Chapter 4
Jameson
When I step out of the shower, I make the mistake of checking my phone again, where I find more texts from my team at the office.
Those photos and the accompanying salacious speculation are already trending as #geneson, some lame celebrity couple nickname for Geneviève + Jameson.
Obviously, this well-timed photo leak is meant to bolster Geneviève’s movie opening. Her new blockbuster opens tonight.
It’s so obvious, it’s almost boring in its predicability. She really needs new PR people.
I don’t care about that.
What I care about is that she’s one of Vance Industries’ brand ambassadors. She’s scheduled to attend the grand opening gala of the all-important Vance Bayshore resort next spring, and we need her there. We need her everywhere, like on the red carpet at her opening tonight, endorsing our brands. Not fielding rumors that she’s fucking me.
Graysen is going to be pissed.
But I’ve been aboard this roller coaster before. It’ll run its course.
I need to talk to my team about this, but fuck it. That can wait until tomorrow.
In my walk-in closet, I pull on a pair of loose linen pants. The sun’s going down, but it’s still warm. Tonight, I’ll have a quick chat with Clara; she’ll have Annabeth talk to PR, set up a meeting for tomorrow morning, while I spend the evening with Cole by the pool, a steak dinner, and maybe that bottle of whiskey.
I head downstairs and into the living room. No one’s around, so I continue along the hall on the other side, to the guest wing and up to the second floor.
Cole’s door is ajar, so I knock, then nudge it open. “Cole, you here?” The room is empty, so I send him a text.
Me: Where are you? Let’s do BBQ by the pool. I’m hungry.
I text Clara to get Chef on it.
Then I notice the flowers mounted on the bedroom door next to Cole’s. Fresh flowers on the door means occupied.
Someone’s staying in the room next to Cole’s.
I fucking told him no guests.
Last thing I need right now are the usual kinds of houseguests and parties that I have in my house. For nineties days, while I’m in no-sex hell, this is a no-party zone.
Annoyed, I stash my phone in my pocket and go back downstairs, heading for my poolside patio. But on my way up the hall to the living room, Clara approaches. She opens her mouth, but I cut her off as she hurries to fall in step.
“Why the hell is there someone in one of my guest rooms and no one told me?”
“I thought you knew by now. Mr. Hudson implored me not to tell you. He said he wanted to tell you himself.”
I slow down. “Why? Who is it?”
“His sister. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you. He just seemed so…” Clara seems to agonize over the right words. “Broken up about her, when she called the other night.”
I consider that. I need more information, but I need it from Cole. “Where is he?”
“He’s waiting for you out on the patio. But I wanted to alert you, you’ve got another visitor. He’s at the bar.”
She doesn’t need to say more. I feel the distinct chill in the air at the same moment I notice the dark figure lurking at the bar in my living room.
As I approach, trying to scrape my head together to deal with this, he turns to me, and Clara wisely disappears.
“There he is,” Harlan drawls, leaning back on a bar stool and scrutinizing me. “The Vance family prince, back from his travels abroad. Sin City, was it?”
“Harlan. Come all the way down from your cave on the mountainside? I’m flattered.” I head behind the bar and pluck a couple of glasses from the shelf. “I didn’t know you could travel by daylight anymore.”
“And this is the warm welcome I get?” He pretends to be offended as he smooths his shirt. It’s a warm summer evening, and he’s wearing a suit, black on black, no tie. Pretty much what he sleeps in, as far as I can tell. “Your house girl didn’t even offer me a drink while I waited.”
“Maybe because she’s a professional, old enough to be your mother, and you call her ‘house girl.’” I mix us both a Manhattan, his drink of choice. “You’ve been a demon since, what, puberty? It can’t shock you anymore if the villagers toss holy water on you when you walk by.”
He ignores that as I slide his drink in front of him. “So how was Vegas?”
I know what he’s doing. Sniffing around to find out if I failed my challenge in Sin City. He doesn’t even try to finesse it into the conversation. Harlan doesn’t know how to finesse a conversation.
Maybe because he spends so much alone time in his crypt.
“How do you think it was? It fucking sucked.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Maybe because you’re such an expert liar, you expect lies.”
“You’re telling me there was no fun to be had?”
“There was fun to be had. I didn’t have any.”
“Now, if you’re me, do you believe you?”
“I don’t care what you believe. I kept my hands to myself.”
“How about your dick?”
“Same.”
“How about your mouth?”
“Are you planning to list every body part? I’m winning this game. I’m not lying, and I’m not cheating.”
Harlan scowls, skeptical. He knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t just breezily lie to his face. I have a major aversion to that kind of dishonesty.
But he also knows celibacy isn’t exactly my lifestyle of choice.
Through the wall of windows to the backyard, behind his back, Clara bustles into view. She’s escorting a woman across my patio.
A brunette woman, wearing a tank top and shorts, her long hair damp. Heat floods my chest at the sight of her, and my breath lodges in my throat.
It’s her.
It’s fucking her.
The woman from the street, with the bungeed suitcase.
Cole’s sister??
What the fuck.
I cough and shift to my left, away from the windows, and Harlan regards me with suspicion. I probably look guilty… about something.
I don’t want him to see her. I’m not even sure why. The challenge?
The fact that I don’t even know what to make of this sudden discovery that that gorgeous woman is in my house? Last thing I need is Harlan getting any ideas about it. Or about her.
Fortunately, Clara guides her out of sight.
“It’s been forty-three days,” my brother points out. I’m sure he’s tracking it on a calendar. “Have you ever gone forty-three days?”
“Why would I?” I mutter.
“And now one of us has made it so you can’t enjoy your favorite pastime,” he muses, sounding borderline pleased. Harlan doesn’t really do pleased, but he’s practically glowing right now.
“Yeah. For your own fucking shits and giggles.”
“It’s called personal growth, Jamie. You’re supposed to be learning something about yourself.”
“As if you give a shit about my personal growth. You just want to watch me suffer, because you’re a goddamn sadist.”
“Hey, I’m just checking in for the family, making sure you’re okay.” He gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Kinda like the Grinch.
God, he’s a liar.
No one would send Harlan to “check in” on me, much less make sure I was toeing the line.
If this family has a black sheep, Harlan is the monster who ate it alive.
And if Harlan is the beast of this family—he is; we literally call him that—then like he said, I’m the prince.
Would anyone really care if the fifth in line for the family treasure lost his share? Would it make any difference?
This is the kind of thinking a visit from Harlan brings about.
I hate that he’s making me sweat.
I need to get rid of him.
I need to go outside and see what the fuck is going on, and why Cole didn’t tell me his sister was coming.
And get a look at her again.
“Well, I’m fine. And I’m telling you the truth. You know I couldn’t lie to a master of deception like yourself. You’d know.”
“Probably. Just depends how bad you want to have your cake and eat it, too. ‘Cake’ being pussy and ‘too’ being your inheritance, in case that wasn’t clear.”
“I’m not having any cake, okay?”
The truth is, I’m not even licking any icing.
I don’t need the tease, or the risk.
The night I opened that gold envelop and read my challenge, I’d walked out, angry.
The next day, I’d gone right back to Graysen’s, had him gather the rest of our siblings on a conference call so they could decide what the hell “no sex” even meant.
And decide they had. With great amusement, on Harlan’s and Damian’s parts. Savannah had hung up on us as we debated the finer points.
Obviously, fucking in any form is out of the question. But what about blow jobs?
Ha. No.
Hand jobs?
Try again.
Happy endings of any kind?
Nope.
And I definitely won’t be finding any loopholes—getting a woman off, using an object between us to buffer actual touching, touching over clothes. Absolutely anything that’s sexually gratifying or results in an orgasm in a woman’s company—hers or mine—is a no-go.
Can I kiss and touch a woman? Sure. As long as I keep my naked sex parts off hers and no one comes.
Fun times.
Can I jack off? Absolutely. If I’m alone. The challenge isn’t about deprivation. It’s about not having sex with women.
So it’s me, myself, and I for ninety days.
Which means that I’ve masturbated daily to try to make it not bother me that my sex life has been put on a time-out.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t made me any less angry.
It’s not that I can’t have sex. This is the part my siblings don’t seem to get.
It’s that one of them has forbidden me from having sex. Probably the one who’s sitting in front of me right now.
Harlan tips his chin up, assessing me. “I guess it really is an honor system, isn’t it?”
“Good thing I have some honor left.”
He downs the drink that he’s ignored until now. “I guess we’ll see.” And with that, the lord of darkness seems satisfied that I’m sufficiently suffering and gets up to leave.
Good riddance.
I follow him to the foyer. I know he won’t be the first of my siblings to “check in” on me in the wake of those photos hitting the web. I don’t even know if he saw them. He didn’t mention them, and Harlan tends to ignore his phone.
Just knowing I went to Vegas was enough to raise his suspicions, probably.
“So, tell me.” He pauses at the door. “Will my challenge be an honor system situation too?”
“Yeah, right. How stupid do you think we are?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“Be honest for once in your life, okay? It was your idea to make me give up sex for ninety days, right?”
My brother’s smile is feral. “I would’ve stipulated six months. At least. But I’m sure there are some of us who think even ninety days is an unreasonable amount of time.”
“Let me guess. Damian is taking bets against me.”
Damian is probably the one person in this family who’d just let us disown him in favor of reserving the right to fuck.
“I would never want to profit from your failures, brother.”
“Uh-huh.”
Weirdly, I know he kind of means that.
One of the strangest things about Harlan is that he doesn’t care that much about money, exactly. He just cares about maintaining his privacy, and nothing can afford impenetrable walls like wealth can.
“I’ll see you on the other side of forty-seven days, Jamie. In the meantime, have fun with your hand.”
“Yeah. Have fun with your hollowed-out graveyard bones or whatever it is you fuck.”
I slam the door in his face. Fucking brothers.
Who needs them, really.