I hurry around the side of the house, because there’s no doubt everyone is out by the pool, judging by the splashing.
When I reach the party, Dane Sterling is the first I run into. He’s all smiles with a little girl in his arms, and I feel like shit because I’m struggling to remember her name. Dane is married to my cousin, our families are close, yet I can’t remember his adopted daughter’s name.
That’s how my life has been—a lot of important things forgotten because my world has revolved around business, leaving room for little else.
“Carrie, you remember Ethan, right?”
Carrie. Of course. How could I forget that?
She nods shyly, and looks away. Unlike the bouncing bundle of blonde curls who is tugging on my jeans. I look down just as the little girl tugging at me peers up, studying me with intense eyes.
“Daddy is looking for you,” she tells me, and I internally curse myself.
Wren’s little girl… I remember her now. Shit. How am I forgetting all of this? And her name is… Ah hell. This is pathetic.
I feel like I turned my head and everyone suddenly has kids in school.
My eyes come up just in time to see Wren waving me over, and I head toward his table, catching the tail end of Britt Sterling’s conversation about her college courses. Sadly, I don’t remember the name she had before she took her brother’s last name.
Maybe everyone needs to stop confusing me and just stay the same.
“I would have waited until the fall to start college. At least take the summer off,” Allie—Wren’s fiancée—tells her.
“The courses I’m taking are only summer courses,” Britt replies, actually smiling.
Yeah, I missed out on the college experience, so I don’t blame her for smiling and enjoying it while she can.
“So you’re finally home,” Wren says, grinning widely while he sits in his chair, relaxed with his arm around Allie.
“Finally,” I echo, sitting down on his other side and stretching out.
It feels like I weigh a thousand pounds less, now that the weight of my father’s company is off my shoulders.
Allie frowns, looking around, but her little girl is rounding the corner again, climbing right up in Wren’s lap. Looking at the six or seven year old girl resting easily against him, you wouldn’t think Wren had only been in her life for less than a year.
Shit, our group is all kinds of fucked up.
“What’s on the agenda?” Wren asks me, reclining back as his daughter tells her mother about something random.
My eyes move from him to his daughter, and a slow, daring smile quirks the corner of my mouth. “Sure you want me to announce my agenda for all ears to hear, Daddy?”
He glares at me before rolling his eyes.
“Give me the PG version.”
Chuckling, I shrug. “No plans. That’s my agenda. My life has been nothing but consistent planning, down to the shi—I mean, the bathroom breaks I could take. All I want to do is kick back and live for a while.”
“Live like last weekend? Keg parties and psycho women?”
I cock an eyebrow at him. “Obviously that last part wasn’t on the agenda. But the parties, yeah. Why not? Unlike the rest of you, I had to miss that entire section of life when I had to take over the company. There wasn’t much wiggle room for fun, other than the few spare moments I could steal away a quick trip back home. Even then I had to temper my behavior because of the possible backlash it could have if any of that got back to the board, who have been chomping at the bit to take the business away for over a decade.”
“Why not just let them have it?” Britt’s voice has me turning to face her, realizing she’s brazenly admitting her eavesdropping. She doesn’t even falter, just stares me directly in the eyes as she awaits an answer. Hard to believe she’s just a college kid.
When I don’t answer, she goes on. “Obviously you didn’t want to run it, and now you’ve sold it. So why did you work so hard to keep the board from having it?”
She speaks like she knows exactly what I’m talking about, which hell, she may.
“Had my reasons,” I say with a shrug.