Come up to my room, so we can talk terms,” Max said, leading Gus toward the stairs. “I’m not stingy like Cole. I’ll do more than give you a few shares. I’ll make you a partner, even let you choose your own title.”
“Are you serious?” Gus asked, his eyes widening.
“Are you serious?” Cole asked at the same time behind him.
“Yep,” Max said as he walked up the stairs beside Gus. He was definitely going to like this big-brother business.
Cole followed them, his voice hard and demanding as he said, “Tell me you are not starting a rival hotel in New Orleans.”
“This hotel won’t be remotely in the same league as a stodgy old Benton hotel,” Max answered Cole over his shoulder.
“That’s what you were planning to do with your trust money? Start a hotel?” Gus asked.
“One of the things,” Max answered, deciding to save his hedge-fund expansion for later. “Thing is, you’ve got a couple of decades under Cole at the Benton Group before you even get close to the number of shares you’d need to make your voice count. But if you quit the Benton Las Vegas and come operate this hotel with me in New Orleans, then you get to be your own man. So two decades slogging under Cole, or taking charge of your life by going in with me on this start-up? One is sure to be boring and one is sure to be an adventure, but you know, your choice, man.”
“He chooses the Benton Group, one of the fastest-growing and most respected brands in the hotel industry,” Cole answered for Gus.
Gus looked intrigued.
His lack of a quick refusal set Cole off in a way Max hadn’t experienced in a while. His older brother grabbed him by the arm and said, “If you think I’m going to let you use your trust fund to build a competing hotel and steal my new vice president, you must not know me, Max.”
The sinister note in Cole’s voice touched Max to his very core, and he actually had to work hard to keep a goofy smile off his face.
Cole didn’t go all menacing businessman on just anybody. With Max and nearly anyone else of whom he didn’t approve, he was usually just coldly contemptuous. No, this arch-villain voice of his was on exclusive reserve for his business rivals—which meant he now considered Max a true rival.
But two could play the arch-villain game. Max took his arm back, opening his mouth to inform Cole that he had enough financial and social capital to get the hotel funded with or without his trust fund. But then he was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot ringing out, cold and deadly, through the lodge.
Chapter 28
“S
unny, run!” Pru screamed at her best friend as she struggled with Harrison.
She’d taken a calculated risk that Harrison was holding them at gunpoint only to give himself enough time to escape the scene. Pru didn’t think he truly wanted to harm either of them—especially the pregnant Sunny.
She’d then gotten as close as possible under the guise of trying to reason with Harrison. Like most secretly malcontented employees, he had a lot to say about why he’d decided to double-cross the company that had been signing his checks for nearly three decades.
The whole story had come out, angrily and desperately. He had gone on about how “that cheap bastard” Cole had awarded him only a few shares in the Benton Group when it had gone public.
But the last straw had been when Cole had hired a thirty-year-old boy to replace him. That, Harrison just couldn’t abide. So he’d struck a deal with the Benton Inn’s biggest potential rival. And then that deal had gone to hell when his contact at Key Card accused him of giving them bad information on purpose and opening Key Card up to a possible defamation suit if the blogger he’d tipped off squealed. His Key Card contact had threatened to expose Harrison to Cole and the authorities if he didn’t get him something else—something Key Card could really use. According to Harrison, he’d been left with no choice but to break into Cole’s room while he and Sunny were both otherwise occupied.
“Who wouldn’t have done what I did in my position?” he’d whined to Pru.
Pru could think of a lot of people who wouldn’t have turned on their employer of thirty years. But she’d met people like Harrison before. People who went on and on about how nice they were and made big splashy shows of giving money to charity. Not because they actually gave a damn about the cause, but because they wanted everyone else to know what nice guys they were. However, in Pru’s experiences, supposed “nice guys” often felt even more entitled than “bad boys” like Max.
How many times had Pru been aggressively hit on by tourists, claiming she should come back to their hotel room because they were such nice guys?
But Pru listened to Harrison’s self-indulgent sob story. Listened and drew closer as she did.
Then she kneed the “nice guy,” who currently had a gun trained on her pregnant friend, in the balls at the same time that she pushed his gun arm into the air.
He fell forward with an indignant yell. Luckily the gun was in the air, because he squeezed the trigger, sending plaster from the ceiling spraying down on them.
“Sunny, run!” Pru yelled as she struggled with Harrison to get control of the gun.
“No! No!” he screamed. “Let me go. You bitch!”
He was the same height as Pru, but still a man. It was taking all her strength to keep his wrist in the air. Plus, Harrison had the adrenaline of panic and unexpected pain on his side.
“Sunny, run!” she yelled again, hoping that her friend had managed to clear the room, because she didn’t know how much longer she could hold on.
A huge body suddenly came out of nowhere, blocking her view of Harrison.
Now Harrison really screamed.
Pru stumbled back and watched Max take the gun off Harrison as if it was a piece of candy he was prying from a baby’s hand. The next thing Pru knew, Harrison was lying facedown on the floor with Max’s knee in his back and his own revolver pressed against his temple.
Max looked up at Pru then. “You okay?” His voice was deadly calm, but there was murder in his pale green eyes. As if Harrison’s continued existence depended on her answer.
“I’m fine,” Pru assured him quickly.
Pru suddenly remembered Sunny and looked around wildly, only to find her outside the doorway crying in Cole’s arms. A rush of relief flooded over her. She then brought her eyes back to Max.
For a moment their eyes stayed locked, her fear giving away to gratitude. She was safe now. They all were. Because of Max.