Page 1 of Can't Win 'Em All
1
ONE
“He’s doing what now?”
My brother Zach glared at my mother—he wasn’t really angry with her as much as the situation—and steepled his fingers in front of him. The entire Stone family, as well as a few close friends and coworkers, were gathered in one of the conference rooms at Stone Casino & Resort to talk about the next phase of our redevelopment.
It wasn’t going well. To say the least.
“Your father is going to contest all of this in court,” my mother replied. Even though she’d been publicly humiliated by her husband, Cora Stone remained unflappable. That’s how I wanted to be when I grew up. Unfortunately, I didn’t have her stoicism. I had plenty of moxie. Stoicism was another story, however.
“All of what?” Zach challenged. He sat next to his wife, Olivia, his fingers absently tracing over her palm as he held her hand in his lap, and it wasn’t hard to grasp what he was doing. He was calming himself—Olivia always had a calming effect on him—but the muscle working in his jaw told me it wasn’t going very well.
“All of it,” Mom replied. “He’s fighting the documents we had him sign. He’s fighting losing his shares in the company. He’s fighting Opal being in charge.” She shot my oldest sister an apologetic look, as if it were her fault that our father was such a jerk. “He doesn’t want to acknowledge what a great job you’re doing because that would mean that ousting him was the best thing we could’ve done.”
I considered that, then nodded. Ryder Stone—the father I had only seen sporadically for the past few months—was never going to acknowledge that the sun didn’t rise and set on him. Opal could’ve spun gold from thin air and yet my father would never acknowledge it. That’s simply not who he was.
“Sorry,” a male voice offered from the doorway, jerking my attention in that direction. Rex Carter, all dark hair and broad shoulders, was breathless as he appeared in the room. “There was an incident on the casino floor, and I had to handle it before I could come up here. I didn’t mean to be late.”
Rex was head of security. Normally, that meant placating high rollers and dealing with the local police when something popped up. Because Rex was who he was, however, he sometimes forgot he was in charge and instead pretended he was one of the drones just so he could get down and dirty with whomever happened to be causing issues at any given moment.
The truth was, Rex liked throwing punches. For some reason—and it was something my sophisticated brain couldn’t understand—that turned me on. Don’t ask me to explain it. I, Ruby Stone, was supposed to be above those sorts of things. I was thirty-five, had the world at my fingertips, and was finally out from under my father’s rigid dictatorship. The world was my oyster … and not one of the raw ones that looked like snot.
So how come I still felt like an awkward twenty-something whenever I was around Rex? It was so odd. It wasn’t as if I’d had a crush on him when I was younger. I was older than him, so that would’ve been embarrassing. When I left the house to live on my own, Rex and Zach were teenagers doing teenager things. They were embarrassing, and I wanted to be as far from them as possible. Somehow, both of them, had grown into good men. In Rex’s case, he’d grown into a smoke show on top of being charming and gregarious. He was still my little brother’s best friend, though. I mean … I couldn’t look at him like that. Or maybe it was that Ishouldn’tlook at him like that. I honestly couldn’t decide.
“It’s fine, Rex.” Mom gave him a welcoming smile and gestured toward the table. “Sit. We’re just doing a basic update.”
“Okay.” Rex’s smile was easy as he sat in the open chair to my left. “Hey, Booby Ruby,” he teased in a low voice, grinning at me.
Booby Ruby. He’d thought himself so clever when he came up with the name. He was twelve. I was fourteen and just going from a B-cup to a C-cup. I’d been mortified by the nickname because I’d been so self-conscious of what was happening. All the women in my family were beautiful. Long, lean, and small breasted. I was the anomaly, and I didn’t want that pointed out. Of course, that meant Rex was going to do just that. The fact that he was still doing it was grating.
“Sexy Rexy,” I replied. I’d been insistent on giving him a name when he refused to let mine drop upon reaching adulthood. Unfortunately, the only thing that rhymed with Rex was a compliment. He ate it up. Seeing his smile was the only reason I kept at it.
“Basically, your father is threatening a lawsuit,” Mom supplied, drawing everybody’s attention back to her. “He’s going to drag this out—and into a public spectacle—if we don’t kowtow to his demands.”
“I say we let him,” Zach replied, his eyes darkening. We all had reasons to dislike our father. Zach, as the only son, took those reasons to heart, especially since our father had tried to force Olivia out of his life.
Sure, Zach and Olivia had entered into a marriage of convenience at the start. She needed health insurance after being laid off. He needed our father to stop giving him a hard time about his wandering eye. Zach hadn’t been looking for forever when he and Olivia got married. He’d been looking for a temporary reprieve. Love will find a way, though, and it had with them.
Even though it had been Rex’s idea—he’d been trying to help his best friend and sister at the same time—he was ultimately the one obstacle Zach feared most when he fell in love with Olivia. Rex had taken the news that the relationship was real better than Zach expected, though. Now my brother was the only one in the family who was happily married. It was a weird reality to absorb.
I was the youngest of three sisters, although still older than Zach. Opal was the oldest. Pearl was the middle sister. Then there was me. We’d all been close in age to one another, which meant we were best friends as well as sisters. My father had wanted to use us as bargaining chips with other casino families in the area, essentially arranging marriages for us. The only form of control we could exert was to refuse his suggestions. That’s why all of us were still single. Now that my father was no longer in charge, I’d considered branching out with my dating options.
I remained nervous about what that would look like. If this had happened when I was still in my twenties, it would’ve been easier. Now I was set in my ways and had no idea what I wanted. For the longest time, the only thing I’d cared about was my father not winning. Now he’d lost—no matter what shenanigans he was up to—and I was still struggling to figure out what I wanted for my future.
“If we let him, all of our dirty laundry is going to be put out there for public consumption,” Mom argued. “That includes your father’s affairs, his pregnant mistress, his embezzlement.” She sighed. “Zach’s marrying Olivia as a business deal will probably become public fodder.”
On the other side of Rex, Zach stirred. “If everybody in Vegas wants to gossip about that, there’s nothing we can do. They’ll stop eventually when they realize Olivia and I are staying together … and it’s real.”
Olivia patted his shoulder. She wrangled Zach’s demons into submission better than anybody. “I agree with my husband.” She gave him a flirty smile that had the lines of his face softening. “Go ahead and let that information come out. He’s the one who looks bad in that scenario.”
Mom cocked her head, considering. “We could put out a statement,” she suggested after several seconds. “We could go on the offensive and say that the reorganizing at Stone Group happened because of impropriety under prior leadership. We wouldn’t have to include his name in the statement, but everybody would know.”
“That will just make him angrier,” Opal argued. “He’ll take it as an attack.”
“Maybe that’s what we need to do,” Pearl countered. “So far, we’ve done everything in our power to protect the family name. Frankly, I find it tiresome. If the real story gets out, we’ll take a hit for a short period of time. It won’t last, though. The casino’s profits are way up under Opal’s leadership. The board isn’t going to argue with results.”
Mom pressed her lips together, and I could tell she was really thinking. Technically, Opal was in charge of the casino—a job that should’ve always been hers—but Mom still wielded an incredible amount of control in the boardroom. Everybody was excelling under the new arrangement.
