the time he was ten—from his hobbies as a child to his extracurricular activities in high school, to his college education, to the woman he married—had been about Cain Enterprises. He wasn’t going to let his father piss it all away on a whim.
“One option is to wait until the bastard actually dies and then take the matter to court.”
Griffin popped the top on the silver shaker and then gave it a vigorous jiggle. “At which point, all Father’s assets will be tied up in litigation for a decade or so. Good plan.”
Dalton leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “If he wasn’t already on his deathbed, I’d kill him for this.”
“I’d help.” Griffin chuckled as he scooped ice into glasses and then covered the ice with whatever concoction he’d mixed up. “On the bright side, the board loves you. Even if Father’s assets did revert to the state, all his Cain stock would be sold, right? He alone doesn’t even have a controlling majority. The board would most likely keep you on.”
“And then you could keep your job as VP of international relations as well.”
Griffin gave a little chuckle. “Yes. That would be ideal.”
They both knew Griffin’s job was a cushy one and not the kind he was likely to find anywhere else.
Griffin sliced a lime into wedges, squeezed one into each glass and then tossed another on top. “Sure, you’d be less insanely rich, but you’d still be CEO of Cain Enterprises.”
“That would be the best-case scenario, yes.” Dalton took the glass his brother handed him and eyed the pale green concoction. “This isn’t scotch.”
“Two years as a mixologist in college. I think I can do better than pouring you a scotch. This is me broadening your horizons.”
Dalton took a hesitant sip. It was surprisingly good, less sweet than a margarita and with enough punch to knock a grown man on his ass—especially one who’d already been knocked on his ass once that day.
“Yes, the board might keep me on.” In his experience, best-case scenarios were little more than daydreams. Reality was rarely so convenient. “It’s far more likely that one of our competitors would snatch up all that Cain stock and make a bid to take over the company. Sheppard Capital is ideally positioned right now to do just that. In which case, I would most likely be fired and Cain Enterprises would be dismantled bit by bit.”
For once, Griffin’s characteristic charming grin was pressed into a grim line. He raised his glass and said bitterly, “To our loving father.”
Dalton tapped his brother’s glass and then downed a sizable gulp, almost hoping that this drink would do him in. He and Griffin had never been particularly close. Hollister had fostered too much rivalry between them for that. Even now, though they were united in their mutual disgust for their father’s stunt, he had still pitted them against each other.
With the heat of the liquor still burning down his throat, Dalton voiced the question he had to ask: “Are you going to try to find her?”
Griffin made a face like he was about to spew cocktail across the room. “God, no. What would I want with Cain Enterprises?”
“Just had to check.” Another thought occurred to Dalton. “There’s one possibility we haven’t considered. Cooper could find the girl.”
Cooper was definitely a wild card in the equation. Dalton and Griffin had been seven and four, respectively, when Hollister brought home the then five-year-old Cooper and introduced him as his other son. He spent summers with them until Cooper’s mother passed away when Cooper was sixteen. Cooper had lived with them for nearly two years, raising as much hell as he could, before going away to college. They hadn’t exactly bonded.
Griffin tossed back the last of his drink. “Cooper could dismantle the company just as easily as Grant Sheppard could.”
True enough… Dalton stared at the murky green dregs of his drink. If Cooper found the heiress, Cain Enterprises wouldn’t be Dalton’s—not the way it was meant to be.
Griffin dribbled the last bit of the drink from the cocktail shaker into both of their glasses. “So how are you going to find this mysterious sister of ours?”
“That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?” Hollister had been a philandering jerk for his entire married life. “It’s not an issue of finding the mother so much as it is narrowing down the possibilities.”
Griffin gave a bark of laughter. “Who did he meet that he didn’t sleep with?”
“Exactly. When we look at it from this direction, the list of potential mothers has to be—” Dalton just shook his head, not even wanting to imagine how many women his father could have slept with. Hollister had had at least one long-term mistress when Dalton was a child, but he was afraid Sharlene was just the tip of the iceberg.
Griffin must have remembered as well. “She could be from anywhere. Any woman, in any bar, in any state in the country.”
“Or from any number of foreign countries as well.”
Cooper had been raised in Vale, but when Dalton had done the math—which he’d been very curious about at seven—he’d figured his father hadn’t been anywhere near Colorado at the right time. However, he had been skiing in Switzerland. Since Cooper’s mother had been an Olympic-caliber skier, Dalton figured they must have met there.
Thinking aloud, Dalton said, “It would be impossible to track down every woman he might have slept with during the right time, even if we could narrow down the time frame.”
“Did you happen to notice the postmark on the letter?” Griffin asked.
“Yes. No return address, postmarked from the local mail station. Which is pretty smart, if she doesn’t want to be found. Maybe it means she lives right around the corner. Maybe it means she lives in Toronto and paid someone to mail the letter for her.”
Dalton swirled the last of the drink around the bowl of the glass as he considered their predicament. “No, the question isn’t who did he sleep with. The question is, which one of those women hated him enough afterward to do something like this?”
Griffin pretended to consider, then shrugged as if giving up. “I’d guess all of them.”
But Dalton shook his head. “No. Say what you will about him, but our father was a charming bastard. So that eliminates all the one-night stands and casual hookups. Someone had to really know him to hate him this much.”
Dalton stood and picked up his suit coat.
Griffin raised his eyebrows. “I take it you’ve had an inspiration.”
“Of a sort. If there’s someone who hates Father that much, there’s one woman who would know about it. Mrs. Fortino.”
“Our former housekeeper?”
“Exactly. She knew everything that went on in that house. She’ll be able to tell me what I need to know.”
“She retired five years ago,” Griffin pointed out. “Are you sure you can find her? Maybe she’s traveling the country in a mobile home.”
“She’s not the one I’m worried about finding.” Dalton tossed back the last of his drink. “She’s not the type to travel, and she was set in her ways even when we were kids. I’m sure she’s still in Houston.”
“Hey, you know who would know how to find her?” Griffin asked just before Dalton walked out the door.
“Our mother,” Dalton stated the obvious.
“Sure, maybe. But I was thinking of Laney.”
Dalton turned and looked at his younger brother, keeping his expression carefully blank, hiding the way his heart had leaped at the sound of her name.
“You remember Laney. Mrs. Fortino’s granddaughter.