Okay, Quinn, my grandfather’s letter reads. You think you’re such a hot shot? Let’s see how you handle a completely different kind of business.
The words twist, hard, in my stomach.
I look up from the letter to see my siblings staring at me with expressions ranging from total confusion to barely veiled glee.
“What does that mean?” our oldest brother, Preston, demands.
“It means he’s just as much of a dick dead as he was alive,” I tell him.
This is not the nicest thing to say about a guy who we just buried yesterday, but none of my family members rush to disagree with me, not even my sister Hanna or my Aunt Meryl. The letter is indisputably a dick move. This whole fucking situation is a dick move.
“Language,” a voice chides. “There are ladies present.”
It’s Arthur Weggers, my granddad’s attorney. He’s a short, balding, sixty-something white guy who I had no reason to hate before today but who has been rapidly dropping into the basement of my regard.
“The women in the room can take care of themselves,” Hanna growls. In addition to the fact that she just lost her grandfather, she’s eight months pregnant and juggling a new and rapidly growing business with her husband, so she’s understandably not in the best mood. “Keep reading.”
But I’ve had enough. “I don’t need this bullshit.” I thrust the letter back into Weggers’ hands. “He can’t do this.”
“He can,” Weggers says. “We’ve been over this, Quinn. He made sure the will was airtight. He had two different medical professionals attest to his soundness of mind and body. He had me review the no-contest clause with three other lawyers. Your own brother ran it by several lawyer friends—” Weggers says this like lawyer friends are three-day old seafood—“and they agree it’s bulletproof.”
We all look at my brother Rhys, who doesn’t meet our eyes. He’s taking his failure to find cracks in the will personally.
But not as personally as I’m taking it.
My granddad’s will leaves the ranchland we grew up on to the six of us: Hanna, me, and our four brothers. But it also contains what Weggers calls conditions and I call The Asshole Clause. We have to hold the land for two years before we can sell it, and during those two years, we have to comply with any “additional instructions” my grandfather provides.
“What does he mean, additional instructions?” Preston demanded, when Weggers read that clause. “It’s not like he’s around to tell us what to do.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say more,” Weggers said, loftily. “It will make more sense in time.”
He deposited those last two words in the air like a television chef sprinkling a finishing salt on a dish.
Today, apparently, is in time. Weggers summoned us with a group text: Your first instruction is to appear in my office at 5 p.m. on the day following your grandfather’s burial.
When we were assembled, he handed me a letter-sized envelope containing a single sheet of paper, typewritten and signed in my grandfather’s arthritic lifelong rancher’s hand. “Read it out loud,” Weggers said.
“Can’t I read it to myself first?”
He shook his head. “Out loud.”
It’s like my granddad is speaking through a pushy, bald medium. Weggers just needs a crystal ball and some patter about the spirits from beyond, and he could be a fortune teller in a back alley tent.
Now he pushes the sheet of paper back into my hands. “Go on.”
I continue reading from where I left off:
Product sales currently account for only 12 percent of the Hott Spot Spa’s revenues. Twenty-five percent is an ambitious but reasonable goal. You must double product revenues during the next year.
The aestheticians, stylists, and technicians at the spa drive these sales, but the receptionist also plays a seminal role.
You’ll work as the Hott Springs Eternal spa and salon receptionist until this revenue goal is achieved for three consecutive months.
“Like hell I will!”
My brothers are all snickering now. Except Preston. He’s never had much of a sense of humor.
“Ha!” my brother Shane says. “Trust Granddad to pick the guy who hates people to be the face of the spa!”
“I don’t hate all people,” I mutter, which makes them hoot harder. I glare at them, and they make a futile effort to swallow their mirth. I swivel my glare to Weggers. “I can’t walk away from my business. I’m its CTO and head of R&D.”
“OMFG,” Rhys retorts. “Or should I say zOMFG? You’re so important, you have two different acronyms!”
I shoot him laser eyes. “You think he’s not gonna do the same thing to you, asshole? You got other letters there?” I turn to the lawyer. “I bet you have a whole stack, don’t you. One for each of us. Because he couldn’t get us back to Rush Creek any other way, he decided to do it from beyond the grave. If he’s gonna do this to me, he’s gonna do it to all of you. Isn’t he?” I demand of Weggers.
Weggers smiles, cat-that-swallowed-the-canary style. “I’m afraid I can’t say. Your grandfather was quite clear that all this happens on a need-to-know basis.” If possible, his smile grows even smugger.
The fucker is enjoying himself way too much.
“Look,” I say, trying to calm myself down, because clearly throwing a temper tantrum’s not going to get me anywhere. “I understand that he’s trying to make a point here. Forcing me back to Rush Creek. Humbling me or something.”
Because even though I didn’t read the last line of my grandfather’s letter aloud, I did read it to myself.
My brothers don’t need to know what it says, or how it echoes the fight my grandfather and I had when I finally told him I was never coming back to Rush Creek to run the ranch.
C’mon, Quinn. If you can run a multi-billion-dollar medical device company, surely you can handle this job.
Unless you can’t.
From beyond the grave, my granddad is still trying to best me at a game I never agreed to play.
“Enough’s enough!” I tell the assembled room. “I can’t walk away from a huge company full of people who depend on me. And I can’t just take some poor receptionist’s job.”
That silences the chuckles.
Hanna coughs. We all turn to look at her.
“Our receptionist quit four days ago,” she whispers.
For the first time, I register how exhausted she looks. My sister has always been the strongest, healthiest person I know, but right now? She looks like someone wrung her out. A knot forms behind my ribcage. My brothers are right. I’m not a people person. And I’ve been a bad brother. But holy God, I love my sister. A stubborn, often-angry sparkplug of a tiny human who drove us halfway to distraction, and growing up in Rush Creek wouldn’t have been the same without her.
I wish we’d done better by her. I flick a look at Preston, wondering if he feels any guilt for the chain reaction he started when he left Rush Creek, but he’s staring at his phone. Of course he is. Preston is never not working.
Hanna sighs. “I’ve been doing her job half-time while our spa manager lines up someone new.”
“On top of all her other jobs,” says a voice from the doorway. Easton, her husband, leans there, handsome, well-dressed, and usually easy-going, but the expression on his face right now is anything but.
Hanna presses her fingers to her head. “Easton, please, don’t.”
He’s at her side instantly. “Is the headache back?” he demands.
“Yes, but—” She leans down, groaning. “God.”
“What? What is it?”
She’s gray.
“Trash can,” she manages.
We all leap at the same time to grab it. My brother Tucker gets there first, pressing it into her hands.
We watch helplessly as she empties the contents of her stomach. Something turns over in my brain, a little alarm signal. I’m not a doctor, but I spend an absurd amount of time in medical offices and hospitals, and I’ve read every warning poster so many times they’re engraved on my soul.
“Isn’t it a little late for morning sickness?” Tucker asks.
Hanna moans. “Ow,” she says, cradling her head in her hands.
“For fuck’s sake,” I say, panic kicking into high gear. “Call 911.”
“You scared the shit out of me,” I tell Hanna.
She’s sitting up in her hospital bed, looking immensely pregnant and very tired, but much less gray and woozy. It’s a huge relief to see her more or less herself again. They’re letting us in to see her, but only one at a time, to keep her stress levels down. I think it’s a good choice: Five Hott brothers at one time would send anyone’s blood pressure through the ceiling. Having just spent several hours with four of them in the waiting room, pacing like caged wolves, I’m qualified to speak to this.
I sit down in the chair next to the bed. And then, unable to help myself, I bend my head down to her belly and rest my cheek against the curve of it. I don’t touch people much, but Hanna has always been the one exception.
“Quinn,” she says quietly. “You were worried, huh?”
I sit up to find her giving me a hard but sympathetic look. I have to turn away—it’s too much eye contact.
“Give me your hand,” she commands.
She takes my hand and clasps it to her belly. As soon as she does, I feel her belly give a seismic roll, almost a bounce. And holy shit. There’s a person in there.
Of course I knew there was, but this confirmation is deeply pleasing, in the way all confirmation of hypothesis is. The way evidence clicks into place is part of why I love science so much.
“He’s turning somersaults,” she says.
My eyes prickle, and I pull my hand away.
“He’s fine, Quinny.” Her voice is tender, which is surprising, because Hanna is one of the most sarcastic people I know. She’s also the only person who calls me Quinny, and the only person on earth I would allow to call me Quinny, ever, under any circumstances.
“I’m sorry, Han,” I say. “I’ve been a terrible, terrible brother.”
“Not the worst,” she says, with a sigh. “You did come to the wedding. You do send Christmas presents.”
I whisper, “My assistant sends Christmas presents.”
That makes Hanna smile. “You tell her to.”
I close my eyes tight. “I told her once, and she made it a repeating item in her calendar.”
“You’re too fucking honest,” Hanna tells me.
“So are you,” I tell her back.
Jesus, I’ve missed her. And I meant what I said: I’ve been a terrible brother.
“Can I?”
I hold my hand out again in the direction of her belly. She takes it and positions it over the pitch and roll of my nephew.
“I don’t understand how anyone can say you’re not a people person,” she says, very softly, like she knows I wouldn’t want anyone to hear.
“I’m not.”
“I bet the people you work with love you.”
“Ha!” I say. “I’m a tyrant. They hate me.”
“This is what you and I do, Quinn. We assume people don’t like us. But what I’m learning is that sometimes it’s us, building walls so we don’t get hurt like we did when we were kids. You have to take it on faith that they do like you and proceed accordingly.”
I squint at her. “That feels like a bad bet.”
She gives me a sharp look.
“Unscientific,” I add.
“Well,” she says, sighing. “People aren’t very science-y.”
We’re quiet for a minute. Then she says, “You don’t have to do it, you know.”
“Do—?”
“What grandfather says. I’ll be fine, no matter what. I was fine before. Working for the Wilders. I loved it, really.”
“But you love this more. Working at Hott Springs Eternal.”
“Yes,” she says. “I do. I love it because Granddad and I did it together—”
Grief streaks across her face. She loved our grandfucker. She could see what she claimed was a heart of gold under his crusty, manipulative surface. More power to her.
She collects herself, because she’s Hanna, and growing up with five brothers taught her not to show weakness. “—and because it’s on the family land, and because for the first time in my life I’ve built something that’s—well, that’s mine. My efforts, my results. And people come to me and tell me that I’ve given them a wedding weekend they won’t ever forget, and—” She lifts her shoulders, palms out. “For all the reasons. But,” she says. “I get it. You can’t just walk away from a multi-billion dollar business and come here and sit at a reception desk; that was just a fantasy Granddad had, that if he got you here, somehow—”
She trails off.
“I’d stay.”
She sighs. “Yeah. I mean, I’m sure that’s what he was thinking.”
“Well,” I say. “He was dead wrong about that. But he was right about something. He was right that I wouldn’t walk away from this. From you.”
“Quinn—”
I cross my arms. “I wasn’t very science-y, either, in the waiting room just now. Sitting there with all the guys and Aunt Meryl and Easton’s big ass family, I bargained with God quite a bit. I said if They let my sister and my future nephew be healthy and safe, I’d do anything—”
She raises her eyebrows, amused.
“—including turn my life upside down and figure out how to people so I could be a receptionist at a schmoofy spa. Though,” I add. “I also said that if They’d wanted me to be a receptionist at a spa, They could have found a less dramatic way to introduce the idea.”
Her grin deepens, then disappears. “You don’t have to keep a bargain you made when you were scared out of your wits,” she says quietly.
I know she means this, and that she’d forgive me in an instant if I turned around and went back to Boston, but that’s not the point.
I think about the first vow I made and broke. Maybe it wasn’t my fault, maybe the die had been cast long before I could really do anything to keep it. But I still hold myself one-fifth responsible. And I will never break another one. Especially not one made on my sister’s and nephew’s lives.
“I do,” I say. “And I will.”
Want to find out what happens when grumpy Quinn goes to work at the family spa… for sunshine-y spa manager Sonya Laurent? Or what happens when he and Sonya place a small wager—with hilarious stakes—on whether he can make his sales quota?
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