Page 36 of Charming Deception

I look out the window. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Megan Hudson wanders into view.

“Every single one of them.” My brother answers his own question. “Because it’s one of the policies we mandate when we create or acquire them…” As he continues his lecture, my eyes trace Megan’s curves in her tight tank top and little shorts. “… and it was important to this company’s founder. So it’s important to us.”

I drag my attention away from Megan when I realize he’s stopped talking. “Excuse me? Founder?” I cup my hand behind my ear like I must’ve heard him wrong. “You mean Stoddard Vance? Granddad? The man who was fucking his secretary for decades? While he was married?”

Graysen looks constipated again. “Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.”

I get up and stroll to the window, but Megan’s vanished. “I’m not making any mistakes, Gray.” Does he really think I’d be that careless?

Just forty-six more days.

Then it’s his fucking turn, or someone else’s. I know every one of my siblings is dying to know what their own challenge will be. I didn’t devise Graysen’s challenge, and I have no idea who did or what it is. But I can’t wait to find out.

I turn to face him. “I’m doing just fine. Honestly, at this point, the drive to complete this challenge so I can watch you all sweat through yours is almost worth the suffering.”

“I don’t care how much ‘suffering’ it causes you.” I know he means it; Graysen could probably easily give up sex for ninety days. It would just give him more time to micromanage the rest of us. “I’m fucking tired of your playboy ways, Jamie. All this never-ending gossip just fuels the fire. It’s threatening our reputation. There’s a reason we put such a premium on maintaining our privacy.”

“Uh-huh. You know what your problem is?”

“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”

“You don’t see any difference between gossip and true bad press.”

“There is no difference when it negatively impacts us. The result is the same.”

“I disagree. The truth matters. Facts are worth defending.”

“Well, the fact is, if you can’t keep yourself out of these salacious headlines, I’ll have to remove you from your position as VP of Brand Marketing. At least for a while.”

I stride back to my desk and face him across it, weighing his seriousness on this. “You won’t. You need me.”

“Not as badly as I need our company image, our family image, to remain intact. The completion of Granddad’s resort is contingent on so many details, so many relationships, so many damn regulations… Since losing him, we’re under extreme pressure to prove that we can deliver without him. I need you all to keep your heads down, even more than usual. And trust me, I’ve got enough issues with your brothers to deal with. I don’t need another black sheep.”

“Which is why you need me. The resort isn’t the only asset that we need to prove we can deliver on without Granddad. What about the hockey team? What are you going to do if the Northmen’s new president attends his first board meeting with the National Hockey Organization and shits the bed? You might need me on that board, and you need someone in the family smiling for the cameras next to the team captain on the sports page. You’re not gonna do it.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Just admit how much you need me.”

“Not that badly.”

Bullshit.

“I may not know hockey like you do,” he says, “but I know business. And I will learn about hockey, damn fast, if that’s what it takes.”

I drop into my seat and recline back.

He’s bluffing. Trying to scare me.

The fact is, we all need each other.

Granddad knew it.

He’d handed his successor at the Northmen organization a lot of power right before he passed, because he was making a final power play. The hockey team was his childhood dream. When he bought the Vancouver Northmen and the arena where they play, it was one of his greatest life achievements.

Passing his role as president of Northmen Sports and Entertainment to someone outside the family, instead of one of his grandchildren, was a warning to us, maybe. That nothing should ever come easy.

And like Savannah said, this game he’s left us to play forces us to rely on each other if things go to shit.

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