Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
I accept the glass and his gaze flicks over my Rolex peeking from beneath my white dress shirt and lingers on my tat before a smirk lifts on his face. “Looks like someone got all inked up.”
“The bastard brother might as well look the role, right?”
“You’re never going to let me live down calling you that, now are you?”
“We both know you don’t want to live it down, but you will have to face me every day if I decide to join the company. It’s my turn to smirk. “We both know that didn’t go well for you at Harvard.” It’s a reminder of our shared college days, where everyone compared us, and he often came up short. “You must have been so damn relieved when I left school and entered the Navy, and frustrated as fuck that I’m back.”
His eyes spark with a familiar anger I don’t have to intentionally stir. He hates me for being the bastard child of his father’s mistress, the brother thrust on him only months after his mother died. An ironic turn of events considering my mother’s cancer. He steps closer, toe to toe with me, all up close and friendly. “If you think that because you’re some sort of SEAL Team Six hero or something, that I won’t buckle you right at the knees, you’re wrong. You will not take what is mine.”
“I see you two got right back into the brotherly love.”
At the sound of my father’s voice, Isaac grimaces and my lips quirk. “Seems we have,” I say, as Isaac rotates and we both face my father, who looks fit and trim in his tuxedo, and far younger than his fifty-four years, a mere hint of gray in his thick dark hair. “I have someone I want you to meet,” he says, and that’s when my little princess steps to his side, her crystal blue eyes meeting mine as my father says, “Eric. Meet your stepsister, Harper.”
Chapter two
Eric
Now, isn’t this interesting , I think, my eyes fixed on Harper, the stepsister I’ve never met, daughter to the woman my father married while I was in the Navy. I offer her my hand. “Nice to meet you, Harper,” I say, and when our eyes meet at this close proximity, the spark between us is so damn combustible there’s no way it goes unnoticed.
She presses her palm to mine, her gaze dropping to a portion of my inked arm, to the collection of colors and designs that make up my full sleeve and reflect everything and somehow nothing in my life. Her lips part, her expression that of intrigue and not the disgust I expect from a perfect princess. She tightens her grip on mine ever-so-slightly and looks up at me. “Nice to finally meet you,” she says, and fuck, the raspy quality to her voice makes my cock twitch.
“Finally?” I ask, forcing myself to release her.
“Harper has become quite the protégé the past year,” my father informs me. “Her father owned a competing business we’ve absorbed. The dogmatic way she fights for the company is impressive. You’d think she was blood, like you two.”
“I was with my father night and day,” Harper explains. “I learned a lot from him at a very young age.”
This just gets more and more interesting. She’s my father’s protégé and if she didn’t want to fuck me as badly as I want to fuck her, she’d probably want to fuck me right out of town. Yet another priceless moment. “I need to make a phone call,” I say, and I don’t wait for anyone’s permission.
I down the whiskey Isaac handed me, set the glass down on a bench, and step around Harper, my destination once again the castle-like house that is the centerpiece of the property. No one stops me. Just as no one welcomed me when I arrived because despite living most of my childhood here, this was never “home” to me. It was just where I lived and thank fuck for it, or I might have turned out just like them. If this trip has done one thing for me, it’s to contrast the Bennett family I now work for and the Kingstons. The Bennetts look out for their own. The Kingstons wait until you turn your back, and stab you in it. In other words, they’re one step up from the devil’s own family.
I reach my destination and enter the back door, directly into the kitchen which is the size of the mobile home I spent my early years in with my mother. That is, right up until the time she killed herself before the cancer took her. Of course, she didn’t leave me in that trailer. She spent her dying days proving that I was the bastard child of Jeff Kingston and forcing him to claim me. I walk through the archway and down a hallway to the right toward my father’s office, which is where I’ll find whiskey a few grades higher than the bullshit Isaac gave me like I wouldn’t know better.