The Bastard Read online

  I follow her and stand up. By the time I put my pants on and locate her by the door, she’s fully dressed. “I have to go,” she says, and I’m stunned at how much I don’t want her to leave.

  I grab her and pull her to me, kissing the hell out of her before I release her and open the door because if I don’t let her go now, I won’t. But she doesn’t go. She seems to forget her speech, frozen in place, right here in the cottage with me. Those gorgeous blue eyes of hers fixed on me, and I want to know what she’s thinking, what she wants, because I want her. Time stretches for several more beats before she closes the space between us and kisses me. “I’ve changed my mind,” she confesses. “I really do hate that we didn’t have that condom.” With that, she rushes out of the door. I let her go, but fuck, I can’t walk away. I can’t really let her go. She’s why I’m still here. She’s why I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving.

  I get dressed again, the scent of her, all sweet and feminine, on my skin, drugging me the way she seems to drug me. I need to see her again. I need to be inside that woman, and not just her body. I want to know why she feels insecure, and she does. I want to know why she’s here when she could be so many other places, like with me. It’s a crazy, out-of-character thought that I shove aside.

  Nevertheless, I pursue her, walking down the path and find the party again. The crowd is still thick, the clusters of tuxedos and gowns gathered around a stage at the end of the pool, and there she is, Harper is on the stage. She’s standing next to my father and my asshole of a brother, with her look-a-like mother, who’s fifteen years my father’s junior, standing next to her. She takes the microphone and starts speaking about the business and the family and damn it, my father kisses her cheek and I know I’m wrong about her. She’s one of them. She’s not a reason to stay. What the hell was I even thinking?

  I turn away and walk down the path to the cottage, pack my bag, and with her still on my tongue, I leave.

  Forever this time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eric

  SIX YEARS LATER…

  I’m sitting at my desk, in my corner office of the Bennett Firm, working on a buy-in on a sports team that’s sure to add a few billion in sales on the books for the company and myself. Which is my job. Make money. Grow the business beyond worldwide legal services. Repeat, with Grayson’s aggressive, but smart, stance on growth that works for us in ways it might not for other companies. I’m scanning the final contract when Grayson pokes his head in the door. “I have contract questions.” He taps his Rolex. “It’s seven o’clock. Let’s talk somewhere that isn’t here.”

  “Here-here to that,” I say. “I could use a Macallan right about now.” I stand up and roll my sleeves down before I shrug on my jacket, which never quite covers my tattoo sleeve, but I really don’t give a shit. I’m long beyond giving a shit what anyone thinks of me. If they don’t like my ink, they can move on and hope to make money elsewhere. Good riddance and good luck.

  “Mia doesn’t like clause eight,” Grayson says, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

  Mia being his fiancée and a criminal attorney with the firm, who’s recently re-joined our inner circle and I’m damn glad she is back in his life after a year-long breakup. Whereas I’m a loner, a man without ties, Grayson needs Mia. I might not understand that kind of bond, but I understand him. “She’s right. I already told the team owners to go fuck themselves over that clause.”

  He chuckles. “Of course you did, and probably not any nicer than you just told me.”

  “Probably not,” I say. “I take it Mia has trial prep tonight?”

  “She does,” he says. “She’s passionate about this woman she’s defending. She’s all in.”

  I shove my MacBook and a stack of papers in my briefcase and join him on the other side of the desk. “We’re about to hit the holidays. When’s the trial?”

  “January.”

  “And the wedding is in March. Are you sure you don’t need to push the wedding back?”

  “Hell no, we aren’t pushing the wedding back. Mia’s trying to shut down the prosecution before this even goes to trial. I hired help and we already planned this once. We’re just duplicating the past plans.”

  We head for my door and talk through a few pieces of the contract. We’ve just stepped into the lobby when the door opens and I’m suddenly standing face to face with a familiar brunette who’s the last person I expect to see right now. “What are you doing here, princess?” I ask softly, reminding her of that night we spent together, reminding her that I know who and what she is, then and now.

  “Obviously,” she says, “I’m looking for you.” Her eyes meet mine, blue eyes the color of a perfect sky, and I have no idea why I don’t remember this about her. Except I do remember, randomly and too often, just as I’m thinking about all the perfect curves beneath another black dress she’s wearing today. This one is more demure, but it doesn’t matter. I know what’s beneath. I know where my hands and mouth have been and so does she.

  As if she’s read my thoughts, she cuts her gaze abruptly and focuses on Grayson. “I’m Harper Evans,” she says, offering him her hand. “I’m the—”

  “I know who you are,” Grayson says, shaking her hand, a hand free of a wedding band. “And he told me quite a lot about you,” he adds. “I must say that you’re as beautiful as he claimed.” Grayson does nothing without purpose. He wants her to know I spoke about her to take her off guard, to make her wonder what else I said about her. That’s how he works. He discreetly takes control and in this case, he’s discreetly handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” she says, her attention returning to me, the awareness between us downright sizzling, as hot as it had been six years ago. “Can I please speak to you in private?”

  Grayson’s hand comes down on my shoulder. “Meet me at our usual spot.”

  I give him a small incline of my head and he departs. “Let’s go to my office.”

  She swallows, her long, graceful neck bobbing with the action, drawing my gaze, and I wonder why I didn’t kiss her there when I had the chance. I wonder what the hell it is about this woman, out of all of the women out there, that has stayed with me all these years. That’s still with me, right here and now. “This way,” I say, motioning her forward, and at this late hour, there’s no one in our path, my secretary included.

  We walk side by side down the hall, and I’m acutely aware of her by my side, memories of pulling her into the cottage and pressing her against the wall in my mind. We reach my office and I open the door, motioning her forward. She glances at me and I sense that she wants to say something, but she seems to change her mind. She moves forward and I know what she’ll see: an executive desk, a window with a view to kill for, and a seating area to the right, which I plan to avoid. I still want her beyond reason and the six years since we last saw each other, and that isn’t to my advantage when she clearly wants something from me.

  I press my hands on my desk and I say to her what she once said to me. “You want something from me.”

  She steps to the front of my desk and meets my stare. She’s older now, and I see the time both in her blossomed beauty but also in the experience in her eyes, in the jaded history I don’t pretend to know firsthand, but I understand in ways few others could. “I do want something from you,” she says. “And I wish I could reply to that statement in the way you once did to me, without wanting anything but what was in the moment. Obviously, you didn’t. You left.”

  “I told you I was leaving.”

  “I know.” She doesn’t add to that statement but there’s more there. “I need help.”

  Now she has my attention. “What kind of help?”

  “I know that you are damn near a billionaire now. Or maybe you are already. I know that you did all this yourself and you have no reason to look beyond here.”

  “What kind of help?” I repeat.

  “We just had our second recall at Kingston Motors and
this time after two people died in our cars.”

  “I read that.”

  “Something doesn’t add up,” she says, sounding earnest. “Nothing has changed in our process and on the books and inside our operations, everything looks right, but it’s not.”

  They’ve grown too fast, I think, but I don’t voice that opinion. “What does Isaac say?”

  “For me to leave it alone. He has it handled, but our stock is down and I’m not you. I don’t have the same head for numbers but I have a decent aptitude. There’s money moving in unpredictable ways. I need your help, Eric. Please. It wasn’t easy to come here. Not after you left, but I’m here.”

  After I left.

  She keeps saying that like she expected me to stay and while I could find all kinds of pleasure in this woman wishing she’d had more time with me, I’m just too damn jaded myself to see this that simply. She said I wanted something. The reverse could have been true.

  “I really need your help,” she repeats.

  If this was that cut and dry, she’d have my attention, but it’s not. There’s more to her visit. There’s more to this story. I sense it. I see it in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?” I narrow my eyes on hers and lean forward, my hands on the desk again, pinning her in a stare. “No,” I amend. “Let me rephrase. What don’t you want me to know?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Harper

  I knew coming here was trouble but I didn’t expect to stare into this man’s blue eyes from across the desk and melt all over again. I was certain I’d built the attraction up into more than it was over time, certain I’d turned it into more than it was, but I was wrong. He affects me and not just physically. I mean, yes, he’s one hell of a good-looking man and he wears that expensive suit he’s got on like he owns it and the world, but it’s more with him. There is something raw and dark about him that reaches beyond his sharp cheekbones and jawline. Something in his eyes, something I feel in every part of me, that I hunger to understand. Which of course, I won’t, considering why I’m here and who I am.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Harper?” he demands again.

  Too much, I think. So much. I focus on the only part of any of this that might matter to him. “People died, Eric. I’m here to make sure no one else does.”

  “And whose idea was it for you to come here?”

  “I wanted to come after the first recall,” I say. “I did. I should have.”

  His eyes narrow. “Who sent you?”

  And there it is. The question I hate with the answer that he’ll hate. “Gigi, but—”

  “Holy fuck,” he growls, pushing off the desk at the mention of his grandmother’s name. “You should have left that part out. No to anything and everything she wants, now or ever.”

  I lean on the desk. “Eric.”

  “Don’t look at me with those big blue eyes and say my name and expect anything but another orgasm. And if you came here thinking the fact that I already gave you one influences me, you were wrong. I can want, and do, when it comes to fucking you, and it changes nothing.”

  My body defies the level head I’m trying to have right now. It remembers that orgasm. It remembers his hands. It wants more, but he’s trying to rattle me and I understand why. I know his past. I know why Gigi is the plague to him. I push off the desk. “I don’t think an orgasm, or two since you had one as well in case you’ve forgotten, influences you. I’m just asking that you hear me out.”

  “For the record,” he says. “I remember both orgasms with crystal clarity. I also remember everything about Gigi.”

  “I know, and I could have lied and told you I made this decision on my own, but I feel like I’m swimming in lies back at Kingston. I don’t want them with you, too. I know Gigi was horrible to your mother. She told me that. She has regrets over trying to deny her, and you, your rightful place in the company.”

  “My place in the company? My mother was sick and we were living in a shithole of a trailer park we could barely afford. I’m pretty sure she didn’t give a shit about my place in the company. I damn sure don’t.” He inhales, seeming to rein himself in before he folds his arms in front of his broad, perfect chest, his tattoo sleeve partially exposed. The tattoos that I know tell a story that I am certain has a lot to do with Gigi and his mother. “That woman doesn’t have regrets,” he adds. “Saying she does is a lie.”

  “She was horrible to me, too, but I was with her when she had a small heart attack a year ago. It changed her.”

  “Nothing changes who we are at the core and if you really believe that, then you’re as naive as you were six years ago.”

  “Naive?” I repeat, my voice low and calm when I really want to punch him right now. “I guess if I was naive, we can blame my decision to get half naked with my stepbrother on me being young and stupid.” It’s out before I can stop the words that place our intimate past right here in this room.

  His eyes darken and heat. “Why would we do that? It wasn’t a mistake.”

  “It was a mistake,” I assure him, “for about ten different reasons I’m not going to list.”

  “The mistake was me thinking you weren’t one of them,” he says dryly.

  I feel those words like a punch, with guilt I shove away before he reads it and me. “I’m not one of them,” I say and I don’t have to cut my gaze as I’m certain he expects. I’ve never meant those words like I do now. “I told you why I’m with them. This is a piece of my father.”

  “Six years is a long time to work with someone you’re not devoted to,” he muses. “And you’re trusted enough to be their spokesperson to me.”

  “They don’t know I’m here,” I say, trying not to think of the hell that will follow if they find out or the many things about this past six years that he can never know.

  “Gigi is them,” he says. “If she knows, they know.”

  “She’s been shut out.”

  “She’s the primary stockholder.”

  “Who isn’t exactly in great health. Your father threatened to go to the board to get her removed as CEO.”

  He rounds the desk and we turn to face each other and damn it, he smells just as earthy and perfect as I remember. And he’s so big and overwhelmingly male. He’s also had his tongue in all kinds of places and I need to not go there. He arches a brow. “What are you thinking, Harper?”

  “A lot of things,” I say, and avoiding the past we share, I hold out my hands. “You’ve done so much. You’re brilliant. They all know that. We need you.”

  “We or Gigi?”

  “We need you, but Gigi said to tell you she’s begging. This is her life’s work. She’s terrified of losing it.”

  His brutal perfect mouth quirks. “I’d almost be willing to go there just to watch her beg like my mother did for help.”

  His mother who killed herself. What was I thinking coming here? “This was a mistake. I should have just told her we’d find another way.” I try to turn away but he catches my elbow, heat radiating up my arm. My gaze rockets to his and that connection I’d felt to him six years ago is present and accounted for, thickening the air between us.

  “If there’s another way,” he says, “why come to me?”

  “People died, and you’re a genius, literally. You also have an understanding of the company, a connection, your family.”

  “Family? Like being the stepbrother who gave you an orgasm?”

  “Now you’re just being an asshole and you have a right. I get that, too, but I didn’t do any of the things they did to you. Like I said. This was a mistake. Forget I was here.” I jerk away from him and rush for the door, feeling as if my heart is going to explode in my chest on the way. I reach for the knob, escape only seconds away.

  Eric is suddenly behind me, his hand on the door, his big body crowding mine, so close that I can almost feel his body heat. “Tell me why you’re really here.”

  I rotate to face him and that’s a mistake. He�
��s overwhelmingly right here, in front of me. “Just let me leave.”

  He studies me for several intense beats, those blue eyes so damn probing and intelligent. “You had to know that I wasn’t going to help.”

  “I know that, but I had to try. People have died.”

  “You came here because people have died.”

  “I keep saying that.”

  “But it’s not everything. It’s not the whole reason.”

  “It’s the reason I was willing to come here and I know you might not believe me, but considering our past, this wasn’t easy for me.”

  “Because I left or because you regret what happened between us?”

  “Does it matter? I was one of them to you then and I’m one of them now.”

  He considers me for a long few beats. “I know that you have a trust fund from your father. Take it and run. Get the hell out now because you’re right, even watching from a distance, and I am, there’s a problem at Kingston.”

  I have a fleeting moment of fear that he knows because he’s somehow involved, but I shove that idea away. He’s not behind this. I know too much about what really is happening to believe he’s behind this. “What do you know that I don’t know?”

  “To get out. I got out. You need to as well.”

  “I don’t get my trust fund until I turn thirty-five and my mother loaned it to your father.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Then leave them and come here. I’ll give you a job. You can make your way just like I did. Unless you don’t trust your ability to make your own way?”

  “I was planning to leave. I told your grandmother right before her heart attack.”

  “And that made you feel guilty?”

  “What part of people have died do you not understand? I can’t just walk away and your grandmother really has changed. She’s old. She can’t handle this alone.”