Handle with Care

by Hunting, Helena

  “You can’t take what Fredrick left me!”

  G-mom crosses her arms. “The only thing he left you in the will was the house and ten percent of the shares in Moorehead. Everything else is to be equally divided between his children, or didn’t you listen when Christophe was going over the will?”

  “I devoted my life to Fredrick!” Gwendolyn shrieks.

  “You devoted your life to spending his money, and while you might have sat on the board of every charity, I’m well aware that your contributions have been minimal. I wonder what else I might find out if I dig deeper, Gwendolyn.”

  “I was pregnant first.”

  “You lied about that and tricked Fredrick into marrying you. If you hadn’t gotten pregnant on the honeymoon, he would’ve left you and you know it.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to end up with her! I saved this company by being the best partner for him. I did everything I needed to maintain order and present a strong front.”

  “But you didn’t love him.” The sadness in G-mom’s voice is etched into her face.

  Gwendolyn throws her hands in the air, exasperated. “Love is a worthless emotion. More than lust, even. I did what I had to do to make a better life for myself and my family. I gave us power and status, and what did that other woman do? Stole his attention once in a while when he needed a fix, and left a stain on Fredrick’s name. She might have had his heart, but I had everything that matters.”

  I stare slack-jawed at the woman who birthed me, and wonder how I managed to make it out of that house without turning into my brother. It’s no wonder he’s the way he is. “His bank account?” Sarcasm and venom lace the words.

  She raises her chin in defiance. “His loyalty.”

  “You threatened to bleed him dry if he left and told him he’d never see his children again. There was no loyalty there. Maybe he pitied you, or maybe he feared that leaving us with you would destroy us. He took the only option you gave him. You divided his entire life, and if you attempt to blackmail Wren, or me, or anyone else I know, I will expose you for the manipulative con artist you are.”

  CHAPTER 26

  ANOTHER FRESH START

  LINCOLN

  I’d like to say the weeks following the confrontation with Gwendolyn were easy, but that would be a lie, and I’ve dealt with enough of those for a lifetime. I bought out her company shares—turns out she wanted the money more than the headache of having to deal with me on a regular basis.

  My brother imploded, as he often does, and ended up going on a bender that landed him in prison, thanks to an indecent exposure charge, reckless driving, and a DUI. Since the contract with my father had long expired and the one Wren signed for Gwendolyn was considered void once she was bought out, there was no obligation for Wren to help manage what was or wasn’t leaked all over social media. When Armstrong screws up, he doesn’t half-ass it. No amount of bandaging could keep him under the media radar.

  While my mother was busy trying to manage the mess from the sidelines, I gave a public statement indicating my brother was struggling with the demands of Moorehead and the loss of our father, and he would be taking some time off while he sought help. In doing that, I recognized that I was fully prepared to embrace the role of CEO of Moorehead. And in a lot of ways I already had, I just needed to acknowledge it outside of my head. Leaving New York wasn’t an option anymore, not with a company that needed a real leader, and of course, New York had Wren.

  Senator Sterling obliterated any chance at being blackmailed when he blew the lid off his own “scandal.” It was a well-orchestrated media leak in which paperwork regarding paternal rights and Wren’s birth father agreeing to sign his over appeared on one of the biggest gossip sites.

  He followed up the media firestorm with a press conference in which he openly spoke about his love for his daughter and his wife, and how they’d dealt with the circumstances at the time. It wasn’t easy for any of them, but being the charismatic, devoted family man he is, the senator was able to spin the entire thing so he shouldered the blame and made Wren their saving grace. He followed it up by setting up a charity event to revitalize an adoption center in Haiti that had been destroyed in a recent hurricane. His poll numbers have skyrocketed since it all came out.

  Two weeks after the media circus, I decide Wren and I need a break from everything, so I book us a weekend at a cabin three hours upstate. I’m in the middle of going through her bag to make sure she has all the things I like—it’s totally fair, considering she pretty much dresses me every day like I’m an oversize toddler—when my phone rings.

  “It better not be work-related.” I snatch the device up from the bed, and my heart stutters as the name Hope appears on my screen. Jacqueline gave me her number and I reached out recently, but until now, I haven’t heard from her.

  Wren comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist, one hand slipping low as her lips move against the back of my neck. “Do you need me to answer and say you’re indisposed?” Normally I’d be all over whatever she’s offering, but right now, I have to take a rain check.

  “I need to get this,” I choke out.

  “Is everything okay?” Wren ducks under my arm and looks at the screen. “Oh my God.” She takes me by the shoulders, turns me around, and forces me to sit down. “I’m right here if you need me. Go ahead and answer.”

  I swallow, take a deep breath, and bring the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Hello, hi, um, is this Lincoln?”

  “It is.” God, my mouth is dry. “This is Hope?”

  “Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I, uh … got your message last week. I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I just … this isn’t … I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Me either, so I think we’re on even ground with feeling awkward.”

  She laughs and I laugh too, but we both sound pitchy and weird.

  “Um, I know this is odd for both of us, but I was wondering if maybe you wanted to talk about … things. You mentioned having some stuff to share with me.”

  “Yeah, I do. I don’t know what your schedule is like. I’m going away for the weekend, but—”

  “I know this is short notice, but are you in the city tonight? I met a friend down here, and I thought—”

  While we talk, Wren runs to the kitchen and brings me back a glass of water, which I gladly accept since I’ve developed an acute case of cottonmouth. I almost choke mid-sip. “Where are you? We could grab a coffee? Or maybe shots would be a better idea.”

  She chuckles again. “I’m in Midtown. Where are you?”

  “I’m downtown.” I look at my current attire. I’m wearing holey jogging pants and a stained T-shirt. “I can come to you.”

  “Or I could come to you,” Hope offers.

  “Do you want to come to my place? Would that be awkward? There’s a restaurant in my building; we could get coffee or shots there since they serve both.”

  “It’s only awkward if we make it awkward, right?”

  I think I like her already. “Exactly. Want the address?”

  “Fire away.”

  Once she has the address, we agree that she’ll text when she’s in the lobby.

  I think I’m in shock as I end the call. “I’m going to meet my sister, and she seems pretty cool.”

  Wren steps between my thighs and settles her palms on my shoulders. “That’s great, babe. I’m so glad she called.”

  “Me too.” I jump up, nearly sending her toppling backward. I grab her waist to keep her from falling over. “I need to find something else to wear.” I make sure Wren is steady before I release her, but pause to kiss her before I disappear inside the closet. “Should I wear a suit? I don’t know what to wear.”

  Wren appears in the doorway. “It’s not a job interview. You’re meeting your sister; jeans and one of your fun shirts would be reasonable.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Good idea.”

  Wren helps me pick out jeans and a shirt because I’m incapable, quite literal
ly.

  I pass her a brush and let her style my hair because my hands are shaking. “This didn’t feel real until right now. I have a sister, Wren, and I’m about to meet her. I want to like her, but part of me already resents her too.”

  She smooths her hands down the sides of my neck. “It’s okay to feel conflicted, Lincoln. You can know it’s not her fault that your dad was so absent from your life and still be upset with her.”

  “But she didn’t do anything wrong, so how is that fair?”

  “Emotions don’t always take fairness into account, do they? I spent my teens and most of my early twenties blaming my mother for having an affair. I never took into consideration what pushed her to make that choice. Was it a bad one? Definitely, but if she hadn’t made it, I wouldn’t exist and my parents’ marriage may have failed. I assumed my mother saw me as a mistake instead of her salvation.”

  “But I kept my dad and Jacqueline apart; I didn’t bring them closer together.”

  “You aren’t the reason they were kept apart, Linc. Besides, if Gwendolyn hadn’t done the things she did, you wouldn’t be here and then I wouldn’t have you in my life.”

  “I wish it could’ve been different. I wish I could’ve known my dad. If he’d just told me, I wouldn’t have spent my entire life thinking he was a bad father.”

  “I know. All the what-ifs are the hardest things to deal with, but I think in meeting Hope, you might get to know him, at least indirectly, and maybe you can stop being so angry at him.”

  “I just want some peace.” I wrap my arms around her and pull her closer, breathing her in. “Will you come with me?”

  “Why don’t I wait with you in the lobby, but when she gets here, I’ll come back up to the penthouse and you can message if you need me.”

  “Yeah. Okay. That would be good.”

  Wren waits with me, as promised, until Hope shows up.

  She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. I can see pieces of my father in her face, which means I can also see pieces of myself. It’s pretty surreal.

  “Hope?” I approach her, and she looks up from her phone, nervously worrying her lip.

  A tentative smile curves the corner of her mouth. “Lincoln?”

  “Yeah. Hey, hi.” We both step in awkwardly. I’m unsure if I should shake her hand, or hug her, or what.

  We laugh at the same time, so I pull her into a hug, because she’s my sister and she seems a hell of a lot cooler than the stupid asshole brother I grew up with.

  “Thanks for going out of your way to come here.” We take a seat in a private corner of the restaurant, and embarrassingly enough the servers address me as Mr. Moorehead.

  “This place is pretty swanky,” Hope observes. “You live here?”

  “I’m staying at my cousin’s right now, but it’s in this building. They own it. The building, I mean. I’m planning to buy here soon, though. One of the penthouses is supposed to be available in a month or so.” I’m nervous and rambling.

  “Pretty convenient to have restaurant right inside your building.”

  We fall into a brief awkward silence, which is broken, thankfully, when the server brings us our drinks. I went with scotch and Hope ordered the same.

  “You really look a lot like Dad.” She drops her head. “I mean, Fred. You look so much like him.”

  “You called him Dad?”

  She gives me a tentative smile. “Our relationship was unconventional, but he was very much my father, even if he wasn’t fully present in my life.”

  “Can you tell me about him? About your version of him. I get the sense I didn’t really know him very well.”

  She tips her head. “But you grew up with him.”

  I fill her in on my childhood, on my father’s absence from the family, his long working hours, my years spent in boarding school, and then college out of state, and my job abroad until recently.

  Hope’s expression turns sad. “I’m so sorry. I feel like this is my fault, like I took him away from you, and you never got to know all the really great parts of him. He was fun to be around. We went on a lot of trips together, mostly vacations to secluded cabins and places out of state where we wouldn’t be seen by a lot of people, I guess. As a kid, I didn’t understand why he never flew with me and my mom, but as I got older, it started to make more sense. I mean, as much sense as it could.”

  It’s difficult to swallow past the lump in my throat. “You went on family vacations?”

  She looks almost guilty as she nods. “Did you?”

  “I skipped out on things like that. My brother, our brother”—I motion between us—“is an asshole and difficult to deal with.”

  She spins her glass between her palms. “I’ve seen the stuff in the news. I wasn’t sure how much of that was real or fabricated to create drama.”

  “He’s really that much of an asshole.”

  She nods. “Dad seemed to worry about him a lot.”

  “He talked about us with you?”

  “Not when I was young, but when I was older and I understood better the dynamics of his relationship with my mother, he did. They seemed so in love with each other. It was hard to see my mother so upset every time he went back to you guys, and there was a lot of resentment on my part. But as I got older, we talked about it, how complex it was. He thought the world of you.”

  “He said that?”

  “He was so proud. I was jealous of you a lot.” She ducks her head, maybe embarrassed.

  “I can understand that, from your point of view, anyway. There wasn’t much to be jealous of. There wasn’t any love between my parents, but I’m sure from the outside it looked a lot different.”

  “He tried to be a good man and do the right thing. I think he was caught between two hard places with no way to make either work,” Hope says.

  We talk until the restaurant closes and move to the bar. Hope runs a small not-for-profit organization that helps provide food and shelter for the local homeless. I tell her all about my sustainable community projects, which she already knew about from discussions with our father.

  I discover we like the same sports teams and have similar taste in music. She and our dad even learned how to play guitar together. The more I talk to her, the more I realize the man I thought he was is not the version Hope had. It’s painful to realize I missed the opportunity to understand him, but at least I’m getting a chance to know my sister and a side of him I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

  “Hey, I know this is probably a lot, but, uh, there’s some stuff in Fred”—I clear my throat—“Dad’s will that sort of involves you, and I figured I should tell you about it.” I’m on my third scotch, and Hope is on her second. I’m buzzed enough to think this is a good time for this conversation. After everything went down with Gwendolyn, G-mom and I hired a private lawyer to review the will and discovered an interesting clause that could change the entire division of assets.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “So the shares in the company are allocated a bunch of ways. My g-mom”—at her confused expression, I elaborate—“our grandmother has twenty-five percent. My mother had ten percent, but I bought her out. You’ll love G-mom, by the way, she’s badass.”

  “You call your grandmother G-mom?”

  “We’re pretty tight; she lets me get away with it. Anyway, ten percent of the shares are divided among the employees and the remaining fifty-five percent were divided between me and my brother equally. But there’s a caveat in the will that stipulates all blood offspring have equal shares in the company and that would include you. Which means a little more than eighteen percent of Moorehead Media is yours, if you want it.”

  CHAPTER 27

  MOOREHEAD LEGACY REVISED

  WREN

  It’s amazing how goals and dreams can change in the blink of an eye. Okay, maybe it takes more than a blink. Maybe the impetus for change starts out as a scowly, grumpy, burly mountain man who transforms into a chin-dimpled, equally grumpy but in
credibly devoted, amazing CEO of a company that was on a crash-and-burn trajectory less than six months ago.

  Said CEO currently has me pressed up against his office door, wearing my favorite angry scowl. As much as I’d like to suck on that pouty bottom lip, we have a lot to do today, including a meeting that starts in less than fifteen minutes.

  “I thought we talked about the lipstick,” he growls.

  If looks could kill, my lipstick would go up in flames. Also, it’s absolutely ridiculous that he’s referencing a conversation that happened months ago. I’ve never really understood why he hates it so much, other than he finds it distracting. “Correction.” I slide a hand up his chest. “You talked about it.”

  “You agreed not to wear it anymore.”

  I scoff. “Right before we were about to have sex. Everyone knows that doesn’t count.”

  His brows pull together. God, he’s sexy when he’s pissed off. But we really don’t have time for an argument over my lipstick. In the months since discovering he has a half sister, Lincoln has fully embraced his role as CEO, and three months ago, he convinced Hope to come on board and help run the company with him. He also managed to persuade me to stay on as an independent consultant for their brand-new sustainable community outreach foundation. I still volunteer with my mother, but I’ve discovered a passion for this kind of work, where we get to help an entire community thrive. It’s been hectic and amazing and exhausting. But I’m in love with this job and this man, so I can deal with any and all the bumps along the road. Even the kind that come in a sexy, glaring package.

  His nostrils flare, and he dips down, surprising me when he captures my mouth. He pushes his tongue between my lips, stroking aggressively in a punishing kiss. He cups my chin, fingertips digging gently into my jaw, keeping me in place.

  His thigh finds its way between my knees, and he punctuates every stroke of his tongue with a roll of his hips. I grab his shoulders, intent on reminding him of our meeting that starts very soon, but he tears his mouth from mine.