Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 59
A stifled laugh—Huck.
“Can somebody tell me when we’re going to quit discussing this? I’m planning a trip.” Driver.
“I’m planning to trip balls,” adds Huck. “Just kidding. God, you’re a tough crowd.”
“Guys, I’m telling you, we just need to give it a few more days.” Roman’s voice is calming, but Charlie’s had enough.
“I’m done with waiting. I’ve run a thousand miles over this.”
“We know,” says Huck.
We step through the door into Roman’s office. I’ve never heard a silence this loud in all my life.
Finally, Huck speaks up, punching through the quiet like a martini glass shattering on bare cement.
“Uh, this might be a dumb question, but…who’s that?”
“Hello to you, too.” I raise Everly’s hand up in mine, holding it tightly, as proud as I possibly can. “I’d like all of you to meet my wife.”
6
Everly
I’m looking at four additional sets of Asher’s eyes. At first I think it’s five, and I can’t believe that six people all have the same eyes.
But then the shock wears off, and I can see that they don’t. There are subtle differences that are easier to pick up at close range, and we are at close range, let me tell you. Close enough to see that one of the brothers has gray eyes with the same stunning intensity as Asher’s.
My hand feels slick in his and my heart beats somewhere at the base of my mouth. Any of them could know. Any of them. And if they do, if Asher appearing in Paulson really does have something to do with the neighboring ranch, I don’t know what I’ll do. If he finds out…
I can’t think about that now, when I’m standing in a room full of all his brothers. We’re performing now. Only the pause is so long and heavy I almost moonwalk backward out of the room just to put it out of its misery.
“Yes. I’m Asher’s wife, Everly Carson. Soon-to-be Carson-Bliss.” Brilliant. Even in this fake fantasy scenario, I’ve ended up with a hyphenated name I don’t walk. Now I’ve done it. At least the silence was a casualty of my word vomit.
“Soon to be?” The brother who asks holds an oversized martini glass with a turquoise umbrella balanced against the rim. “Ash? Care to explain?”
“I got married yesterday,” Asher says, and his thumb moves in gentle circles on the back of my hand. I know it’s for the appearances, but it feels so real I could curl up into that feeling and stay there for days. He takes a deep breath. “Everly, I’d like you to meet my brothers. Beau here has the martini glass, as usual. Roman is my oldest brother.” The man behind the desk lifts his hand. “Driver’s in the back corner.”
“Hey,” says the brother named Driver. I want to know the story behind that name.
“Next to Driver is Charlie.”
Charlie gives me a crisp nod, his arms crossed over his chest.
“We’re twins,” pipes up Beau. “In case you couldn’t tell. It’s a very opposites-attract situation.”
“No one here is attracted to you,” says Charlie, glancing at Beau at the last possible moment. Beau takes a sip of his drink and grins, but I get the sense his smile is usually a lot wider. Is it me? It’s probably me.
“And leaning up against the wall there is Huck.”
Huck detaches himself from the wall and stands up next to Roman’s desk. “Nice to meet you, Everly.” He swings his gaze around to Roman, who looks across at Asher like his older and more irritating. “Are you going to tell him off for this or should I?”
Roman waves him off. “Tell him off for what? He’s a grown man in a free country.”
“I call bullshit,” Charlie says.
From the shock wave that goes through the room at his words, I’m guessing that Charlie wouldn’t normally say that kind of thing to a guest.
But…I’m not a guest. Not really. I’ve been thinking of myself as one ever since Asher told me about the resort and club on the plane.
“Charlie…” Beau balances the rim of his glass against his lips. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“Sorry, you’re right. I should be absolutely calm about the fact that I’ve been trying to find you for weeks, Asher, and you’ve been off the radar. And now you show up here married?”
“You’re overreacting, Charlie,” Driver says from the back of the room. “They’re here now. That’s what matters.”
“Yes. They’re here, and we have a problem that needs all of us, not outside interference.”
“Sorry about him,” says Beau, lifting his chin and smiling at me. “He’s been a little uptight since birth, but especially this summer.”
“Did you read any of the messages, Asher?” Charlie runs two hands over hair. “We’ve sent hundreds. Maybe a thousand. Did you read any of them? Do you know what you’re walking into with a complete stranger hanging off your arm?”
“Hey.” The word bursts out of me before I can stop it on a swell of hot indignation that I can’t swallow down. My throat is a tight not. This is not what I was expecting. I was expecting something more along the lines of an early fall vacation with a few stolen beach days, not a bunch of errant rage contained in a small room. “I’m not hanging off his arm. Since when is it illegal to hold your husband’s hand?”
“It’s not,” says Beau helpfully. The heat in my chest splits into two halves. One wants to stay righteously indignant and the other wants to burst out laughing at how stupid it is to be righteously indignant about my fake husband.
“For another,” I barrel on before I double over with a fit of the giggles. “Your brother is back, and he’s fine. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
“It does count for something,” Roman says neutrally. “Of course, we were all very worried, Asher.”
“He’s downplaying it,” says Huck. “He’s been pissed, too. Charlie’s run several ultramarathons up and down the beach for stress relief.” He puts the last two words in air quotes. “Clearly, it hasn’t been working.”
“I read some of the messages,” Asher admits, squeezing my hand. “Not all of them.”
Charlie looks at Roman. “See? He doesn’t give a shit what happens here. He does whatever he pleases, and we’re left to scramble when he doesn’t show up for months on end.”
My face has gone numb with the sheer awkwardness of standing in what is clearly a family problem to be solved. Asher didn’t mention any kind of tension at Bliss on the plane. He only said that his job in Montana was done, and he had to get back, which is irritating, to say the least. I want to pull my hand away from his and demand to know what this is all about, but I can’t. He’s my husband.
“I’m sure that’s not true.” Roman’s voice is even, but his eyes narrow when he looks at Asher. “And I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation of why he’s been out of contact.”
Asher shrugs, lifting my hand along with the movement. “I had other things to do.”
“Other things to do,” Charlie repeats, acid dripping from his voice. “Other things to do, while we pay your salary and try to fix everything without you?”
“Fix everything?” Asher’s jaw is locked so tight I’m surprised he can get his mouth open to talk. “You think you’re the ones who have been fixing things all these years?”
“How would we know?” Charlie laughs, the sound bitter and frustrated and exhausted. “You never tell us where you are. You never tell us where you’re going. Nobody knows what you do, Asher, we just pay for your expense card and even that’s privileged information.”
“He gets privileged information?” asks Beau.
“Do you think I’d be this pissed if I could have tracked him based on his credit card purchases?” Charlie yells. “No. Because Dad wanted him to have a whole secret life. The rest of us got no such special treatment.”
“If you wanted special treatment, Charles, all you had to do was be less of a prick.” Asher’s squeezing my hand so tightly now that I have to wiggle my fingers to loosen his grip.
“I’ve never asked for special treatment. I only want you to pull your weight in this fucking family. Are you even going to do it now, or did you just bring her here to weasel your way into taking more from us?”
Asher nods. “That’s reasonable. That’s a reasonable thing for you to say. But you know what? If you can’t be civil, there’s no need for me to be here. Let’s go, Everly.”
He leads me out of the office by the hand. “Nice to meet all of you,” I call over my shoulder.
“Are you serious?” he says under his breath.
“We’re supposed to be married. Any woman would want to impress your brothers.”
“My brothers are assholes.”
“Beau seemed nice.”
“Asher.”
He wheels around and I turn my head to see Charlie standing at the other end of the hallway.
Charlie stabs a finger in our direction. “I don’t buy this.”
Asher doesn’t hesitate. He turns to me, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me. Our lips crash together with the kind of raw, desperate passion that I’ve only ever witnessed in the movies—hard and hot and relentless. The air flees my lungs, and I run my hands up the sides of his neck, threading my fingers through his hair. I want more of him. I want all of him. I want—
He breaks the kiss. “Buy that,” he spits at Charlie.
Then we’re gone, my lips bruised and my heart racing.
7
Asher
“We might run into my brother, but I have to get out and move.”
Everly stretches her arms above her head, which has the delicious side effect of making her black tank top lift along with the curves of her breasts. “I’m not afraid of your brothers.”
“I don’t relish the thought of talking to Charlie this morning.”
“He did seem pretty pissed.”
We make our way out of the tiny rental house on the club side. The hotel is booked for the weekend so I went with the rental, even though I wanted to get the hell off Bliss property last night. I don’t know what Charlie’s problem is. I get that there is a problem, and that Charlie thinks it’s a big one, but whatever it is can’t possibly be huge enough to sink the Bliss empire entirely. It’s too big a ship.
But maybe Charlie doesn’t know that.
I settle into a jog and Everly matches my pace. We go down the hill through the club in the early morning light. The breeze is crisp and the leaves flutter to the pavement one by one in slow motion. It’s not usually this summery in September, but there’s something strange about this year. I knew it the moment the plane touched down in New York. But I can’t complain, because the weather means that Everly is wearing that tank top and those capris and her body is unbelievable. The jeans she wore at the bar were an epiphany, but her ass in these workout pants is a revelation. Especially against the backdrop of the lake. She looks out over the sand. “Nice.”
“It is nice.”
I scan the beach for any sign of Charlie, but I don’t see him out here.
“Why was he so upset?” Everly’s breath has settled into an easy rhythm. She steals a glance at me from the corner of her eye. “Do you really not know?”
“I had my phone off,” I hedge.
“For weeks? Nobody on the face of the earth has their phone off for weeks.”
“Fine. Not for weeks. But I did stop reading the messages after a while.”
“Why? Aren’t they your brothers?”
“Yes. Can’t you tell by our shared features?”
“Oh, I can definitely tell by the shared features,” she says, blushing. “But you never know. Six guys with similar faces and matching eyes could have started a resort based on that, I guess.”
“They’re really my brothers. And from what I can tell…” Our feet sink in time with each other into the sand, and that same warning scratches at the back of my mind. I don’t really know Everly. I only know that when I look at her, my heart reacts like a bongo drum under a pair of heavy palms. “It has something to do with the trust.”
“Are you…trust fund babies?”
I grimace at the sound of that. “Not exactly. The financial structure of the resort is set up with a complicated trust. It means that the resort stays consolidated, even if one of us leaves.”
“Has one of you ever left?”
“My brothers would say that it’s me who’s always leaving, but I always come back in the end.”
“But it makes them suspicious.”
“I think the wedding is what’s making them suspicious.” The breeze kicks up again, ruffling my hair. “I shouldn’t have said that it was yesterday.”
“So what if it was yesterday? It’s a free country.” Everly lifts her chin. “Besides, I’m hot. They should be happy for you.”
I laugh out loud. “They should. You’re right.” I point her in the direction of the jogging trail and we swing onto it. “I just…feel like there’s something waiting in the wings here.”
Everly stumbles, and my heart whips out of my chest. I catch her arm before she hits the ground and for a moment all of her weight is in my hand. I get an arm around her and sweep her up. “Wow,” she says. “You saved me.”
“That’s twice now, isn’t it?” I mean it as a joke, but Everly’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Don’t be embarrassed, Ev. Everybody trips up sometimes.”
Suddenly I become aware of how close I have her held to my body. Close enough to feel every breath. Close enough to feel the heat of her skin. Close enough to…
She steps back and smooths down her hair, breathless. “Come on, Asher. We should keep running.”
“Thanks for sitting down with me.”
Roman folds his hands on top of his desk and looks across at me.
I rub my hands over my face. “Let’s not be this way. It’s weird.”
“Well, you didn’t have to meet with me. After that business with Charlie I thought you’d be across the Atlantic by morning.”
“Yeah, well.” Pain arcs across my chest. “I don’t have any more items on my agenda at the moment.”
“No?”
“No. Dad was the one who sent me on my rounds.”
Roman considers this. “You don’t think you have enough to keep going?”
I wave this away. “I can figure it out. I just haven’t yet.” I’ve been dragging out these last few assignments all summer because it seems so final to have nothing left on the list.
“I’m happy to…take that over for you, if you want.”
I choke back a laugh. “Choosing my assignments?”
“Yes.” His eyes on mine are perfectly steady, and I can see that he’s serious. Roman and I are only a year apart. The roles here could easily have been reversed. I could have been the one staying at Bliss while he traveled all over the world, doing dad’s bidding. “You’d have to share some things, but…it could be done.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you?” Roman frowns. “You got married yesterday? Was it planned, or did you have a whirlwind romance on the road?”
“It was a whirlwind romance.” One night at the bar, and one handshake agreement on her front porch. Still, the lie tastes bitter, like lemonade without any sugar. “But it felt like the right thing to do.”
“Ash…” Roman leans back in his chair. “I have to ask you this, and I hope you’ll be honest.”
My heart thuds loudly over the sound of my thoughts. “I’ve been honest.” I’ve been lying.
He nods. “Is there any chance that Everly could be the source of our problem?”
“The problem with the trust?”
A sly smile spreads across his face. “So you did read our messages.”
“Not all of them. But enough to gather that the resort is losing money, and the receiving account is a mystery locked in the trust.”
“And we have been…completely unable to solve that mystery without you. All of us have to be present to make the request for the document.”
“Shit.” Guilt claws into my throat. “If I’d known it was like that…”
Roman raises a hand. “You don’t have to explain it to me.” It’s probably true. We’ve always had an understanding between us. “Charlie, on the other hand…”
“I don’t know what Charlie’s so worried about. There are other…means.”
Roman raises his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Roman, yes. What do you think I’ve been doing all this time, seducing women in foreign countries?”
“Everly is from a foreign country?”
“Everly is from Montana.”
“And did you meet her in Montana?”
“Yes.”
“What other means do we have in Montana?”
“I don’t know.” With a click, a lock inside my chest releases. “I have no idea, Roman. Dad sent me to an address, and I…I met Everly.” This is close enough to the truth. Isn’t it? “But he’s sent me to lots of different addresses over the years to meet with lots of different people, and it’s always with the same objective in mind—to make sure everything is going smoothly.”
“What’s everything?”
“Dad’s made…other investments over the course of his life. Different businesses, different ventures. They all return money to Bliss, as far as I know. Straight into the trust.”
Roman pats the surface of his desk. “I want to smash my forehead into this. Secret revenues? What was he thinking?”
“I’d guess he was thinking that he wanted us to always be okay.” A painful lump pushes its way into my throat. Why is it still hitting me so hard that he’s gone? “I thought you knew about all of this.”
“I know about some of it, obviously. Driver’s got a similar thing going on. I just didn’t know the extent of it.”
“I’ve kept records, if you want to see them. I don’t have amounts of money, though.”
“No.” Roman sighs. “I’m assuming that’s all wrapped up in the trust. And if you’ll help us out, we can get access to that information and put this all to rest.” He sticks out his hand to shake. “Deal?”
