2. Logan

"Married?" I repeated incredulously into my phone. Since I was tucked away in my private office at the back of my restaurant, I didn't bother trying to keep my voice down. My dad was on the other line, and my slow-boiling anger only ramped up as he replied. There was absolutely no shame in his voice.

"Yes, Logan. Married. You have a new stepmother, and I'd like it if you would try to be happy for me. You know how much I care about this family."

Christ. I didn't like the sound of this guilt trip, and I certainly didn't like the idea of a stepmother. I was thirty-five years old, for fuck's sake, and I hadn't had a mother for most of my life. Besides that, this was a big change. Despite several dynamic-shifting changes in my youth that resulted in my two foster brothers, our family hadn't changed in over a decade, and I was pretty happy with how it had always been.

"Dad, you know I love you, and of course I want you to be happy. But you met this woman a few weeks ago on a cruise, for Christ's sake. What do you even know about her?"

"Her name is Jodie," he answered easily. "She has a daughter who's a bit younger than you, and a granddaughter she helps to take care of. She's a bit younger than me, but still age appropriate. And I know that she makes me happier than I've been since we lost your mom."

That knocked all the wind out of my sails, the air out of my lungs.

"I… I want to be supportive here, Dad," I said, and it was true despite the frustrated tone I couldn't shake, "but you have to admit that this is… out of character." That was an understatement if I ever heard one. Dwight McDonald may be a dreamer, idealistic to the end, but he'd always been sensible, too. Sensible people didn't turn their impromptu vacations into spur of the moment weddings.

At least it was an efficient way to get the ceremony and honeymoon all knocked out at once.

Still, the angry part of me, the side I usually reserved for dealing with incompetent employees in my work, wanted to give my dad the tough love he seemed to be lacking right now. Dad was well-off and surprisingly trusting despite the number of people who had tried to take advantage of his money and generosity over the years. It took all of my well-honed self-discipline to keep myself from yelling, Open your eyes, old man! This woman is probably just a gold digger!

Despite Dad's best efforts, I'd never quite developed his ability to see the best in everyone. People had to prove themselves to me before I'd give them a shot. And often, they fell short.

Right then, someone who had proven himself to me again and again stuck his stupid, handsome head into the office door. Nate Young was my longtime best friend and foster brother well before he became my business partner and the head chef of my restaurant, Forge. He grinned, his prominent canines flashing in the fluorescent light, when I put the phone on speaker and mouthed to him, It's Dad. Nate looked intrigued.

"I just need you to trust me. I don't need you to be excited for me yet," Dad said. "I know you're a tough nut to crack, Son."

Nate snorted.

"Is Nate there?" Dad asked, and Nate mimed zipping his lips.

I smirked at my brother as I answered, "Yup, you're on speakerphone, Dad."

Nate frowned at me.

"Great!" Dad boomed, his bright smile audible in his voice. "Perfect, actually. I want both of you boys to come to dinner with me, Jodie, and her family tonight. We'll have to do something when Bennett gets back into town, all seven of us, but for now, I can't wait for at least two of my boys to meet the new women in my life. We've got to welcome them into the family."

"Women?" Nate asked, one eyebrow raising at a jaunty angle. "Family?"

"Didn't you hear?" I asked at a deadpan. "Dear old Dad got married. On a singles' cruise."

"Holy shit." Nate laughed. "Congrats, Pop."

"See? Your brother is happy for me, Logan."

"My brother isn't always the greatest at decision making, either," I grumbled, and Nate flipped me off from the doorway.

"Well see you at dinner, Pop," Nate hurried to say, accepting the invitation for both of us. Then he snatched the phone out of my hand, catching me off guard. "We've gotta get back to work, though. See you tonight!" He pressed his finger to the phone screen, ending the call.

The second Dad's voice wasn't in the room with us anymore, Nate looked at me with wide eyes. "Is he serious? He got hitched on vacation?"

"Seems like it. I can't believe he'd be so… reckless," I let out in a huff.

"Not all of us can be as painfully practical as you, big bro," Nate replied. He stepped further into the room, then flopped down to sit sprawled in the chair in front of my desk. "Maybe she's good for him. He sounds happy."

"Maybe she's after his money," I rebutted.

"Come on, dude. Dad's not that naive. Sure, he's more of a dreamer than you, but you practically have your feet soldered to the ground. Give him a little credit. We can trust his judgment."

"I sure hope so," I said, and Nate gave me a soft, slightly-chastising smile as he led me out of the office.

At last, work. I could use a distraction from all of this personal bullshit.

I shifted easily to boss mode as I stepped out onto the busy restaurant floor. This was my element, far more than the role of my father's eldest son. Servers bustled about, scurrying out of my way when I came stomping through, knowing my tendency to be on a warpath even when I wasn't in a bit of a foul mood. I'd earned my reputation as a hard-ass, the kind of boss who didn't accept subpar work or excuses, and as a result, my restaurant ran as a well-oiled machine. That wouldn't be possible without a few of my employees fearing me.

The front of house manager approached me, then, with a wild look in her eyes and a pen stuck in her black curls. "Mr. McDonald, sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but we've noticed a bit of an issue?—"

"Spit it out, May," I snapped at her, and an extra level of grumpiness came out that made me instantly feel a little guilty. Her face sank the tiniest bit, but before I could think about trying to walk back my attitude, since my bad mood had nothing to do with her, she sprang right into her professional mode, laying out an issue I needed to solve.

Luckily, though the issue she laid out was complicated enough to make my already-distracted head spin, it was a pretty simple solution. I laid out the steps she should follow and watched her shoulders relax. Everyone at Forge was on edge lately, since we were all gearing up for a big event that would define a lot of our careers. Mine especially. I'd been demanding perfection, and I'd accept nothing less.

"Thank you, Mr. McDonald, sir," my frazzled manager sputtered before she ducked away, scurrying off to carry out my plans.

"Sorry, May," I muttered under my breath when she turned away from me. Hard-ass or not, I wanted to earn my employees' respect. May was a good one, hard-working without my brand of intimidation, which made her the favorite manager of a lot of the employees under her. And she'd never shown up late in the entire time she'd been in my employ, which put her in my good books.

"Sorry I'm late." I heard a slightly-husky female voice break through my thoughts as I was examining marketing materials for our upcoming event. When I turned toward the side door, still ajar from the whirlwind entrance someone had just made, my gaze fell on a lush, curvaceous figure that had my mouth watering.

"You know it's not like me, May," the woman was saying, and Christ, the full rosiness of her lips as she spoke made my cock twitch in my pants. The way her teeth sank into her lower lip in an apologetic expression made my brain slide easily from all-business directly into the gutter, wondering how that pretty mouth would look with my full girth filling it up, my cum dripping down her chin.

Snap out of it, Logan, I mentally chastised myself. This wasn't like me, but I couldn't help it. I watched this woman speak quickly to my front-of-house manager, and through the sound of her excuses for her tardiness, I traced her soft, perfectly feminine features with my eyes, noticing the striking gray-blue irises framed by dark lashes and the fetching smattering of freckles across the bridge of her slightly-upturned nose. Her dark hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, exposing her ears and a soft jawline, and it was all too easy to sweep my eyes down her pale neck, across her sun-dappled collarbones, and into the deep V-neck of the black top she wore. I only got a quick look at her ample cleavage before she'd tied a black apron around herself and covered those delicious mounds, and it took a lot of willpower not to groan aloud.

Somehow, that shook me out of my horny trance, and Serious Business Owner Logan McDonald was back in full force. I heard myself say, "Excuses aren't tolerated around here. You're late," in a tone as cold as our walk-in freezer.

The beautiful, dark-haired woman's eyes instantly found me, drilling their intense indignation directly into my own. She lowered her dark brows, and I pretended not to find it femme-fatale sexy.

"I wasn't talking to you, sir," she practically sneered, though she was smart enough to keep it borderline. She knew who I was. Everyone at Forge knew me, since I practically lived here, especially lately. Now that I was focusing more on her face, her expression and the words coming out of her pretty mouth, I vaguely recognized her, too. She'd been working here a while, though I knew that we'd never had any direct contact before now. I would have remembered her if I'd ever caught more than a brief glance of her in my peripheral vision.

"But you're late," I scolded her. "I don't accept tardiness in my restaurant. Haven't you learned that by now, Miss…?" I told myself I wasn't just fishing to learn her name. That I just wanted to know how best to tamp down her rebellious spirit in front of the subtly-gawking coworkers who surrounded us. But I found myself trying to guess what would come out of her mouth next. Maybe she'd have a name as sultry as her dark hair, like Veronica, or else something a little edgy.

She surprised me, though.

"Carly Sanders, employee of the month," she said proudly, as if that really was her full name. "And, might I add, for the past three months in a row," she added, again balancing on a knife's edge of a respectful tone. "Not that it's your business what goes on in my personal life, Mr. McDonald, but I was four minutes late because I was dealing with a family… issue, which I consider more important than any job, no matter how dedicated I am to my work. And for the record, I've never been late before. Not once."

"It's true," May squeaked, corroborating the sexy employee of the month's story. I saw a faint twitch on the first woman's tempting mouth, a flicker of near-laughter that suddenly made her look younger. A mischievous teenager, almost—though she was certainly older than that. Those full, rounded curves told me she was all woman. Younger than my thirty-five-going-on-sixty, though. That was for damn sure.

I took a long moment to consider this development. The beautiful server stood her ground, her shoulders back in a show of confidence that again marked her as someone mature, sure of herself. It was hard not to admire her strong will, her refusal to back down even under my apparently-intimidating stare. And once I let myself really consider what she'd said, I even admired her reasons. Family was always my first priority, too. Which was why I even gave a damn that my dad had made a potentially life-ruining decision without consulting me.

Fine, Carly Sanders, you fucking gorgeous pain in my ass, I wanted to say. You win this round. But I can't be kept down for long.

And despite my practical side telling me none of this was important, was some part of me looking forward to going toe-to-toe with her again? No way. No, that must just be some residual weirdness from the shocking news Dad had shared on the phone. That must be what had gotten my guard down low enough for this thick firebrand of a woman to get past it.

"Fine," I gritted out, struggling to hold that blue-gray gaze. "But don't let it happen again. Now back to work, all of you."

After the scene dispersed and my employee of the month walked away, leaving the view of her big, juicy ass squeezed into tight black jeans imprinted on the undersides of my eyelids, I found it hard to concentrate on my various tasks around the restaurant. Whenever that woman was in my line of sight, I found her instantly, like some oversexed game of I Spy.

Toward the end of the evening, I noticed her talking with Nate in the doorway to the kitchen. I caught a quick look at her laughing, smiling face, though I was too far away to hear how she sounded in joy. Since Nate worked in the kitchen, he got to know our employees a lot more closely than I did, and clearly, he and this gorgeous woman were friendly, if not full-fledged friends. It stirred up some acid-green jealousy in my throat.

Nate was always the charming one, even when we were kids, when he'd still been a little awkward-looking and I had a solid four inches of height on him. Now he was a towering string bean, too handsome for his own good, who looked down on my own substantial height, and he still lit up a room like the fourth of July. I didn't begrudge my foster brother this, as he'd had a harder life than me in a lot of ways, and I loved him to death. But I'd never been able to shake the desire to have half of the charisma Nate had. Maybe then, I'd have more than a small handful of friends to call my own. Maybe I'd have more going for me than my work and my unconventional immediate family.

Maybe, a sick voice deep inside me said as I watched the pretty employee of the month laugh at another well-timed joke from my brother, If you were like him, you could have a snowball's chance in hell of landing a girl like that someday.