LITMIR.BIZ

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It wouldn’t be the first time for any of them. But they didn’t know Sally Duke.

      One day when she’d heard enough arguing, Sally banished the boys to the custom-designed tree house she’d had built for them. She told them they could come down when they’d learned to behave like friends and brothers.

      Cameron, Adam and Brandon spent hours in that tree house, and eventually their worst secrets were unraveled and shared. Brandon’s drug-addict mom ran off and his dad used to beat him until the man was killed in a bar fight. Adam’s parents abandoned him when he was barely two years old. He was raised in an orphanage before being thrown into the foster care system.

      Cameron finally confessed that his own father was a violent man and his mother bore the brunt of it. Not that she was all that loving, given her appetite for alcohol and drugs. Cameron knew she had lied and stolen and worse to support her habit, but he blamed his father for turning her into an addict. He still had nightmares of his mother screaming from the beatings his father inflicted. Even worse, Cameron could never forget hearing his old man hit his mom while yelling that he was doing it because he loved her. And he would never forget waking up and finding them both dead. He was seven years old.

      When Adam and Brandon heard that Cameron’s dad thought he was showing love by beating the crap out of his mother, they both were disgusted. That led to the pact.

      First, the three eight-year-olds swore loyalty to each other. Next, they made a sacred vow that they would never get married and have kids, because it was clear that marriage turned people mean and stupid. Married people hurt each other and their kids.

      Finally, they vowed to make Sally Duke proud that she’d chosen them.

      From that day forward, Sally let them know in a hundred different ways that they’d fulfilled their third vow—and then some. They’d all grown up to be honorable, successful men and she couldn’t be more proud. Of course, now Sally had come up with some cockamamie plan to marry the brothers off so they could give her a bunch of grandkids. And despite all of his diatribes, Cameron had just given her exactly what she wanted.

      “Oh, man,” he said aloud. The realization had him rubbing his knuckles against his chin. “Wait’ll Mom gets a look at little Jake.” He chuckled in anticipation of the scene that awaited him when Sally heard the news.

      Of course, she might be a little disappointed that he had no intention of marrying Julia, but she would just have to live with it. Cameron would never marry, that was all there was to it. He would never want to destroy someone else the way his parents had destroyed each other.

      It’s not like he’d been a martyr to his fate. Cameron had tested the waters more than once, in spite of the boyhood pact. But things had never worked out, to put it mildly. There had been plenty of women in his life and a few attempts at serious relationships, but they’d been disastrous. He’d used those as strong reminders that he’d come from bad stock and things would never change. He wasn’t willing to put someone else through that kind of pain, let alone experience it again himself. No, he was meant to go it alone, and that suited him just fine, thanks.

      He stood and checked his wristwatch. The babysitter had taken Jake for a long walk around the hotel grounds so Cameron could have a short meeting with his brothers here in the suite. They were due any minute.

      They would soon find out they were uncles, Cameron thought. So much for sacred pacts. But at least Cameron hadn’t been the first brother to break it. That honor went to Adam when he married Trish James last month.

      The doorbell rang and Cameron greeted his brothers, then led the way to the kitchen. “You guys want beers?”

      “You have to ask?” Brandon said, swinging the refrigerator door open and grabbing three bottles from the shelf.

      “How’s Trish?” Cameron asked Adam, knowing his brother had brought his wife along for a quiet, romantic weekend at Monarch Dunes.

      “She’s great,” Adam said with a smile. “She ran into Mom and her friends downstairs so they’re probably relaxing at the pool by now.”

      “Relaxing?” Brandon laughed. “We’d better get this over with so you can rescue her.”

      “Good idea.” Adam sat at the dining room table and opened a thin binder of notes and spreadsheets.

      Cameron and Brandon joined him at the table where they discussed some last-minute scheduling items that had arisen over the hand-off of priority projects from the Monarch Dunes resort to the Napa Valley property.

      “You’ve done a great job with Monarch Dunes, bro,” Brandon said, tipping his beer bottle in Cameron’s direction.

      “Thanks,” Cameron said. “Napa’s looking good, too.”

      The three men had found out years ago that the best way to run their development company was to put each brother in charge of a particular property from start to finish. The Monarch Dunes property had been Cameron’s baby from day one and he’d run the project much as he ran his life: with military precision.

      The multifaceted, multileveled Craftsman-style resort, located forty miles south of their home town of Dunsmuir Bay, was already completely booked for the next three seasons and on its way to becoming the premier destination spot along California’s Central Coast.

      Cameron had had a hand in every decision along the way, from the expansiveness of the lobby that opened to a spacious terrace overlooking the ocean and cliffs, to the placement of the greens on the state-of-the-art championship golf course that wound around the wide perimeter of the hotel.

      “My staff is more than ready to have me move out of here,” Cameron admitted. “They’ve started saluting me when I ask them to do something.”

      “When you ask them to do something?” Adam said sardonically. “More like barking out orders, I’d say.”

      Brandon shook his head. “Once a marine, always a marine.”

      With a shrug, Cameron said, “Hey, I just prefer to have things done the right way, so let’s get back to business.” He read his notes off a legal pad. “I’ll let my assistant know that the Napa grand opening will be pushed back one week to coincide with the grape harvest and crush. She can coordinate schedules with the Napa staff.”

      The Dukes’ Napa property was being built adjacent to the acres of vineyards and the winery they’d purchased years ago. The white wines were already being marketed all over the country and the reds were on the verge of reaching world-class status.

      “Good,” Brandon said and walked toward the kitchen. “Hey, what’s this?”

      Too late, Cameron realized Brandon had picked up the scrapbook Julia had given him earlier. “It’s nothing.

      I’ll take it.”

      But Brandon was already thumbing through the pages. “Dude, these are baby pictures. It’s a baby album.”

      “Who’s the baby?” Adam asked, moving around the table to see what Brandon was looking at.

      Hell. Cameron reached for the book. “I’ll take that.”

      “I don’t think so,” Brandon said and whipped the book away.

      Adam pierced Cameron with a look. “Was there something you wanted to share with us?”

      “I’m not playing this game.” Cameron held out his hand and waited calmly until Brandon gave him the thick scrapbook. “Okay, I’ll see you guys later.”

      “You’re kidding, right?” Brandon said, both hands fisted on his hips. He turned to Adam. “I saw a shot of a pregnant woman. And an ultrasound photo.”

      “So what?” Cameron said. He wasn’t about to let his brothers see anything else in the book before he’d had a chance to thoroughly view every page.

      “What’s going on, Cam?” Adam asked quietly.

      Feeling

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