My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,19
a collective sigh of relief when we were finally released.
“Thanks, everyone!” Josie shouted above the din of voices as everyone started milling around. “I know it was a pain, but it’ll look great in our new public relations campaign.”
“Time for brunch!” trilled my stepmother, Heather. “We’ll see y’all at the house in fifteen. Don’t be late.”
After I got my shirt back from Josie’s flunky, I rode over to the family homestead with Tanner, who seemed like he was in an even worse mood than when he’d picked me up earlier.
“Everything okay?” I asked, eyeballing him. “You’re gripping that steering wheel like you want to rip it out of the dash.”
He loosened his fingers, shaking his hands out one at a time. “I got an earful from Nate is all.”
“Work stuff?”
Tanner worked for Nate, managing one of the regional sales divisions. Dad liked to start his kids at the bottom and make them work their way up from merchandiser—stocking product in grocery store freezers—before letting them advance through the company ranks. It was how both Nate and Manny had started, and Tanner was supposed to be following the same career path. Only he hadn’t taken to it the way they had. Ever since he’d moved into sales management he’d been seriously fucking miserable.
He nodded as he rolled his shoulders. “I’ve gotta go to Oklahoma next week.”
“How long?”
His frown got deeper. “I don’t know. Hopefully only a few days. As long as it takes to figure out why our numbers are down.”
“You should just quit,” I told him even though I knew he’d never do it. Quitting was more my style than Tanner’s. I’d quit that merchandiser job after three days. I’d quit college after a semester. I’d quit on every woman I’d ever tried to be in a relationship with, and then I’d quit trying to be in relationships altogether.
Tanner was Mr. Dependable. The guy who was in for the long haul. The one who kept showing up, no matter how hard it got.
“And do what?” he shot back with a snort.
“I don’t know. How about literally anything else? Maybe try writing that book you’ve been talking about forever.”
When we were kids, Tanner’s nose had always been stuck in a book. He’d go off on his own and do nothing but read for hours. He’d even majored in English in college, which seemed like a waste now that he was stuck working in sales.
He snorted. “Sure, like it’s that easy.”
“I didn’t say it was easy, I said you should do it.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” He shot me a sidelong look. “No offense, but you’re the last person I’m interested in taking career advice from.”
“Fine,” I said. “Keep martyring yourself, then.”
“Once I fix this mess, things will get better.” His knuckles were turning white on the steering wheel again. “At least it’s only Nate’s wrath I’ve got to deal with for now. Dad’s been too distracted by this new real estate thing to breathe down my neck like usual.”
“What real estate thing?” I was pretty far out of the loop these days when it came to Dad’s business dealings.
Tanner shrugged. “One of his buddies from the Chamber of Commerce talked him into partnering on some real estate startup. They’re buying up properties around town on the cheap so they can squeeze a bunch of condos onto each lot and flip them all for a tidy profit.”
“Great.” I shook my head as I stared out the window at the bluebonnets that sprang up all over the place every spring and would be gone again in just a few weeks. “Just what this town needs. A bunch of overpriced, shoddily built eyesores.”
My dad had cultivated a public image as this benevolent, earth-loving peacenik to align with the company’s socially conscious branding. But behind closed doors he’d always been all about the money. It was his barracuda-like business instincts and not his affinity for progressive causes that had grown the family business from a dinky regional ice cream company to one of the top brands in the country.
The only thing Dad loved more than making money was using his money to make everyone else do whatever he wanted.
“Anyway,” Tanner said as he turned onto the tree-lined drive leading to the house we’d grown up in, “I’m just going to spend the next two hours trying to avoid Nate and Dad.”
The King family villa was a mammoth ranch-style house Dad had custom built in the late eighties after the business had started to