Page 9

I didn’t know why. It was just an instinct, and I’d learned never to ignore it.
Everyone spoke at the same time. It was hard to keep track, but it didn’t matter. I liked hearing snippets of what everyone was doing. We all got together maybe once a month, though I saw my brothers a bit more often. Each of us was handling a different branch of Whitley Industries. My grandfather had set it up in his youth and had successfully added branches over the years. Then my father took over and started adding even more.The problem was, he didn’t do so profitably, so when he literally left the country, most of them were in danger of bankruptcy.
I’d taken over the fitness branch, which hadn’t been developed at all. It had been mostly an afterthought, but I knew it had potential. Maddox was running a company designing office plans. Leo was the head of Whitley Real Estate. Colton, the oldest, was running the biotech branch. Spencer took over the publishing arm. His mother had been operating that one; she passed away from cancer shortly after finding out about the double life her husband led. Cade ran the coffee business, and Gabe had started with a craft distillery and went on to add a bar. Now he’d opened a hotel with Maddox. We were all successfully growing our grandparents’ legacy, and I knew they were proud of us.
“What areyoudoing today?” Natalie, Jake’s wife, asked me.
“I’m taking Allison out.”
The chatter died instantly.
“What do you mean, ‘out’?” Leo inquired.
“She hasn’t had any time on her own since everything happened, so I offered to go out with her.”
“Very interesting,” Gran said.
She glanced at Leo, who had a Cheshire cat grin on his face. Gran’s eyes simply lit up.
Fuck.She was going to jump to conclusions fast. I was sure of that.
“Give her our best,” Gran said. “And please tell her that even though we don’t know her, we’re all ready to help in any way we can. I think I speak for the entire family when I say that.”
All right, that was a decent reaction. I really should give Gran more credit. Her mind wasn’t always on matchmaking.
Although, to be fair, Jeannie Whitley had been an actress back in her day. She could fake it if she wanted to.
Leo frowned, clearly just as perplexed by her blasé comment as I was.
Thankfully, no one mentioned Allison or my outing with her for the rest of the day, although by the looks Maddox, Leo, and Gabe gave me, they did want to give me shit about it. I appreciated that they held their tongues.
I left the house early in the afternoon, as I was picking Allison up at five. On the way, I decided I’d call Hugo. Initially, when I brought this all up, he’d asked me a few details about Allison, like what her job was and other information. He had enough to go on, but I put the two of them in contact, as he needed more details. Now I wanted to know if he’d made any progress.
He was excellent at what he did, but he was also swamped with work. I wanted to make sure he was able to stay on top of this, friend or not. Thankfully, he answered after several rings.
“Hey, Nick.”
“Hey. Sorry to call you on a Saturday. Figured I’d have better odds at reaching you.”
“I suppose you want an update on the whole Allison thing?” he said.
“Did she send you all her information?”
“Yes. She was very open about it and eager to cooperate, which is always helpful.”
“So, how does it look?”
“I’d like to know a bit more about the in-laws, but...”
I didn’t like that pause.
He sighed. “Grandparents usually have a good fighting chance.”
“But Nora and Jim specifically wanted Allison to look after the twins. They put that in the will.”
“Wills can always be contested. They can try and prove they’re better candidates. That’s why I said from the get-go thatyou can’t dismiss it. Several things are taken into account, of course, such as their age and income.”
“They’re around fifty-five. They had Jim very young.”