The death of a father is a delicate matter under the best of circumstances. As Kyle Kingsley stared at his brother Nate across their patriarch’s failing body, the circumstances surrounding this particular demise couldn’t be worse. Holed up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Kyle had more questions than answers about the man who’d brought him into this world but had spent so little effort seeing him through it. Only, the time for questions was long gone.
“The lawyers are meeting on the Tanaka deal tomorrow. They’ll want to revise the paperwork. Dad’s name will be replaced with mine unless you have a problem with that.” Nate’s dress shirt and tie clashed with the general rustic appeal of the cabin but perfectly matched the brash ambition in his eyes.
“You mean, will I contest your claim to the throne?” Kyle shifted forward in his chair. His eyes fell on the mottled skin of his father’s hands. They rested on the head of the dog who’d stayed curled by his side for two days now as if he were giving the tawny mutt a benediction.
“Play to your strengths, Kyle. You’re the face of Hunt Club. Do you think for a second that if I had the clock-stopper you wear every day, I’d want to do what I do? Hell no. You’ve always been the beauty. I’ve always been the brains. Do you think the public wants to see this ugly mug all over the Internet?” He pointed to his own face. “We need your billion-dollar smile. Leave the desk jockeying to me and enjoy the good life as nature intended.”
“The good life? Hmm. Funny, it didn’t seem so great when that redhead—what’s her name?”
“Kate? From the New York agency.”
“She tried to set me on fire.”
Nate shrugged. “Redheads.” He ran a finger inside the neck of his tie, loosening it a few inches. “Kyle… the deal.”
“The position is yours.”
Nate smiled in that lippy, gaping way he did that always reminded Kyle of a filter-feeding whale shark, only instead of krill, his gaping maw collected entrepreneurial opportunities. He had to hand it to his brother—what Nate lacked in attractiveness he made up in cunning. Could premature hair loss be triggered by a hot-running brain?
“I’ll call the transition team and have them prepare the necessary documents for overnight delivery.”
“Two things. One, Dad’s still alive. Two, we are in the middle of nowhere. Unless you plan to go medieval and have the lawyer send the papers by carrier pigeon, it’s going to have to wait. Relax. There’s no hurry.”
“It won’t be long, though. The doctor said any minute now.” Nate’s brown eyes shifted, fixing on their father’s lumbering chest. “We should get the paperwork started.”
Although the lip smacking and carcass circling didn’t exactly surprise Kyle, his patience with his brother waned. Unrestrained ambition made for hasty decisions in the heat of the moment. Kyle preferred a more deliberate approach. Estranged or not, the man between them shared their DNA, one of the few things Kyle had in common with his brother. He deserved respect.
“I’d like to experience these last moments with our father minus the paperwork. It can wait.”
With a disappointed grunt, Nate shifted in his chair. “Why do you think he chose to come out here to die, anyway? I didn’t even know this town was on the map. What’s it called again?”
“Red Grove. I didn’t know it existed either, but I think that was the point. He didn’t want the public to see him like this.”
“His will says no funeral. Nothing public. Does Red Grove even have a crematorium? What do we do with the body?”
Kyle nudged back his chair, the legs protesting with a rumbling screech against the wood floor. The dog lifted its massive head, brown eyes tracking Kyle as he circled to Nate’s side of the bed. Despite his brother’s considerable size, Kyle fisted Nate’s collar and lifted him from his seat.
“I’m not going to say this again,” he whispered into his brother’s ear. “Dad is still alive. As far as we know, he can still hear us. We’ll handle the arrangements when the time comes. Until then, unless you want to talk about what few personal memories we have of him, shut the fuck up.” He dropped his brother back into his chair and returned to his own.
Nate spread his hands and shrugged. “Sorry.” He did not sound sorry. Only a note of annoyance flavored the word. Still, he hushed. The cabin grew quiet aside from the deep, wet rattle of their father’s breathing and the occasional whine of the four-legged beast lying at his side.
“Am I allowed to ask what we should do about the dog?” Nate tugged at his pant leg, clearly perturbed by Kyle’s restrictions on the conversation.
Kyle reached out and stroked the dog’s head. “His name is Milo.”
“I can’t have a dog. I’m allergic,” Nate said. “We’ll have to take him to the humane society.”
“He’s a one-hundred-sixty-pound mastiff. No one is going to adopt this dog. Three-quarters of the population doesn’t have a house big enough for this dog. Frankly, one fart and he could knock down the walls of this cabin.”
Nate snorted. “You can’t keep him. You’re barely home. And I don’t need to tell you the staff is not going to want to deal with a dog like this.”
“Dad loved Milo.”
“More than he loved either of us.” Nate’s nostrils flared. “Just another way for the old man to deliver one last jab to the balls.”
“Maybe, but I’m keeping him,” Kyle said definitively.
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll never let you on the plane with that thing.”
“I’ll drive him back in my rental.”
Nate scowled. “This is a bad idea, Kyle. You don’t adopt a dog to fill the absentee-father-shaped hole in your heart.”
Kyle let his eyes drift over his brother’s stocky frame. “Better than filling it with peanut butter.”
Nate flipped him the middle finger.
Silence settled between them again, interrupted only by their father’s labored breaths. For once, even Nate had nothing to say. He crossed his arms and stared blankly at their father.
The scrape of claws on wood caused Milo to raise his head again and Kyle to rub the tightening skin at the back of his neck.
“What was that?” Kyle looked toward the kitchen in the direction of the front entrance. Milo gave one low woof but didn’t find the noise concerning enough to leave the bed to investigate.
“Who knows? We’re in the middle of the woods. Probably raccoons.” Nate stood and stretched. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee.” He waddled toward the kitchen.
With a whimper, Milo laid his head back on the bed, staring at the old man with the single-minded intensity only man’s best friend is capable of. Kyle scratched the dog behind the ears. “It’ll be okay, Milo. I’ll take care of you.”
The quiet morphed into something even quieter, a silence that only comes at the end of things when man and beast become equals and the last stroke on the portrait of a life is cast upon the canvas. Kyle stared at his father’s chest. It did not rise. It did not fall.
With two fingers, he searched for a pulse. And then he said good-bye.