Page 126
Sage laughed so hard she pulled a pillow over her face, shoulders shaking. Even Mary Sue was smiling widely now, her knitting momentarily forgotten.
Finally Sage emerged from behind the pillow, wiping tears from her eyes and trying to catch her breath. “Oh my God. He grunted? I’m learning his grunts. I need a whole dictionary.”
Isabelle grinned. “Okay… okay, so what happened? Did they lose money or something?”
Isabelle let the pause stretch just long enough for dramatic effect. “They made seventy-eight million. On that deal alone.”
Sage made a sound that wasn’t even a word.
“They tried to send Bear a bonus check,” Isabelle continued, riding the wave. “He ignored it for weeks. Until Michael finally called him, completely exasperated. Bear picked up and said—” she dropped her voice into a low, perfect Cal rumble “‘Michael. You’ve been managing my money for over a decade. Do whatever you want with it.’”
Isabelle let the laughter settle for a moment before her tone softened.
“And Michael…” She glanced into the fire, a gentle ache in her voice. “Michael looked at me later and said, ‘Just buy more land around him. Put it in the trust’s name. I’m sure he’ll figure out something to do with it.’” She smiled softly at the flames. “And that was it. That was his whole thought process.”
The fire crackled warmly between them.
“Michael is a good man,” Isabelle said quietly, meaning it in ways she rarely said out loud. “He would do anything for Bear.”
Sage didn’t miss the softness in her voice. She caught Mary Sue’s eye for a brief second—both of them noticing, both of them saying nothing. Some things were still private.
After a moment, Sage said, “I don’t get it though. If Bear is like… a millionaire… why doesn’t he do anything with it?”
Isabelle looked at her.
Sage caught her expression and blinked. “What?”
“He’s a billionaire, babe.”
The silence that dropped over the room was complete. Even the fire seemed to pause.
“Like—”
“Forbes-list rich, if the money weren’t buried in shell companies.”
“What’s a shell—”
“Companies set up so people can’t trace who actually owns them,” Isabelle explained. “Bear wants his privacy. Michael wants Bear to have whatever Bear wants. It’s a system.” She tilted her head. “He does do things with it, by the way. He just does them quietly.”
Mary Sue’s knitting needles had stilled entirely. Her voice came out low and unhurried, aimed somewhere in the middle distance. “My boy tried to send me money when he was in the SEALs.” A pause. “I sent it back every time. Told him I didn’t want money. I wanted him to come home.”
No one said anything.
Outside, snow fell in soft, steady curtains. Inside, the fire crackled warmly and the sweet scent of brown sugar cookies lingered in the air, mixing with woodsmoke and the faint vanilla from the lotion Mary Sue had rubbed on Sage’s hands earlier.
Then Sage whispered, for what felt like the fifth time since yesterday, “I miss him.”
The words slipped out half complaint, half confession, heavier than she meant them to be. She immediately hunched her shoulders and added quickly, “Don’t.”
“Sage.” Isabelle pointed a half-eaten cookie at her. “It’s been three days.”
“I know—”
“Three days. And the first one barely counts because he showed up here twice—”
“He was in the neighborhood—”
“He lives six miles outside of town.”
