Page 4 of The Holiday Clause

“Shut up, Grey. I guess it was just about the money for you then.”

“Watch it.”

Wisely, Logan withdrew his challenging words and continued with the story. “What choice did we have? We either grew up, settled down, and acted like responsible adults, or he was selling off the company and giving the profits to the board and shareholders.”

“He loved being a prick.” Soren sipped his bourbon and stared into the fire.

“Maybe his actions weren’t malicious at all. Maybe this was his way of making sure you boys would be okay in the end.”

“There she goes, romanticizing things again,” Soren grumbled. “Sometimes, people are just shitty, Wren.”

She adjusted her blanket. “Everything in nature has duality, Soren. Even Magnus Hawthorne. If he could feel anger, he could feel peace. And if he was capable of happiness, he also knew sadness. I know for a fact your father loved you.”

“You guys ever see Dad happy?” Soren joked, and his brothers chuckled.

“Couldn’t even tell you what his laugh sounded like.”

“Did Dad even have teeth?”

They all chuckled, but then the mood sobered as they each recalled a personal memory with Magnus that—despite his gruff and direct manner—brought a soft smile to their faces.

“He laid down the law before we’d even digested our Thanksgiving turkey,” Soren recalled, his gaze unfocused as he seemed to relive the whirlwind of the past few months. “The doctors gave him weeks, and he wasted no time meeting with his attorney to permanently change the will.”

“It was a pointless clause,” Logan grumbled. “How did he expect any of us to actually change our lives that much before Christmas? His expectations were always unrealistic.”

A strange mixture of guilt and relief flooded Wren as she kept her gaze down. That holiday clause was where she came in.

Magnus had changed his will just before the holidays to include a section stating that the lion’s Hawthorne Fishery of the family business would be inherited by the son who married first. None of the men had been thinking about marriage until Magnus dropped that bomb. He’d wanted a reaction, and he’d gotten one.

Hawthorne Fishery wasn’t just some rinky-dink, small-town operation. It was a billion-dollar, global-scale company with astronomical expenses and hundreds of vessels in each fleet built to travel deep international waters. There were inland processing plant stations off the coast, and the board wielded government-level influence when it came to ocean-related legislation and the country’s environmental laws. There was an entire world of capitalism out at sea, and the Hawthornes were one of the oldest family-run fisheries still in existence.

The boys had a right to be disgruntled. It wasn’t just Magnus’s legacy—it was their birthright. The thought that the company could have been divided into shares and sold to the highest bidder or passed down to the board was simply unthinkable. Hawthorne Fishery needed to stay in the Hawthorne family.

“As always, Dad got his way.”

Like a magnet, she felt Logan’s dark stare pulling at her senses. Wren lifted her eyes and met cold obsidian. The year had changed him in ways she was still trying to figure out. Gone was the sweet companion she’d grown up alongside, and in his place sat a cold-hearted man desperate to hide all the gentle qualities he now believed made him weak.

He held her stare. “Didn’t he, Wren?”

Logan had a gift for unnerving others with that penetrating glare, but she’d learned how to deflect it long ago. Despite the way her breath grew shallow, she held her body perfectly still. “I suppose he did. In a way.”

Logan’s cold stare slowly warmed when he smiled at her. With a past as long as theirs, every glance carried language outsiders couldn’t decipher. Her tangled history with the Hawthornes harbored more secrets than anyone would guess, and their silence spoke volumes.

When the four of them were together, it was impossible not to feel the pull of nostalgia. Their shared past could be as overwhelming as their masculine intensity.

“Don’t give me that look.” She turned back to Soren. “Finish the story.”

Soren sighed and sipped his bourbon, shifting to get more comfortable in his seat. “So he dropped the bomb on us, and we all knew he meant business. None of us woke up that morning with a single thought about marriage, but that all changed when we understood what was at stake.”

“It’s a big company,” she agreed, and they all chuckled.

“Yeah, that’s what this was about.”

Her cheeks flushed. She couldn’t fathom a reality where she wielded that much influence over men as unapproachable as the Hawthorne brothers. They might not intimidate her as much as they did outsiders, but that came with a lifetime of knowing each other.

Despite playing together in diapers when they were young, she still recognized the potent breed they were. She preferred to believe their actions were motivated by money, but when she found herself at the center of their family feud, she learned there was more to the story. Much more.

Logan chuckled. “There was no way you were beating me to her.”