Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter One
Dixon
For Dixon Beckett, there was nothing worse in the world than losing—well, except for falling in love, but that was pretty much the same thing.
But winning? That was the ultimate rush. The best meal he’d ever eaten didn’t come close. The perfect sunrise was a distant nah. The closest thing was probably sex, but even then, it wasn’t the same. Winning was everything—which is exactly why he was considering his cousin Nash’s absolutely-without-a-doubt-ludicrous idea.
“You’re fucking drunk,” their cousin Griff said as he snagged Nash’s glass.
In truth, they all were, but Nash was clearly needing to be cut off if he thought that ridiculous plan was at all reasonable. A shudder skated along Dixon’s skin at just the mere thought of what Nash was suggesting, and Dixon took another fortifying gulp of whiskey as his gaze darted between his two cousins.
They were about the same age, but that’s where the similarities seemed to vanish. Nash was all smooth model looks; quick, easy answers; and a granite chin. Then there was Griff, who always kept his mouth shut and let his tats and muscles scare off whoever didn’t get the hint to go away already and leave him the fuck alone.
Both of which were the exact opposite of Dixon, who had to pay a swarm of assistants to keep people as far away from him as possible for one simple reason: the word “gullible” was tattooed across his forehead. He couldn’t help it. His mama raised him to always lend a hand to someone in distress. Unfortunately, she never taught him how to separate those in genuine need from the con artists and unscrupulous. Dixon knew it, so he kept the world at arm’s length. Which explains why he only discovered his wife had kept secrets from him after her death…
He shook his head. He was too drunk to think about Nicole right now.
Instead, he ran a hand across his clean-shaven jaw and glanced around the library at Gable House, where the cousins had agreed to meet tonight. To drink. To figure out what the hell they were going to do with—his gaze darted to the Christmas present sitting on the end table—that.
The first Christmas at their grandma’s without her was going to be rough.
They had just three months before the fateful holiday and there was all-out bloodshed among the cousins.
Grandma’s gifts were legendary, and each cousin would fight to the death for this last special gift they’d found after the funeral last month. The present was wrapped in festive fat-Santa paper—and completely missing a tag. Which is why they were currently three-sheets-to-the-something drunk and trying to figure out a reasonable way to decide who got the gift. Any way except Nash’s hair-brained scheme, that is.
“You are correct—I’m drunk off my appreciated-by-women-across-Harbor-City ass. However”—Nash swiped his single malt whiskey back—“that doesn’t make my plan any less brilliant.”
“Or logical,” Griff said under his breath in that drunk way that was twenty times louder than the person ever thought it was.
“Hear me out.” Nash set his glass down with a thump. “So our magnificent, much beloved, and dearly departed grandma Betty left us one last present.” He nodded toward the rectangular box. “But didn’t say which one of us it was for. There’s only one way to solve this. A competition.”
“To get married first?” Dixon sputtered. “Why are we competing to lose?”
Yeah, he’d take a stroll down Eighth Street naked before he’d walk down the aisle again. It wasn’t that he was a sucker—no matter if his cousins teased him that he couldn’t help but see the best in everyone. Usually that wasn’t a bad thing. But then that was before he’d laid eyes on Nicole two years ago. Before he’d fallen hard within moments of meeting her. Before they promised they’d spend the rest of their lives together. Before he opened up his front door one evening to find a somber police officer with rain dripping off his hat and a pitying expression on his face. Before he’d lost the most important person in the world six weeks into what was supposed to be forever.
Dixon won at everything, but he’d lost when it came to love, and it had gutted him until he’d woken up one morning and realized the way to move forward was to never fall in love again.
That was the only winning plan.
Now here he was, sitting with his cousins, drunker than he’d been in years, and starting to think about agreeing to Nash’s whiskey-fueled bad idea. Because he knew he could win. Dixon didn’t date at all. Ever. Can’t get married if you never date, right? But wait, something wasn’t adding up.
“No, you dumbass,” Nash said. “Clean out your ears. The bet is to be the last man standing single and unattached by Christmas morning.”
“Wow.” Griff weaved a bit in his chair. “Such a romantic.”
Nash shrugged. “I’m a realist.”
“You missed out on something, asshole,” Dixon said as the gaping flaw in Nash’s plan worked its way through his muddled thoughts. “I don’t date, you’re a total dog, and Griff is…” He glanced over at his cousin, who looked like a himbo and talked like the scientist he was. “Griff staying single has never been his problem.”
Griff flipped him off. “By choice, you asshole.”
“Whatever you say.” Dixon rolled his eyes and immediately regretted it because it sent the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves into a spin that made his stomach lurch. He took a five-second breather, grasping the table edge to anchor himself. “It’ll never work. It’ll just be a three-way tie.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Nash plunked his cell down on the table. “Success is guaranteed.”
What he saw on the screen of Nash’s phone made Dixon do a full-body shiver of revulsion.
A dating app.
And not just any app. Bramble. The app that required people to go on a minimum of six dates with each other. There was no way he could go on six dates with someone. Even the idea made his heart speed up. Not in a good way, but in the same way it would if he found out that zombie rats were a real thing.
“Each of us has to go out with the first woman to respond to our profiles. No ifs, ands, or buts. And we get to plan the others’ dates, just to keep anyone from cheating.” Nash gave his cousins a cockeyed smirk. “Unless, of course, you two can’t take the challenge.”
“What are you, twelve?” Griff scoffed as if the other two men didn’t know him well enough to understand that any challenge was going to hook him.
“No,” Nash said. “I’m saying that I’m man enough to know I can win—especially since I’ll be planning your dates. You two are fucking hopeless at it.”
The man should have been cut off three drinks ago.
Dixon focused on the blurry Nash in the middle. “You’re saying you think I’d ever start dating again?”
Nash tapped his phone. “One hundred percent.” He held Dixon’s gaze. “Three words. Grandma’s. Last. Present.”
Dixon swallowed hard. Okay, maybe, just maybe, those three words could get him to date again. A wave of nausea twisted his stomach at the thought.
“And what makes you think you’re going to be the last man standing, Nash?” Griff asked.
Cocky and sure of himself as always, Nash didn’t hesitate. “Because I’m always the exception that proves the rule.”
“And what rule is that?” Dixon asked.
That so-sure expression flickered for an instant before Nash brought it back with full force. “That most poor suckers are destined for love.”
“I’m gonna throw up—and not because of the whiskey.” Love? There wasn’t a worse four-letter word in the dictionary. “So your argument is Nash exceptionalism—and that Griff and I are going to lose out on gaining sole possession of Grandma’s gift because we’re going to fall in love?”
Nash nodded. “That’s right. Each of us has three months to prove he can be the last man standing. Dixon, you can go first to get it out of the way, since you’ll probably fall the fastest. Griff can take second. And then last, since it was my brainchild, there’s me.”
It was all Dixon could do not to laugh out loud at the absolute stone-cold numb-nut douchebag he was related to. Clearly Griff and he weren’t going to even consider the idea. It was preposterous.
Griff leaned forward, bracing his tattooed forearms on the table. “I’ll agree on one condition.”
What the fuck?
Dixon turned his head to look dead-on at Griff. It was a mistake. His stomach gave him the middle finger, and his vision momentarily deserted him. “Griff, you’re the logical one. Why are you going along with this?”
Their cousin, utilizing the tunnel-vision focus that made him the best head of R&D in the entire cosmetics industry, ignored Dixon’s question and said to Nash, “If you aren’t the last man standing, then you have to spend a night alone in the tower.”
Nash scoffed, but there was no missing his instinctual flinch. “Whatever. I’m not ten anymore.”
It was brilliant. The tower was the supposedly haunted room they had barely been able to walk into when they were kids spending summers together at Gable House. Challenging someone to spend the night in the windowless room was their version of a triple dog dare.
“Without a flashlight or any electronics,” Griff said, twisting the knife.
“That’s dirty pool,” Nash grumbled, using one of their grandmother’s favorite phrases.
“What’s wrong?” Dixon asked, latching on to Griff’s devious idea with both hands. “I thought you were the exception that proved the rule?”
If none of them fell, then there was no last man standing, and Nash would lose the bet—meaning it would be one fucking amazing win for Dixon.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” Nash shot back the rest of his whiskey and pulled his earlobe three times—a secret sign that was another holdover from their summers together. “But you two can’t submarine the deal. You have to go on every date.”
“Affirmative,” he and Griff said at the same time as they tugged on their ears in the expected response when sealing a bet.
This was a no-lose situation. Griff was practical. They’d flip for the present or some other reasonable solution. Regardless, there was no way Dixon wouldn’t be the last man standing, because he had the ultimate plan. He would not get roped in by a woman with kind eyes. Not this time.
Dixon Beckett was going to write the kind of Bramble bio that only a psychopath would respond to.
Because he was a fucking winner.
