Read Meddling with a Millionaire for Free Online

father didn’t spend any holidays with them? He’d been eight that year. Or maybe when he turned ten and Brandon Case’s wife had shown up to see for herself what sort of “whore” her husband had taken up with. His mother had cried for three hours straight after that. The next day she’d slapped him when he said he hated his father and hoped he rotted in hell.
    Love made people miserable. It led to expectations. Expectations led to disappointment. Disappointment led to infidelity. Infidelity led to divorce. Except for Cody, all his friends had cheated on their wives or been cheated on. And they’d all started out madly in love.
    He was an hour south of Dallas when his cell rang. He engaged the car’s hands free system. “Hello.”
    â€œHey, Nat, how’d it go?”
    Hearing Max’s voice, Nathan restrained a snarl. He could tell from his older brother’s overly cheerful tone that he’d called expecting to hear that Nathan had failed. “It went fine.”
    â€œSo, Montgomery is doing the deal?” Max’s voice lost some of the good humor.
    If his half brothers found out about the strings Silas had attached to the deal, Nathan would never hear the end of it. He intended to get the contracts signed without that happening.
    â€œThere are a few bugs to work out, but I’d say things look pretty good.” Nathan relaxed his death grip on the steering wheel.
    In his early twenties, he’d spent almost a year on thepoker tournament circuit, learning how to read people and to hide his thoughts. In the championship game, he bluffed two of the best poker players in the country and won half a million dollars. The skills he’d picked up during that time had come in handy these last six months working with his half brothers. He’d learned a long time ago never to let them see him sweat.
    â€œBut you don’t have a signed contract,” Max persisted, regaining his cockiness.
    Nathan ground his teeth. Leave it to the middle Case brother to point that out. “As I said, there are a couple details still under negotiation.”
    â€œYou were pretty sure you’d come back with a signed contract. Wasn’t Montgomery impressed with your proposal?”
    Nathan bristled at the implied insult. His brothers had developed their business acumen in the boardrooms of Corporate America. Nathan had taken an entrepreneurial approach. He’d grown his millions in the stock market and from venture capital investing. No matter how legitimate his investments, Max and Sebastian refused to give him credit for having a strong business sense. They couldn’t get past the fact that his fortune had grown from the seeds of his poker winnings.
    â€œSilas is looking over the numbers. He’ll have an answer for me in six weeks.” Valentine’s Day. He hadn’t understood the significance of Silas’s choice of date until Emma explained her own deadline to him.
    â€œThat long? He’s probably no more comfortable with the risk than Sebastian and I are. Two hundred million is a big chunk of our assets. If you’re wrong, we stand to lose everything.”
    After their father’s retirement, Sebastian and Max had changed Case Consolidated Holdings’ business strategy from high-risk to ultraconservative. Nathan would be thefirst to admit that their father’s obsession with huge profits had led him to make some dicey deals, but his brothers had overreacted.
    And because they had, Nathan’s ideas for moving forward by joining with Montgomery Oil to create a new company instead of continuing to buy existing companies had been met with skepticism.
    â€œI’m not wrong,” Nathan said.
    He’d been a fool to let his father talk him into coming to work with his brothers. Brandon Case had been out of his mind to think Sebastian and Max needed him. They only needed each other. And their safe little strategies.
    â€œYou