Chapter 8
Jameson
“I’m a lot tougher than you seem to think,” Rowan says stubbornly. “You know, I grew up with four brothers.”
“Right, I almost forgot. Four brothers who were probably tit fed until they were twelve and had their asses wiped for them with daisies.”
I smirk, because I was raised with older brothers like that. And my sister has four brothers, just like Rowan.
I can already relate to this book.
This Jessica Rivers is a decent author.
I put my feet up on the lounger, settling back into the deeper shade where I can read the screen on my tablet better. It’s sunny this morning, the sky a vibrant, clear blue overhead.
“If we run into someone out here,” I tell her, digging through the ratty clothes in the abandoned shack we’ve come across, “it’s not gonna be one of your precious brothers, so spare me the ‘I can handle anything that you can’ act.” I toss some clothes on the table. “Put these on.”
“I will not.” She looks scandalized. “They’re dirty and they’re men’s.”
“And I told you, that dress will get you killed. You can’t even run in that thing.”
“How will it get me killed? It shows I have value.”
I scowl at her embroidered corset. “You really have no idea what would happen to you. What a Lady’s worth out in the wide world, to other tribes beyond the Westlands. You’d be lucky if they killed you.” I flick my knife in the air. “Now take it off.”
She doesn’t.
“Or you can stay like that. But if you fall and break an ankle, I’m leaving you behind.”
I turn away as she finally starts moving. I hear the rustle of her skirts. I hear her boots clunk on the floor. I give her a moment to pull on the leggings, then turn. They fit well enough. They’re too short, meant for a boy, but once she puts her boots back on and tucks them in, you wouldn’t know.
The fancy corset now looks even more ridiculous.
“The rest of it. Come on.”
She seems distraught. “You have to help me. My dressing girl used to do it.”
Bloody hell. She can’t even dress herself?
I jam the tip of my knife blade into the tabletop and spin her around. I unhook the many hooks on the back of the corset, exposing her naked back. Then I rip the corset off.
She turns around, holding her slender arms over her chest. Her breasts are larger than I would’ve thought. You couldn’t tell a thing about her tits through that corset, which is not the least of what’s wrong with it. I toss the thing on the floor, where it belongs.
“Is there a bra?”
“You don’t need a bloody bra. Just put this on.” I shove the boys’ undershirt at her.
We stare at each other like we’re from two different planets. I’m starting to think we are.
“Savage girls don’t wear bras?”
“Why on earth would they?”
She takes the undershirt like it’s diseased, but she turns around and slips it on. She tucks the shirt into her leggings, and when she turns back around, the thin fabric is stretched over her breasts. I can see her nipples through it.
I toss the other shirt at her. She pulls it on. It’s long sleeved and fitted, and I can still see her nipples. It’s not even cold in here.
I hand her the vest, and she pulls it on. There. Now she looks like a human being instead of some fairy-tale nightmare.
“And no more fancy hairdos.”
“Fancy?” She touches her mussed hair. “What’s fancy about it?”
“No one besides some stuck-up Lady would wear her hair like that. Take it out.”
She starts taking it out. “But I don’t know any other way to wear it. How do savage girls wear their hair?”
“Just do a plain braid.”
“I don’t know how to do a braid.”
What girl doesn’t know how to do a braid? What person doesn’t know how to do a braid?
I really hope she’s a fantastic fuck, for her future husband’s sake, or the man’s getting nothing out of this deal.
I grab her hair, pull it forward over one shoulder. I split it into three sections and braid it so she can see. “Just pull each section over the one in the middle, back and forth. Left, right, left, right.” I get to the bottom and grab the strip of leather she pulled from her fancy do.
“Have you braided a lot of savage girls’ hair?” she asks as I tie the leather around the bottom of the braid in a little bow.
“Horsehair.” I drop the braid. “Same damn thing. Now keep up, or you get left behind.”
I head outside, and she hurries to follow me into the forest. “Stop making idle threats. You’re not going to leave me here alone.”
“So what if I do? With your newfound braiding skills you can weave yourself a raft and float on home down the river.”
Her face reddens with anger. “Look. We both know if you leave me out here, I’ll probably die.”
Yeah. Don’t tempt me.
“Let’s just agree on that,” she huffs, “and you can stop throwing it in my face. You’re not going to abandon me, and we both know that, too.”
“And how do we know that?”
“Because you love my brothers.”
I don’t refute it, but I don’t like letting her win. “Love is a strong word between men. They’re not cunts, though, I’ll give them that. Your little brother, Forest, now there’s a cunt.” I start heading up the hill in front of us, forcing myself not to think about my little brother, or I might just leave her behind for real.
I hear her struggling to keep up with my long strides, and when I glance over my shoulder, she doesn’t appear pleased. “Will you stop saying that?”
“What? Cunt?” I stop short, and she bumps into me. “Cunt, cock, shit, fuck. What’s the problem?” She gapes at me. “Look, princess?—”
“It’s Lady Rowan,” she insists.
“It’s not Lady anything to me. And you might get used to the way I speak, because I’m not changing it.”
Then I stride on up the hill.
“Huh.” I lower my tablet to the patio table in front of me. I’m sitting out on the balcony off my bedroom, and I can see my new gardener in the backyard below. Over at the far corner, where that kid from the landscaping service who trims the hedges is showing her around.
I pull out my phone and send her a text; Locke procured her phone number for me. Security, of course.
Me: Wolf is an asshole.
I observe her reaction as she tugs her phone from the back pocket of her little khaki shorts and reads the message, then taps out a reply.
Megan: You’re reading my book???
Me: I started the first one last night. He just made Rowan give up her lovely dress. He’s quite a dick. The story’s good, though.
Her response, again, is quick.
Megan: His little brother was just killed right in front of him!
Me:Still.
I wait while she types, then shoves her phone back into her pocket. My phone chimes.
Megan:I’ll have you know that Wolf is hot.
I jolt when a hulking man with neck tattoos looms over me out of nowhere, blocking out the sun. Locke shoves his phone at me.
This, again.
I know my head of security wouldn’t barge into my bedroom unless it’s important. However, his sudden presence makes me uncomfortably aware that I have a hard-on.
“Jesus. Since when do you not knock?”
“I knocked. You didn’t answer.”
I take the phone and glare at him, and he leaves.
On the screen is yet another celeb gossip site, showing a photo of me—with another female celebrity.
I swallow a groan and scroll, finding several more photos. But it’s the first one that’s the most damning.
“Fuck me.”
There’s really nothing else to say, as my morning goes to shit.
* * *
When Clara announces a visitor midafternoon, I head into my home office and settle behind the desk in time to glimpse, through the front windows, the distinctive Rolls-Royce Black Badge Cullinan SUV rolling up my driveway.
I’d wondered why he didn’t call yet today. Now I know.
I thumb away from the web page where I found one of the rare online photos of Cole with his sister and set my phone aside, making myself look busy at the home computer I never really use. My oldest brother and boss, Graysen, is big on appearances, and as far as he knows, I work from my home office most of the time.
I literally never work in any office. What’s the point of being a billionaire if you’re tied to a desk all day?
Anyway, I haven’t wasted my whole day stalking Cole’s sister. There’s not much to be found about her online anyway. No other press besides the few photos taken when she’s attended some hockey game or fundraiser with Cole over the years. No gossip.
Her life couldn’t be more different from mine that way.
I can’t even find any social media profiles except an Instagram account in her pen name. Her page is all quotes from her books and random photos of things she must think her readers will like. Most of them feature flowers. She has fewer than two thousand followers.
All the world seems to know about Megan Hudson is that she shows up every now and then at a hockey game with her brother, seems to prefer plants to people, and gets flush faced, adorable, and unbelievably sexy all at once when she talks about her writing.
That last part is my own personal observation.
I should’ve said no when Cole asked me if she could stay here with him. And again when he asked me to give her a job.
But I just couldn’t.
Cole is that kind of friend. He has this roguish charisma that endears him to people, including me. You just want him at your party and at your back.
But more than that, I owe Cole so much more than a place to stay while his house is being renovated and a temporary home and a job for his sister.
I promised myself, after he told me the hard truth that no one else would: Anything he asks. Because when your friend has your back like that, you have his, too.
Cole has never asked me for anything. He has his own money, his hockey career. It was a given he’d crash here while his house was being finished. That’s what best friends are for. But this… this is the only thing he’s ever outright asked me for, and I can tell it’s important to him.
She’simportant to him.
But wealth builds walls, right? That’s practically the Vance family motto. I don’t have to let her in.
She doesn’t have to be important to me.
I’m only reading her book because I’m curious. It’s not every day you meet an author.
I probably won’t even finish it.
She might say it’s not a romance, but it’s starting to feel like one, and what guy reads romance?
I’ve got more important things to do with my time.
I’ve actually spent the bulk of my day so far on and off the phone with my team at Vance Industries and our PR department as they work on dousing the flames of today’s fresh, new scandal, which is spreading like wildfire in a drought. People are, as always, weirdly ravenous for this shit.
When I met up with pop star Nina Joy in Vegas, we hadn’t seen each other in a while, and she’d come on strong—as can be seen in the photos that went viral as soon as they were posted this morning. Like Geneviève, Nina is one of Vance Industries’ brand ambassadors. She’s the face of Sea Salt citrus gin and their trendy bottled gin cocktails, one of our leading product lines, she’s performing at the Vance Bayshore resort opening gala in the spring, and Graysen is probably fit to blow. Or bury me.
“Come in,” I growl, when Clara taps on my office door.
“Mr. Vance is here,” she announces from the doorway.
“By all means, show him in.”
She does, then shuts the door behind him.
Graysen strides into the middle of my office and frowns as he looks around. He hasn’t been here in a while; usually, we all go to him. He lives in the house that we all grew up in, which still feels like home base to the rest of us. Or at least he did before Granddad died and he moved into his suite at the resort to oversee its completion to an obsessive-compulsive degree.
Besides that, Graysen Vance is notoriously “too busy” for such things as hanging out with other humans, even ones he’s related to.
His thick, dark-brown hair is compulsively neat, his jaw set, and the ability to smile, if he ever had one, seems to have been decommissioned due to its irrelevance. He wears a dark suit and a stiff-collared shirt with a silk tie. As he does every day of his life.
I like to picture Graysen as a baby, in a diaper and tie, holding a briefcase. It makes it easier to deal with him when he gets all holier-than about my life choices.
Which he’s definitely about to do.
“Day forty-four,” he remarks, his storm-cloud-gray eyes meeting mine.
“This is how you greet me now?”
“That’s what it is. Day forty-four of the most important challenge of your life. Or is it?”
“Get to the point, Graysen. You can’t pull off coy. You just look constipated.”
He frowns deeper, which just makes him look more constipated. “Let’s start here. As of last night, there are photos all over the internet of you and Geneviève Blaise.”
“Was that a question?”
“Does it need to be?”
“They’re paparazzi photos, Gray.”
“You’re holding hands, Jamie.”
I stretch back in my chair. “How new are you to this game?”
“You sound like Granddad,” he notes, and there’s some affection in it. “You’re way more like him than you know. Grandma always said so.”
“So?” Seriously, the last thing I want to chat about right now is the man responsible for this actual fucking “game” we’ve been forced to play. “Don’t believe everything you think you see.”
“I will when I see it with my own eyes.”
“Jesus, you’re getting paranoid. You’re sounding more like Mom every day.” It’s not a compliment, and he knows it.
He makes a grumbly noise. “So you aren’t fucking Geneviève?”
I hate to admit it, because it’s really not his business or the wide world’s. But I won’t lie to him. “I was.”
He sighs.
“But not during the challenge. That photo is months old. Someone held it back, timed this little gossip frenzy to coincide with her movie opening. PR knows the truth, and they’re on it.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe that you’re no longer involved with her?”
“You’re supposed to believe a brother who’s never lied to you. I’m not the lying kind. I think we can agree that Harlan got all those genes.”
“The challenge is only part of the problem here. Geneviève is also one of our brand ambassadors,” he reminds me. “Which means it’s unethical.”
“My job is to oversee our brands, and the celebrities who endorse them, is it not? I don’t need you micromanaging me.”
“It’s not your job to fuck the celebrities in question. You know how many of our companies have a no-fraternization policy?”
I look out the window. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Megan Hudson wanders into view.
“Every single one of them.” My brother answers his own question. “Because it’s one of the policies we mandate when we create or acquire them…” As he continues his lecture, my eyes trace Megan’s curves in her tight tank top and little shorts. “… and it was important to this company’s founder. So it’s important to us.”
I drag my attention away from Megan when I realize he’s stopped talking. “Excuse me? Founder?” I cup my hand behind my ear like I must’ve heard him wrong. “You mean Stoddard Vance? Granddad? The man who was fucking his secretary for decades? While he was married?”
Graysen looks constipated again. “Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.”
I get up and stroll to the window, but Megan’s vanished. “I’m not making any mistakes, Gray.” Does he really think I’d be that careless?
Just forty-six more days.
Then it’s his fucking turn, or someone else’s. I know every one of my siblings is dying to know what their own challenge will be. I didn’t devise Graysen’s challenge, and I have no idea who did or what it is. But I can’t wait to find out.
I turn to face him. “I’m doing just fine. Honestly, at this point, the drive to complete this challenge so I can watch you all sweat through yours is almost worth the suffering.”
“I don’t care how much ‘suffering’ it causes you.” I know he means it; Graysen could probably easily give up sex for ninety days. It would just give him more time to micromanage the rest of us. “I’m fucking tired of your playboy ways, Jamie. All this never-ending gossip just fuels the fire. It’s threatening our reputation. There’s a reason we put such a premium on maintaining our privacy.”
“Uh-huh. You know what your problem is?”
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“You don’t see any difference between gossip and true bad press.”
“There is no difference when it negatively impacts us. The result is the same.”
“I disagree. The truth matters. Facts are worth defending.”
“Well, the fact is, if you can’t keep yourself out of these salacious headlines, I’ll have to remove you from your position as VP of Brand Marketing. At least for a while.”
I stride back to my desk and face him across it, weighing his seriousness on this. “You won’t. You need me.”
“Not as badly as I need our company image, our family image, to remain intact. The completion of Granddad’s resort is contingent on so many details, so many relationships, so many damn regulations… Since losing him, we’re under extreme pressure to prove that we can deliver without him. I need you all to keep your heads down, even more than usual. And trust me, I’ve got enough issues with your brothers to deal with. I don’t need another black sheep.”
“Which is why you need me. The resort isn’t the only asset that we need to prove we can deliver on without Granddad. What about the hockey team? What are you going to do if the Northmen’s new president attends his first board meeting with the National Hockey Organization and shits the bed? You might need me on that board, and you need someone in the family smiling for the cameras next to the team captain on the sports page. You’re not gonna do it.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Just admit how much you need me.”
“Not that badly.”
Bullshit.
“I may not know hockey like you do,” he says, “but I know business. And I will learn about hockey, damn fast, if that’s what it takes.”
I drop into my seat and recline back.
He’s bluffing. Trying to scare me.
The fact is, we all need each other.
Granddad knew it.
He’d handed his successor at the Northmen organization a lot of power right before he passed, because he was making a final power play. The hockey team was his childhood dream. When he bought the Vancouver Northmen and the arena where they play, it was one of his greatest life achievements.
Passing his role as president of Northmen Sports and Entertainment to someone outside the family, instead of one of his grandchildren, was a warning to us, maybe. That nothing should ever come easy.
And like Savannah said, this game he’s left us to play forces us to rely on each other if things go to shit.
Ultimately, I’m pretty sure Graysen doesn’t want me to lose the game any more than I want to lose it.
“Then, by all means.” I call his bluff. “Do what you have to do. Hand my job over to Harlan and let him represent us in the media.”
I fucking dare you.
The constipated look is back. “Harlan isn’t… palatable… as a public face of this company.”
I snort. “Understatement.”
“And Damian is best left an enigma.”
“You mean a dirty secret that hides in plain sight.”
Graysen’s jaw twitches.
“I’ve given you my word. What more do you want me to do to prove I’m trustworthy on this? Wear a chastity belt?”
“I want you to put your money where your mouth is. Remove yourself from the immediate handling of all female talent. Hand them off to your team. Stick to the men. You’ve got this whiskey deal with Jesse Mayes, all the hockey endorsement deals with the Northmen. Focus on those.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“From where I’m sitting, you look eternally constipated.”
“You’d have trouble taking a shit too if you knew your entire family, your thousands of employees and your dead grandparents were all watching your every move, every moment of every day.”
Yeah, I have to admit that sounds exhausting. At least I only have him breathing down my neck.
“So, in summary, I’m an out-of-control playboy who’s destroying the family reputation. Damian owns a sex club, but I can’t have a sex life?”
“Damian is discreet. You’re not secretly banging your secretary or privately indulging in a kink. Your sex life gets smeared across the internet at least once a week?—”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“And we haven’t even gotten to Nina Joy yet. You were photographed with her in Vegas two days ago.”
And here we go.
“She’s been all over the web for months dating a famous soccer player,” Graysen grits out, “and there she is, two fucking days ago, in your arms, kissing you.” He’s actually getting mad, a flush of red creeping up his neck.
It’s not like Graysen to get mad at me.
As the oldest, eight years my senior, he became like a parental figure to me after Dad died when I was only eleven, and Mom remarried and lost interest in motherhood.
Maybe he really thinks I’m lying to him.
What can I do but keep telling him the truth?
“Yes, I saw Nina in Vegas two days ago. And yes, she kissed me. She kissed me. Someone caught it on camera, and now it’s online. But that kiss was not reciprocated. I didn’t touch her except to remove her from my body, which she was trying to climb. End of story.”
“So you’re telling me nothing happened?”
“I’m telling you what happened. And that was it. She tried. I turned her down.”
My brother’s jaw is twitching again.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It’s hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Because you used to date her, before we partnered with her.”
“So, you think I can’t control myself?”
I want to tell him how fucking wrong he is about that.
Like the fact that this morning, I jerked off thinking about my new gardener wearing nothing but gloves as she knelt in the flowerbeds, weeding. I got myself off in the shower before I dared risk running into her today. And I did it slow.
While I came, I pictured my best friend’s little sister gasping my name while she came, her pussy juice dripping down her thighs.
In my mind, I’ve already fucked her.
But in reality, I have reasons not to touch her. The challenge. Cole. The fact that I’m not the out-of-control sex monkey my siblings seem to think I am.
Really, none of this is any of his fucking business, though.
My word should be enough.
“You think I’m a sex addict or something? Is that it? I can’t possibly resist a woman just because I find her attractive?”
Graysen swipes a hand over his face, looking weary and so much older than his thirty-eight years. He looks like a dad, actually. Like a guy who has no children of his own yet, but has worried about his younger siblings all his life.
“No, Jamie. I think you just never have a reason to keep it in your pants. So I chose this challenge for you, to give you a reason.”