Page 4 of Love By Design

“I’m just reviewing the numbers on this bid,” I told him, leaning back and rubbing hard at the bridge of my nose. “You know I hate math.”

“And yet it’s your whole job.”

“In the fun way, not the boring way.”

Finn snorted and adjusted the angle of the laptop, setting it down on the white tablecloth so he could get to work. He scratched mindlessly at the side of his nose and scrolled back to the top of the page I’d been stuck on. “Leave this to your capable baby brother.”

With some complicated math degree from CalTech, Finn was more than capable, but if I told him that, his head might explode. Either way, I was happy to let him triple-check the bid for me and sit back to finish my drink.

Smith was the next to show up, sliding in to flank me with a tired sounding groan when his ass hit the booth. His wavy hair flopped down over his face, and he puffed out his lower lip to try and use his breath to blow it back…to no avail.

“Long day?” I asked.

He flagged down a waitress with a curl of his fingers and ordered a fresh round for the three of us, plus a drink for Hunter, who’d never been on time for anything a day in his life. Not even his birth, Finn liked to remind him, or else he would have been the older one.

“I’m thinking about changing my name,” he announced.

“Coming from you, I’m not surprised. What would you change it to?”

“My mom’s name is Hartford,” he said.

Finn glanced up from my laptop, one brow raised. “Smith Hartford? That sounds like a brand of breakfast sausage.”

Smith gave him the finger, and Finn returned his attention to my bid.

“That full of disdain?” I asked.

He frowned and shrugged. “I don’t feel ownership of it the way the three of you do?”

“What do we own?” Hunter asked, breathless and late. He dropped his brown leather messenger bag against the side of the booth before sliding in and obnoxiously knocking into Finn’s shoulder.

“The Covington name,” Finn said, not looking up but still reminding us of how unfairly well his brain worked.

“I was thinking of changing my name,” Smith muttered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t even eat sausage,” Finn said, snapping mylaptop closed and looking up at me. “You had some errors with some of the line items, but I cross-referenced them with the source files in your project folder, and you have better margins now. So that’s a win. I also programmed it to extract the data automatically, so if you drop a new quote in, it’ll populate.”

“How did you do that?” I asked, taking my computer back from him and setting it in a slim laptop case between me and Smith.

“It would take me longer to explain to you than it took me to do. Just trust that it’s done, and it’s done properly.”

“I do,” I assured him.

The waitress returned with all of our drinks—fresh wine for me, a matching glass for Smith, a Manhattan for Finn, and a vodka soda for Hunter. We cheers-ed, clinking our glasses together before lapsing into our normal kind of Friday night conversation. I told my brothers about the project I’d been working on for months and the disastrous meeting with Stanley and Silas. Finn talked about the internal debate he’d been having with himself about pursuing grad school or not. Hunter complained about a recent case filing, and Smith just gestured in the air and took another drink of his wine.

“Who did you say you met with earlier?” he asked me instead of talking more about himself.

“Stanley Ayres and his son.”

“Silas?” Smith asked, scrunching his nose.

“Silas,” I confirmed. “Do you know him?”

Smith and Silas were the same age, but I knew from Silas’s biography in the article I’d read that he and Smith hadn’t gone to the same college, and I knew for sure they’d not attended the same high school.

“Friend of a friend,” he muttered, cheeks flushing.

“Indeed,” Finn said, huffing out a laugh.