Page 12 of Second Chance Wedding
“Then why did you agree to this?” Gage demanded. “What if Frankie’s wrong? Fifteen grand could be twenty for all we know.”
“Enough,” Alec said softly. “Speculating will get us nowhere. It’ll be whatever it is, and we’ll deal with it.”
Cole noted Alec had never taken his gaze off him during the discussion, and even though he had no reason to, Cole fought the urge to squirm.
Instead he forced himself to hold Alec’s gaze. “You would’ve done the same thing. Youdiddo the same,” he said, referencing all the times when Alec had gone to bat for the brothers and kept them from jail for one infraction or another.
Like joyriding in unattended golf carts or snitching booze out of unsuspecting tourists’ beach coolers for some underage drinking and mayhem. In the aftermath of their parents’ death, they’d put Alec and Aunt Rose through hell when it came to trying to keep them in line and out of trouble. Every day brought a new adventure in how they could have screwed up their lives if someone hadn’t intervened.
Brooks leaned back in his office chair, and it squeaked loudly. “She still as pretty as ever?”
Cole glared at him. “I’mnothung up on her. That is not what’s happening here. I’m simply trying to keep a kid out of serious trouble.”
“Because he’shers,” Brooks said with a grin.
“What if Analise can’t pay for the repairs?” Alec asked. “She just relocated her business and expanded. Things have to be tight for her. Can she afford to pay?”
Three sets of eyes locked on him, and Cole shoved himself off the door where he’d leaned for the discussion and straightened. Ana had been desperate to keep him from calling the cops last night and undoubtedly would’ve said whatever it took to keep her son out of jail. Could she afford it? “She will.”
“How are you going to enforce that?” Gage asked.
“I can think of a few ways,” Brooks said, still grinning.
Had his brother always been so…infuriating? “She’ll pay,” Cole said in a tone that dared Brooks to keep pushing buttons.
“What about the boy? What’s his punishment in all of this?” Alec asked.
“He could work it off,” Brooks said. “Might be fun to have a minion around to do our bidding.”
Brooks’s statement reenforced the idea Cole had considered last night but then rejected. But how did he argue the point without them believing it was due to Ana? “He would be trouble.”
“Yeah, but he’s the one who screwed up. Not Ana. We know what’s involved with expanding a business and moving hers into that hotel has to have her spread thin. The punishment should be on him, not her. If he’s busy washing and detailing the limo every day after school plus all the other stuff we could have him do, he’d be too busy to get into trouble,” Alec said. “Might help him learn his lesson, too.”
“Unless he tries to steal the limo again,” Gage muttered.
“Legally kids his age have to have a work permit,” Alec said. “But we can get him set up easily enough. That never stopped any of us from working where we could and earning what we could.”
“You seriously want him here?” Cole asked, surprised by his brother’s train of thought and yet…not.
“The boy is the problem, not Ana. I say we each figure out a list of things he can do and let him work it off. Cole can track things whenever he isn’t driving.”
Cole winced. “Or we can just let his mom pay us for the repairs, and she can handle him.”
His brothers stared at him like he’d grown four heads.
“If Ana could handle her son, this probably wouldn’t have happened,” Alec said, stating the obvious.
Knowing his brother was right didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
“I’d certainly like to know he getssomepunishment,” Gage added.
“Hard work would keep him busy,” Brooks said. “And he could shadow all of us while we’re here, so we’d know he’s actually working and staying out of trouble.”
Cole felt himself losing the battle. Taking on responsibility of a troubled teenage boy wasn’t on anyone’s priority list, but apparently that was the plan.
Alec was newly married with a baby at home, and Brooks now had a wife and four imps to keep track of, in addition to running their various businesses. They all had more than enough demands on their time, yet here they were adding another. Even Gage.
Gage was single, but he was the king of side hustles. Always finding something new to add to his list of incomes whenever the offseason hit and tourists thinned.
