Keep It Together - By Lissa Matthews Page 0,10
and there was no pressure for it.” He did understand. He knew what having money did, what it could do. It could buy you anything, even time and nothing at all.
“That’s just it. I wanted to do something, I just… I had to figure out how to make my own way.”
“I’m not judging you. Amber went through a similar period right after college, but she couldn’t stand Russ’s mother and her constant parties at the time, so she begged our father for a job.”
Chrissie snickered. “I remember Russ telling me about his mom and then meeting her. It was…interesting, to say the least. I don’t think she has missed me or was too broken up about there being no wedding. She didn’t even say good-bye when she left the church, and to be perfectly honest, Vegas showgirl was probably right up her alley of prospects for him more so than a redneck girl from South Georgia.”
Colt couldn’t hold the bark of laughter in. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand how my father fell in love with her, but she made him happy, and my mother made him miserable.”
As siblings, though, the three of them had gotten along fairly well from the start, but it was clear they were all very different personalities. Amber and Colt had taken control of their father’s holding company after going to college in Austin at UT, but Russ had gone off to college clear across the country for a law degree. He’d been offered a job with a top corporate firm in Houston, as well as a job in the family business, but had turned it all down for a prestigious criminal and family defense firm in Atlanta.
Russ always had been the one who bucked the system, and Colt had always admired him for it. When his law office opened a satellite location in Savannah, Russ had moved without a second thought so he could head it up. He’d bought the perfect downtown townhouse right in the heart of the historic district and had a plan.
Ditching his bride-to-be and running away to Vegas hadn’t been part of that plan. Even now, Colt didn’t know the truth of what had spooked his brother. Russ had seemed to Colt and Amber to be turning over a new leaf, a more settled existence since he met and got engaged to Chrissie. In the end, though, it really didn’t matter, the whys and whats about it. Russ had lost her, and Colt was going to do his best to keep her.
She was special, and she tripped his triggers in ways no other woman ever had. She wouldn’t care for his money. She wouldn’t care for his place in his company. She wouldn’t be impressed with Houston society or making a splash with the local who’s who crowd. She was the kind of woman who would want nothing more than love and give nothing less in return.
He could do that and be happy with it. He could take or leave the trappings of being the head of a company, but he didn’t want to leave her. She would fit him. He hadn’t quite figured out how he knew that, he just…did.
She was comfortable too. He joked and smiled easily with her, around her, at the mere thought of her. His guard was down, and he liked that about himself. How a woman he barely knew could manage that, he didn’t know. He’d never experienced anything like it, and he didn’t want to lose how incredible it felt.
“Are you close with your parents?”
“My dad, yes. We’re a pretty tight family, I guess. Russ doesn’t come home much, though.”
“What about your mom? You said she made your father miserable, but is she happier too?”
He rarely even thought about his mother anymore. “When she left, she never looked back.”
“Oh, Colt, I’m so sorry.”
Her sincerity was genuine. He could tell in the way her voice softened, in the way her eyes transformed from happy to sad in an instant and seemed to reach out to him. “Thank you, but I’ve been over it for a long time.” Colt’s father had settled enough money on her that she could go wherever she’d wanted, and he figured she’d gone as far as she could to get away from them all. She’d been a society maven, the same as Russ’s mother, but in a different way, one he didn’t know how to explain.
“How do you get over something like a parent leaving?”
He shrugged. He didn’t know how