He walked across the catwalk and jogged down the stairs to the concrete floor below. He looked at Linc. “I hear you.”
“Hearing is one thing but are you going to do something about it?”
Tyce nodded. “I am.”
Beck cleared his throat and sent him a smile that shriveled his sack. “Good to know. Now, there’s just one more thing we need to do.”
“What’s that?”
Jaeger cocked his head. “You made Sage cry,” he said, sounding like he was ordering a cup of coffee.
Oh, crap. They said they’d rip him apart if he made Sage cry and judging by their hard expressions, she’d been crying a lot. Well, he was a fighter; he could tolerate three punches. Once it was done, they could all move on.
“Jesus,” he muttered as he stood in front of the three Ballantyne brothers, bracing himself for what was to come. “Okay, take your hit.”
Jaeger and Beck exchanged looks and Reame just grinned. Jaeger lifted a dark eyebrow, his eyes dark and cold. “You’re going to make it right with Sage?”
Tyce nodded. “I already said that, didn’t I? Yeah, I’m going to make it right.” Damn, waiting for a punch was worse than the punch itself.
“If you hurt her again, we’ll set Reame on you and he’s a sneaky son of a bitch with mad skills. He’d do some damage,” Beck told him, echoing Jaeger’s icy demeanor.
“Understood.” Tyce nodded. He looked at Linc, relieved that he’d avoided being hit by Sage’s hotheaded brothers. They were more gracious than he might have been if some guy messed Lachlyn around. Linc looked like he always did, calm and controlled.
Okay then, dodged a bullet. Phew.
Tyce pulled in a breath, started to take his hands out of his pockets, thinking that he’d invite them upstairs. The big fist came out of nowhere, slammed into his jaw and he dropped backward, his butt connecting with the cold and very hard concrete. Crap, that hurt. Tyce looked up at Linc, who had a self-satisfied smile on his face.
Right, he hadn’t seen that coming, Tyce thought, holding his jaw. “God, it hurts like a mother,” he moaned.
“Good.” Linc held out his hand to Tyce to pull him up. “You got coffee? We still have business to discuss before you go groveling back to Sage. And you will grovel.”
“I will grovel,” Tyce agreed, allowing Linc to pull him up. Holding his jaw, he lifted his eyebrows. “What business?”
Linc gestured to an amused Jaeger and Beck. “We’re going to repay you the money you spent buying Lach-Ty shares. We inherited Connor’s money so we’ll spend it to reimburse you for Lachlyn’s share of the company. We’ll also add her as a co-owner of the assets we own jointly, like the art collection, the properties and the gem collection.”
Holy crap, now he was really seeing stars. Tyce wiggled his jaw and started to lead them to the stairs. As his foot hit the bottom stair, an idea popped into his head. “If I ask you to, do you think you could get Sage somewhere for me?”
“Possibly,” Linc replied.
“And instead of reimbursing me for what I paid for the shares, could we do a swap?”
“What swap?” Jaeger asked, his eyes still amused. Yeah, it would be a while before he lived that punch down.
“There’s a red diamond ring in your family collection that Sage loves. I’d rather have the stone than the money because I’d like to put it on your sister’s finger.”
Linc looked at him, then looked at his brothers. Some sort of silent communication happened between them and Linc finally nodded. “I think we can work that out.”
Reame was the last one up the stairs and Tyce heard his chuckle. “I have to say that life is never boring with you Ballantynes.”
Now there was a statement Tyce fully agreed with.
Thirteen
Sage didn’t want to go to an art exhibition and she deeply resented her bossy future sisters-in-law—sadly, her brothers were rubbing off on them—turning up at her apartment and bundling her into the shower. Amy had always been bossy so that wasn’t anything new. Art exhibition, cocktails and clubbing, they told her. Just the five of them setting Manhattan alight.