Wilde About Carson: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Three

by Faircloth, Cate

  But since I can’t, I figure I should let it go back to normal. My makeup is the same as always—nothing too dramatic—and eyeshadow to match my dress. Once I slip on my black heels, I grab my coffee and thermos it before I get ready to leave.

  My drive to the office is short. The forty floor, thirteen thousand employee-filled building sits in the middle of downtown metropolis surrounded by other businesses, small and large. Parking is nice because we have an exclusive underground place, but it isn’t cheap.

  I greet the same people on the way in—security, first lobby receptionist, elevator security, the receptionist on my floor, security again, and then I finally get to my office. I am tired of smiling. Then it’s on to checking emails. I have folders for importance and then who is actually talking to me. The first ones I have to look at are from people on the Board, and then Holden, of course, the Big Guy. But he doesn’t have anything to tell me but reminders that we are working on a huge acquisition with a financial company in Dubai. The problem is their policies and protocols or whatever are very strict and unforgiving. Their businessmen are the same way. I don’t know about the specifics. Holden has been territorial about it and hasn’t passed it on to my department yet. We really only come in when we are ready to do final signing and contracts.

  After I do those emails, I get to client emails and settle a few fires before I can respond to colleagues and check on the people under me. By the time I do that, it’s almost lunch. That’s how my day goes until I have a meeting or something. Today, I have two later on.

  My phone is on silent, but I see the flash of a text come up. Part of me thinks it’s Kevin, but it turns out to be Carson. I try not to frown.

  Carson: How is your day? Lunch?

  Emily: I don’t know yet. But lunch, yeah.

  Carson: LOL. I’ll bring it in the office.

  I smile to myself. Food makes me happy. Free food, that makes me even happier. In the time it takes him to show up, I answer one of the nice guys’ emails about an account with China and talk down the rude and quiet one. It’s an art conversing and working with some of those people and being their boss, too. With my bachelor’s and graduate degree and all my education, they don’t really teach you how to be someone’s boss or four people’s boss especially when odds are stacked against me most days, but it will never stop me from wearing the pants.

  “Sushi and rice, all the carbs to make you happy.” Carson barges into my office with food in hand.

  He actually looks really good today, better than most days that I have noticed, or because the sun is shining so brightly into my office. His suit is very sleek and black, tailored, of course. I go with him to almost every tailor fitting. The crisp white of his dress shirt is always so starched, the black tie-wrapped collar straining against the muscles of his neck. Usually, he keeps his messy brown hair just that, but today it’s slicked back.

  “Board meeting?” I guess.

  “Yeah.” He huffs, setting the food down at the table. He looks exhausted for sure.

  I sit at the single chair in front of the table, and he sits on the other side taking off his jacket as he relaxes.

  “That bad?” I ask him.

  He gives me a look raising his brow over his sharp gray eyes and shaking his head. He isn’t ready to talk about it, so we eat instead. California rolls and fried rice—we should have better eating habits. And we do, most of the time.

  “The first time I came to work with my dad, I was seventeen,” he starts. “I remember that day. It was after school during my junior year, close to the end of the year, and I was so excited to be a senior finally.”

  “And I was so excited. Dylan was already interning over the summer from college, so he was here, too. Dad showed us around all day.” Carson wipes his mouth and tosses the napkin down, but I don’t know if he is angry or not. “And I can still remember everything that happened especially when Dylan said I probably wasn’t cut out for this job. I wasn’t supposed to be COO this fast. Today, days like today… I think he is right.” He laughs once without any humor at all. Without anything.

  I swallow hard giving Carson a moment to wallow. Nothing keeps us from skipping meals. I guess that’s why he waited until we finished before saying this. I get up and walk around to him hugging him as he sits. Carson is warm and solid, usually always happy and upbeat. I don’t see him like this very often. He hugs me back. I move closer to him, his cologne mixed with aftershave and his special shampoo flood my brain. He’s always smelled the same with that strong shower gel and minty aftershave. Well, I guess not until we were about seventeen. Before that, it was Axe and a headache.

  “That isn’t true, Carson. You’re amazing at your job. This can’t possibly be easy, but you do it, you do it really well. No one could have…” I have to make sure I don’t cry because then he’ll be sad too, and I’ve only seen him cry a handful of times. “… no one could have predicted your dad dying so soon, and he left you the job for a reason. He believed in you.” I sigh, taking a deep breath as I gauge his reaction.

  Carson finally nods. He squeezes my forearm held over his chest. His hand is warm, calloused, and his grip is hard. I don’t know why I’m even reacting to his touch. I never have before. It must be the moment. Yeah, that must be it.

  “Thank you. I want to believe that, but…”

  “But what? What happened?” I pull away from him and sit next to him instead. I rest my hand on his knee trying to find his gaze, but he refuses to meet mine.

  “Nothing.”

  I almost laugh. “Okay, Carson. Nothing happened, you just woke up this morning with this revelation?”

  His lips twitch with a smile, but it doesn’t reach. But, I can usually always make him smile when he gets like this. He can do the same to me too.

  “No. We just met with the Board about the merger with that financial company in Taiwan, and it’s turning out to be a shit show. I don’t really know… anyway, somehow an oversight led to the fault becoming mine. Operations and all. Dylan decided it was a good time to tell me how he felt about me, truthfully. You know, maybe that’s why he’s been so pissed off since Dad died, and he’s been indifferent to me.” Carson huffs, leaning back into the couch. He crosses his arms, leans back, and closes his eyes. His jaw is so clenched it’s giving me a headache.

  I watch him stew and rub his leg gently to remind him that I’m here. I can’t even imagine how hard it is. I never thought of how the hierarchy would get complicated. No one was ever jealous of the other. I mean, I don’t think Dylan or Evan fought Holden for CEO and now owner, but there still has to be some family tension especially doing it for the first time with their dad gone, no one to really ask for help.

  Carson is the youngest of them here, and to know one of his brothers doesn’t have his back… that must be even worse. I feel bad for him, but I feel even worse that he has to go through this. I hope he knows he isn’t alone. I guess him coming to my office makes him know he isn’t alone.

  “Dylan has his own issues, Carson. And it goes a lot deeper than thinking his kid brother needs a career change especially when you don’t. Evan and Holden don’t think that, and they’re more important.”

  We both chuckle softly.

  “And… you shouldn’t doubt yourself. I don’t doubt you.”

  He finally opens his eyes, looks at me, and smiles. “I’m your boss, you aren’t allowed to doubt me.”

  “See, I got you to smile.” I poke his ever-present dimple on his right cheek, and he laughs, his throat bobbing with a booming sound.

  I smile at him and rub his arm absently as he thinks to himself. He eventually tells me more about the meeting, but most of it goes over my head. I still listen, and at some point, I don’t know why I’m still holding his arm the way I am or why neither of us have said anything. He’s leaned closer to me, our eyes locked, and he holds his hand over mine on his arm. I watch his eyes darken for a second as his tongue flicks out to moisten his lips, and I drag my eyes back to his. />
  “Thank you.” He finally breaks the uncomfortable silence. Silence between us is never uncomfortable, though. I don’t understand it.

  “Always,” I whisper. And then it goes back to quiet. Staring. Almost nothing but still filled with so much it’s hard to ignore.

  And I don’t know what it is. I can’t look away from his eyes, and I can’t say what I think is appropriate.

  “You smell like soy sauce,” I whisper. See, not appropriate.

  We laugh and finally pull away from each other. I’m suddenly a little cold, but it could be the air. We clean up, take mints, and go about our respective days.

  I have meetings, then an emergency meeting after a crisis erupts in Lagos when one of the companies we acquired files for bankruptcy. The first time in months I leave after seven, and after Carson too.

  But finally, I’m in bed after my mini spa routine and trash television. Kevin is texting me about a long day, and I’m enjoying his story about running his interns crazy, but I’m so tired. I think I fall asleep in the middle of the conversation, but it isn’t because he bores me or something.

  I am just exhausted. Monday is finally over. And it was a long day. But I don’t know why I’m thinking of Carson when I eventually fall asleep.

  9

  Carson

  I’m beginning to think my oversight in operations isn’t a figment of Dylan’s imagination. Not that he would ever make stuff up, but maybe blow things out of proportion a little bit to fit his agenda. So, I spend all of Tuesday holed up in my office going over everything we did with the Taiwanese business relations, and I can’t come up with anything other than I didn’t clear everything. I didn’t run checks on the initial contract. I never started a meeting with the contact liaison, and I can’t remember why I didn’t. Nothing makes sense. It was only about a week and a half ago, and I had finished closing three deals in the same week. But I’ve never been that distracted.

  To top it off, one of our biggest acquisitions has gone into bankruptcy. The concept of holdings is that what we own doesn’t actually produce anything, so there are no back costs technically to initial investments. But this company in Lagos was a real estate holding itself, so whatever they dealt with before slid into our operations. It’s important to look out for that, and we did, but shit, they weren’t supposed to go bankrupt.

  “How much do they owe?” Dylan barks from his spot at the conference table in Holden’s office where he has been for the past few hours with us. We all had to push back all our meetings, and we have been trying to resolve this without involving the Board. All I want to do is buy out that damned board and call it a day. It’s annoying having to answer to people who don’t have any business asking questions. I get it, they’re part of the team and are important to the company as a whole, but Dad never wanted a board. He only established one so everything wouldn’t be on his shoulders as CEO, so that he could spend time with his family. He was never absent, I never had to miss him until now.

  “Enough to build a small city.”

  “And they never informed us?” I ask, sitting three chairs away from him on the other end.

  Dylan glares at me over the rim of his glasses. He only wears them when he is reading all these documents. But his glare is recent and always only directed at me.

  “Well, it’s something you should have checked.”

  “I ran checks,” I say through clenched teeth. He slides into a condescending closed smile that literally makes my blood want to boil me to death.

  “Obviously they weren’t clear enough.”

  I scoff, shaking my head at him. “We have… the department didn’t do anything wrong, and no point of contact led to what is actually going on. Financial could have caught it, too. No one did,” I say, throwing whatever he wants to dish out right back on him.

  “This isn’t helping anything. We need to be looking for solutions, ways to resolve this without causing a panic and dropping hundreds of dollars in stock.” Holden paces the office, hands on his hips as he stares down at all the documents in front of us—reports, receipts, transcripts.

  “I know that, and that’s what we’re doing. For some reason, Dylan wants to blame everyone but who was actually wrong here.” I try not to raise my voice, but I’m going to lose it soon. Evan hasn’t said anything. He has been keeping to himself doing his job as CTO, which is basically just being there to make sure everything runs smoothly technology-wise at least, everything we have—every secret, every operation—all technical. A security breach is the only thing that could really do us in, and that’s why Evan was the best person for the job, what with his masters and tons of research in internet security. So, he rarely says anything in meetings like this. It’s kind of funny since he likes to do a lot of talking and joking but not about his wires and toys.

  “I’m not blaming anyone, I’m stating the obvious. Issues like this are always from an oversight in operations. If you can’t do your work on your own, you delegate to oh, I don’t know, the entire department under international relations, then you clearly made an error.”

  “This account has been in IR for months. There were no issues presented at any meetings,” I answer Dylan back. He stares at me with a blank expression, only his dark eyes showing any emotion at all. Evan looks up finally as if he knows what’s coming, Holden stops staring at the papers and looks at us instead.

  “Maybe something was left out. Or you just can’t manage to think that your little girlfriend missed something.”

  “Don’t talk about Emily like that!” The scene around me blurs when I fly out of my chair and go straight for him, but he’s lucky I don’t get there before I can pound his face when Evan holds me back.

  “Chill out, that’s enough, Dylan.” Evan presses hard on my chest moving me back as my eyes train on Dylan. He sits there calm and collected like nothing happened.

  “That’s out of line, and you know it. That has nothing to do with this issue.” My breath is choppy as I try to breathe through my anger. All I want to do is pound Dylan’s face in—for getting to me, for doubting me, for insulting Emily.

  “Dylan, we all know this is beyond the four of us. This is beyond what any of us could have done, and we all know that it is. All we can do now is fix it and stop placing blame. Because it isn’t anywhere in this room, either,” Holden says, in his calm and steady voice that could quell a storm.

  Evan doesn’t let me go until he is sure I won’t do anything and stop breathing like I ran a marathon. When he does, I walk away from them over to the window where I can see the skyline instead of angry faces from my brothers. They start talking in hushed whispers. I don’t know what they are saying, and I don’t care to eavesdrop. I look out the window in the same office my dad had, doing the same thing I used to do as a kid back when I didn’t have to worry about what actually goes into all this. There are four high-rises that I can see from here that we developed and own. I know there are dozens of others, but I can’t see them from here. I know a lot of hard work went into them, and my dad did it on his own, and probably went through this dozens of times, but not with three bickering, grown men acting like children. If I don’t listen closely enough, Holden sounds like Dad running point with Dylan about what to do next.

  I know I need a second to think to myself before I step back into that conversation. Part of my thinking is trying to figure out why I got so angry about Dylan talking about Emily. There have been numerous comments made about her by our wonderful employees only because we still live in that kind of world where men in the workplace will put down a woman because she is in charge, and they aren’t. It’s happened, and I’ve never launched myself across a table at them. Maybe it’s because Dylan is my brother and not technically an employee, but I don’t remember being this angry. I don’t remember feeling like I wanted to rip someone’s head off. This isn’t the first time my reaction to Emily or something concerning Emily has been different recently. I am aware of how well she does her job, I am aware of how well
our accounts are doing because of her, and I have no doubts or any need beyond pure fact to prove that. Dylan knows that. It’s the same with me too—I am good at this job, and I don’t make mistakes. But he has been attacking everyone, especially us lately.

  “Carson?” Evan pulls me out of my own head.

  I take a deep breath taking my hands out of my pockets before I turn around and face them. Evan has the same putrid expression on, Dylan is still sitting down with a forever innocent look on his face, and Holden—well, I can never tell what he is thinking. He always looks like he would rather be frowning but is trying not to.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” I lean over the back of one chair glancing at Dylan to find him staring at me like he is waiting for something.

  “Well, I’m not going to apologize.” I wave my hands. Evan chuckles, and Holden shakes his head.

  “I wasn’t asking for that.” Holden smiles a little bit.

  “But we do need to get along long enough to figure this out.” Holden lays his hand on the back of the chair stretching it out and leaning down as he sighs deeply, like he is trying to stretch out a bad back.

  “All of a sudden we’re fighting like teenagers again because you can’t think long enough to stop picking a fight with people.” Holden looks directly at Dylan, and I can tell he is trying not to stare him out too. Probably not to pick another fight.

  “I’m not. I’m just pointing out the obvious, and you people get mad when I do.”

  “You know that isn’t true.” Evan chuckles once, moving around the desk to go back to his own papers, probably just reports of the last tech trial.

  “I think it is. Carson over here put himself in a time out just because he doesn’t like me telling the truth about Emily.”

  I almost laugh at the absurdity. “We both know…” I groan and rub my eyes before I look back at him, “Emily Rhey is one of the most qualified employees we have. She has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Yale, she interned at three of the top ten holdings in the world, and in case you missed it, since she has worked here, our international revenue threshold has increased by over sixty percent. So, tell me again how the hell Emily isn’t good at her job?”