Page 3 of The Flirt (The Leblanc Brothers)

"All right. Then we'll just carry him back and forth."

She smiled brilliantly. "Yeah, we can do that."

I was proud of how well Sarah and I were managing this whole co-parenting gig, considering what a shit show our divorce had been. In fact, the same could be said about our marriage. Sarah came from old money, just like me. Her family used to be in the sugarcane business generations ago. But even with our similar upbringings, we had different values. After we got married, she assumed neither of us would work and we’d besocialites. That was simply not who I was. I was proud to continue my family’s legacy. We were already heading toward a separation when she unexpectedly became pregnant with Bella. We tried to make it work—at least I did... right up until I found out she cheated.

I didn't even want to remember that time in my life. We'd done our very best to shield Bella from it all, and thankfully, she’d never been aware that we’d been at each other's throats. Divorces were ugly. No matter one's intentions, they somehow spiraled, and not in a good way.

The first thing I told my lawyer was, “I don’t want this to get ugly. I want it to be as smooth as possible. We'll give Sarah what she wants, and everything will be easy.”

His reply had been chilling: “In all my career, I've never seen an amicable divorce."

I was sure our situation would be different. I’d been wrong. But Sarah and I had come a long way since then. We were never going to be friends, but we were civil around Bella. She lived with me during the week and with her mom on the weekend. Sarahhad bought a house in Marigny that had a big yard, too, and Bella was happy there.

When we arrived at the gates of the school, she turned to me and posed, holding her chin high and putting a foot forward. "Does my hair look okay?"

I glanced at her pigtails. She was very fussy about them. I styled her hair every morning, and my little girl was getting more pretentious about her looks.

"Yes, you look lovely."

"Dad, you always say that."

"That's because it's true." I kissed her forehead. She threw her little hands around my neck, and I pulled her into a hug. "Have a great day, cricket," I said.

"Thanks, Dad." She stepped back, turned on her heels, and broke into a run. I stayed until she disappeared inside the building, then walked back to the office.

As I turned onto Royal, my phone beeped. My brother Zachary was calling. I answered right away. We had a meeting scheduled later today, but if he wanted to talk before, it had to be important.

"Morning, brother," I answered in greeting.

"Hey, are you at the office?"

"No, just dropped Bella off. Is this about the meeting?"

"No, actually. Mom called me."

"Right now?"

"Yeah. Apparently our grandmothers are insisting on meeting the new chef."

I started to laugh. "Indeed.”

“Think that's a good idea?"

"Fuck no. I was going to think about ways to stop that from happening.”

“I have a few!" Zachary proceeded to rattle off some options. None of them sounded bad, but I couldn't see them working.

Then again, he did have a way of smoothing things over. There were six of us brothers, and we couldn’t be more different. Xander was the most exacting out of all of us—he never missed a single detail. Julian was good at presiding over everything because the man never lost his shit. Anthony was solution oriented. He didn’t go into detail like Xander, but he got the job done. And Beckett was always up for anything. He was the best at making sure Xander didn't drive everyone crazy by going intotoo muchdetail. It was always a fine line.

“Right, I don’t think any of that will work,” I conceded after he finished presenting his “solutions.”

“Honestly, neither do I. By the way, have you met Scarlett yet?"

"No, I wasn't involved in the interviews. But you did, right?" He was the only one of us who took part in the hiring process across all the branches.

"Yes. She’ll do great. And as an aside, she's smoking hot."

"How was that an aside?" I hadn’t even had time to look her up online.

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