Page 10 of The Merger

“Fabulous,” Tate says.

“Don’t you want to leave your clothes …” I call out, but the door slams before I’m finished.

Dammit.

There goes solving my problem this afternoon. But if his smirk earlier was anything to go by, I’ll take a note from the Brewer playbook.

I’ll change tactics and press on until I get what I want.

I might be down, but I’m not out.

Chapter Three

Gannon

“You need to ask Jason to set you up with a loyalty rewards program,” I say, sorting the mail Kylie dropped off while I was in meetings this afternoon. “Ghana last month. Ireland next week. You’re quite the little jetsetter.”

Mom laughs through the speakerphone on my desk. “There’s nothing wrong with living your life. I just wish I would’ve started sooner. Hint. Hint.”

“It loses its subtlety when you sayhint hint.”

“Maybe I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”

I smile. “I live my life, Mother. Just because I’m not flying across the world on fancy vacations doesn’t mean I don’t have an enjoyable existence.”

“When’s the last time you took a vacation, Gannon Reid?”

“Ooh, middle name. You’re serious.”

“Iamserious,” she says. “You’re forty years old, and all you do is work.”

“Hmm. I wonder where I learned that from?” I pause, listening to her groan. “That question was rhetorical, by the way.”

As the eldest Brewer son, I was born with a particular set of expectations. And if I forgot them while riding bikes or playing with action figures, my father was right there to remind me that I was failing him. Not failing the expectations.Failing him.

All I wanted to do was please the man. I played baseball because he did. I learned everything I could about cars because that was the only thing we could discuss that didn’t involve business. I combed my hair to the right despite my cowlick all through elementary school and joined the math club despite hating math—I even tried to make myself left-handed like my dad.

But the older I got, the more I realized that being like Reid Brewer wasn’t a compliment, and I tried to erase all the traits I purposely tried to attain. Some of them stuck. One of those sticky habits is working too much.

“Are you coming back to Nashville any time soon?” I ask.

“Yes, of course. I need some baby Arlo snuggles.” Mom laughs. “Who would’ve thought Renn would be the first of you to have a baby?”

“Me.”

“Really? I thought it would be you.”

I ignore the twist in my stomach and, instead, chuckle for her benefit. “That shows how little you know your children.”

“That’s not very nice.”

I leaf through a finance report. “Renn was a professional athlete. He was fucking women on different continents for years. You’re lucky he doesn’t have a dozen offspring scattered across the planet.”

“Don’t sayfuckingin a sentence with your siblings. It’s … disturbing.”

“Although with all your traveling lately, you could continent-hop and visit your grandchildren.”

“Gannon, that isn’t funny.”