Everywhere and Every Way - Jennifer Probst Page 0,6

one last shot. He hated how dirty he was willing to play, but it was his life, and he had no choice. Already his brothers seemed to gather themselves up and walk out the door, ready to give up Pierce Brothers. In a way, he couldn’t blame them. But he needed to win.

“If you don’t do this for me, I’ll lose everything,” he said quietly. “You probably don’t care about that, and I accept it. But I’m asking you to do it for someone else.”

“Dad?” Dalton sneered.

“Do it for Mom.”

Tristan stilled. Dalton jerked back, raw pain carving into his face. A long stream of curses emitted from his little brother’s mouth, stinging his ears. Tristan just stared at him like he’d enacted the biggest betrayal—worse than Fredo in The Godfather.

The words fell flat from Tristan’s mouth. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

Caleb didn’t back off. “This was Mom’s company. She gave it to us from her great-great-grandfather and renamed it Pierce Brothers because she believed in all of us to keep it safe. Sure, Dad doubled the profits, but she always told us this was our legacy.” His throat burned with something, but he refused to name it. “Mom was the one who told us at the kitchen table every damn day that blood is the only thing we can count on. That if we’re not here for each other, nothing else matters. To watch this company, the only thing we have of her memory, dissolve would leave us with nothing.”

Dalton looked like a ghost had walked into the room. “She left us,” he said. “We have nothing anyway.”

“We’ll never know if she was going to come back,” Caleb said softly. “Don’t we owe it to her to give it one last try? We were close once. I’m not saying we can get back that same type of relationship, but there’s gotta be a way we can live in the same house but still have separate lives. Tristan, you can run your businesses from here and incorporate some of the changes you always wanted to see in Pierce Brothers. Dalton can take over all the woodworking. Then we can all walk away at the end of the term and decide what we want from there. I’m asking you, as my brothers, for one year to try.” His throat was choked, but he forced the final word out. “Please.”

He heard his father’s spirit roar and call him a pussy. He watched the faces of his brothers harden, trying to process emotions they’d refused to deal with for way too long. Caleb didn’t care if he went to hell for it. He needed them to keep his company alive, and he’d do anything possible to convince them.

Finally Tristan spoke. “I need time to think about it.”

Caleb nodded. “Understood.”

“You all can take a few days,” Dyken said. “Talk it over. Let me know your decision.”

“I’ll tell you within twenty-four hours,” Tristan clipped out. He straightened his suit jacket, tugged at the Windsor knot on his bright red tie, and turned. “I’m going out for a while.”

Dalton slowly followed, pausing with his hand on the knob.

“You’re wrong,” he murmured into the silence. “Mom was never coming back.”

Then he left.

Dyken packed up his briefcase and left Caleb alone, staring at the closed door for a long, long time.

chapter two

* * *

Don’t look at me like that. I’ve had a shit day, and getting drunk is probably the best thing on my to-do list.”

Two sets of big brown eyes stared back at him. Every one of his moves was measured and studied in shaking silence. He’d been stupid to put the bag of rawhide bones near his bottles of precious bourbon, not realizing that each time he’d get a drink, the goofball duo would assume they were getting treats.

“No way. One of you stole the leftover chicken, and I still haven’t figured out who’s lying.”

Bodies finely tuned, ears pricked, tongues lolling in helpless excitement, these two were impossible to say no to. Caleb bit back a smile.

He’d found the two puppy mastiffs tied to a tree during a job. Abandoned, dehydrated, and starving, with sores on their bodies, they’d likely been out in the woods for a while. After a vet visit that saved their lives, Cal couldn’t stand the idea of them going to the shelter. They refused to leave each other’s sides, bonding from the horrific incident, so separating them wasn’t an option.

His father hated dogs and probably would’ve left them in the