Page 3 of The Holiday Clause

All of the Hawthorne men possessed a potency that was impossible to ignore. It wasn’t easy sitting in a room surrounded by such raw masculinity, but she’d been around it her entire life. Despite their history, when any one of them drilled into her with that shameless Hawthorne stare, she was as defenseless as every other red-blooded woman. Even now, after everything they’d endured together, that intensity could still overwhelm her.

Mercifully, Greyson turned his attention back to the fire.

Wren faced Soren. “Finish the story. What happened next?”

“He laid down the law,” Soren said with a gruff laugh. “Told us we’d been invited to Thanksgiving only to help him decide who would inherit the family business. We’d always assumed it would be divided among the three of us, so you can imagine our surprise when he suddenly changed the game.”

“Not all of us wanted it,” Greyson said, his stare turning pointedly toward his brother.

Soren scoffed. “How can you say that?”

“Because if you wanted it, you’d have it. Hawthorne men get what they want. And they own their mistakes.”

“Fuck off.” Ice rattled in Soren’s glass. “It was never about who wanted it most.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Logan stretched out his legs on the ottoman, mimicking Greyson’s radiated confidence. “As his sons, we all deserved an equal share.”

Soren’s eyes narrowed on his brothers. “But we’re not talking about the company, are we?”

Together, they all turned to her, each wielding that penetrating Hawthorne stare. “Don’t look at me! I had nothing to do with this.”

“Wren,” Soren smiled wickedly, “you had everything to do with it. You were the true prize.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I wasn’t. It was always about the company. I was just a means to an end.”

Logan laughed, the sound a little lighter now. “Dad wanted one last hurrah—one last chance to pit us against each other—and he got his wish, just not the way he expected.”

“I was never part of Magnus’s plans.”

“But you were always part of ours.”

“Take it easy.” The low warning was enough to defuse any flirtation sizzling in the air.

The room fell silent. Even the crackling fire seemed to quiet as Greyson met his youngest brother’s stare. “You never showed any interest in running the company back then, so stop acting like you did.”

“How the hell would you know what I wanted? All you cared about was keeping to yourself in that secluded cabin of yours, chopping wood at all hours of the day and night.”

“All right, Logan, keep it civil.”

“Grey’s right,” Soren agreed. “You never said anything about wanting it until Dad said you couldn’t have it. On paper, the fishery might look good, but you never cared about the actual work that went into managing the fleet or making sure the captains had everything they needed to keep the crews safe. You were too impatient to sit through quality control meetings, discuss logistics for managing the supply chain, or build relationships with our overseas buyers.”

“Because I was never given the chance.”

“Bullshit.”

“Here we go,” Greyson mumbled, rolling his eyes.

“Boys!” Wren snapped, slapping her hands against the fur blanket covering her lap. The muffled sound didn’t have quite the effect she wanted, but it got their attention. “We were reminiscing, not having an argument. Stay on topic, or I’m going to bed.”

“Maybe we all wanted the prize,” Soren admitted, meeting her stare from the shadows. “At least on some level.”

Greyson and Logan glared at Soren. Wren dropped her gaze to the contents of her mug, afraid to meet any of their stares in that moment.

“Dad did what he did best,” Logan said, disrupting the tension. “He reminded us how much we disappointed him and leveraged his stingy affection to create a competition between us.”

“Not all of us were starved for his affection, Logan.”