Page 79 of The Forever Rule

Dorian gave him a once over, and nodded tightly, before holding out his hand.

“Nice to meet you. I’m the pretty brother.”

Cale just laughed, a camaraderie in his gaze.

Sophia and Isabella looked between them. “I don’t know if I’m going to like this many brothers.”

“And I thought Kyler was bad,” Isabella snickered, and something settled into place.

No, we weren’t truly family, not yet. But we were getting there.

And maybe, maybe this could work. Despite my mother, despite my father, it could work.

I just had to hope to hell I didn’t ruin things with Blakely in the process.

Chapter Ten

BLAKLEY

Dear Diary,

I really hope I wore the right panties for this evening.

As I walkedout of my latest meeting, feeling oddly high on success, I tried my best not to skip down the hallway to my office. Working here was completely different than working at my previous place. I hadn’t realized how suffocating my last job had been. I hadn’t been able to do what I was good at. I had somehow been shuffled into doing paperwork for others, and focusing on what they wanted, rather than what I’d been hired for. It had been constant walking on eggshells, making sure I didn’t rock the boat. Everything that I had done had been so I could keep my job, a job Ihadn’t even liked.

Now I had a team that wanted to do good things, and I was learning along the way.

There was a knock at my door, and I looked up to see James standing there, tablet in hand as he continued to work.

“Yes?” I asked, not feeling nervous at all about the fact that my boss was standing in front of me. What a novelty.

“I’m looking over that proposal you sent, and it’s great. I have a couple of suggestions for it, that you don’t need to take into an account, but I think could help.”

I smiled and stood up, going toward him so I could look at his tablet. It was just easier when I knew he had that manic energy and sometimes he just couldn’t sit down.

“No problem. It’s just a proposal. There’s what, twenty more steps before we can put anything into action.”

“Exactly. Flynn always rolls his eyes at me when I say that we need those twenty steps. He likes ten.”

My lips twitched. “I don’t have any siblings, just my folks. I love my parents, but I don’t know if I could actually work with them.”

“Oh, this is why I’d never work with my parents. I can work with my brothers, because we call each other out for things, and we listen to each other. But if all seven…” He paused and then cleared his throat. “If all twelve of us had worked in this building, it would be too much.”

“Well there’s going to be four of you now,” I said, smiling at that new information.

Isabella had sounded worried and yet excited at the same time when she had put in her two weeks’ notice. Her first day was on Monday, and I couldn’t wait to see what happened. I was nervous for her, and the rest of the Cages, but it was going to be nice to have my best friend working nearby.

“It was Aston’s idea, but honestly, Flynn and I should have come up with it too,” James said with a shrug. “Hell, I realized I just said that working with everybody would be too much, but if people have the skills to make this work? Why not. Anything to make the company even better than what Dad thought it could be.”

I heard the bitterness in there, but he smiled so brightly, so much like Flynn in that moment, I couldn’t say anything.

“Do you know if she’s going to work in this office, or another.”

“She has the option of working at either one of our buildings. I don’t actually know where she lives, and Aston is handling all of that. We have more than one accountant on our team, and since she’s going into forensic accounting, she’ll be working more with Aston than me.”

“It’s going to be nice though, right? You’ll be able to know her.”

“Yeah. More than just at dinners where things are awkward and we’re doing speed dating for siblings.” Hepaused and cringed. “In a not really weird incest way that I just said.”

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