Chapter 9
Jameson
Istare at my brother, too shocked to respond for a long-ass moment as the meaning of his words weighs down on me like an anvil with the words fuck you etched into it.
“You chose this challenge for me?”
“Yes,” Graysen says with distaste. “I did.”
I’m stunned. I would’ve seriously put every dollar I had on Harlan being the one. Or maybe Damian.
But it was Graysen.
Which means it wasn’t meant to make me suffer. It’s much worse than that.
Maybe he really doesn’t trust me.
Maybe he really believes I’m a liability.
And if that’s true, then my inheritance and my job and literally everything I have is really on the line here.
If Graysen tells the others I failed…
They’ll believe him over me. Even if they don’t want to, even if they want to trust me, they’ll take his side.
Graysen is the boss.
Every pack, even a pack of alphas always snapping at one another’s necks, needs an ultimate alpha. And Graysen has always been ours.
Which means that if I can’t convince him that I’ve won the game, I’ve failed anyway.
Fuck.Time to just lay all my cards on the table.
“Look, I’m not allowed to tell anyone about this challenge, right? I can’t tell women why I can’t hook up with them, which makes it extra fucking difficult.”
He says nothing, just frowns.
“Also, I make it a policy not to lie to people I care about. And Nina has always been good to me. But I lied through my teeth to her in Vegas, because of the fucking challenge. The only thing I could think to tell her that wouldn’t piss her off was that I can’t hook up with her because I’m in a relationship.”
Graysen’s eyebrow lifts with interest. “You told her you have a girlfriend?”
Yeah. That was the plan. But me being an inexperienced liar, it kind of spiraled out of control. “I told her I have a fiancée.”
“And that worked?”
“It worked. She was actually happy for me. Threw me an impromptu dinner with her band.”
He shakes his head. “And how long do you think that lie’s going to hold?”
I exhale, rubbing my face. “Maybe a few weeks until she wonders why I haven’t publicly announced my engagement?”
“You have another lie locked and loaded to deal with that?”
“No,” I growl. “And I really hope you’re happy that this challenge is killing me slowly.”
My brother goes quiet in a way I know I’m not going to like as he stands there, hands on his hips, thinking.
“I just realized you haven’t sat down since you got here,” I say uneasily.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Your sex life is a magnet for gossip,” he mutters, the gears turning in his head.
“Speculation about my sex life,” I correct him.
“I tried to make it stop by making you give up sex,” he goes on like I haven’t spoken. “But that didn’t work. So, if we can’t stop it, we need to counteract it. Bury the gossip under something bigger.”
“Such as the truth?” I say dryly.
Graysen scowls at me like I’m an idiot. “No one cares about the truth.”
“I do.”
He starts pacing, ignoring that. “What’s the one thing that could effectively bury these never-ending gossip pieces? What could outshine the rumors of a playboy lifestyle?”
Damn. How did this spiral so out of control? The media is my domain. That “playboy lifestyle” is usually an asset for us, whether my brother wants to admit it or not.
Suddenly, it’s become a liability.
When I realize maybe he’s waiting on an actual answer, I grimace. “I told you. The truth. I’m already talking to PR?—”
“A fairy-tale romance.” Graysen answers his own question. “With one woman. That’s the only thing that gets more attention than this shit. Nina Joy bought into it, right?”
“Uh—”
“What makes the covers of magazines and featured articles and goes viral every damn minute? Celebrity love stories.”
A vein starts throbbing in my forehead as we stare each other down.
I hate that he’s making sense right now. Marketing is my thing, not his.
“That means you,” he adds grimly, “plus someone the family approves of. Which means no gold diggers and no bimbos, Jamie.”
I’m gradually absorbing how serious he is about this. “You know I’m not in a relationship.”
“Then get in one.” Yup.He’s serious. “And it needs to be grand. Yet believable.”
Believable.Because it won’t be real, but he’ll want me to sell it like it is. Is that what he’s saying?
“So now celibacy isn’t enough? Now you want me to ask someone to marry me, but not have sex with her, or, what? You’ll choose to believe I failed the game and lock me out of my inheritance?” I keep my voice calm, but that vein in my forehead is ready to explode. “Because of some fucking online gossip?”
My brother just looks annoyed. “You can have sex with her. Eventually. You’ve only got a few more weeks on the challenge.”
“And where am I supposed to find a woman worthy of your ‘approval’ out of nowhere? She’s just supposed to appear out of thin fucking air?—”
The door bursts open and a small, disheveled whirlwind Tasmanian-devils into the room, spraying soil. “You fired Romeo?” Megan pants at me in her little tank top, her sweaty cleavage heaving.
Her nipples are hard.
“I’m so sorry.” Clara’s right behind her, huffing and puffing. “She outran me.”
I sit back, not sure how to process that Megan Hudson just sprinted into my office. “It’s all right, Clara. You can leave us.”
Clara nods, smoothing her mussed hair as she shuts the door.
“You fired Romeo?” Megan repeats, whipping her gardening trowel in the air for effect. And flinging mud across my office.
“Is that mud?”
“What?” She wipes her sweaty forehead with the back of her wrist, smearing mud across it.
Graysen crosses his arms over his chest, glancing from my mud-sprayed sofa to Megan to me. I ignore him, trying to look unfazed, but mud on my sofa from Brianza is a hard no. I don’t even have sex on that sofa.
“What are you, auditioning for some Shakespeare-in-the-Park thing?” I demand, fucking irritated in five different directions.
“Huh?” Megan looks from me to my brother and back, suddenly self-conscious, like she’s just realized she exploded into a meeting spraying mud and shouting at me about Romeo.
“Who’s Romeo?”
She blinks at me. “Uh, Romeo is the very sweet, kind man who’s been making your gardens beautiful for the last four years and he has three kids he’s trying to put through college and his wife is going blind and you just fired him from the job he loves!” She stares at me, panting, waiting for me to respond to that.
Oh. That Romeo. I thought his name was Raymond or something.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I tell her. “I’m in a meeting.”
She glances at Graysen again.
I grind my teeth. Her nipples are still hard, and he’s looking at her.
“This is my brother, Graysen,” I force out.
In a much more polite tone, she says, “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt. But this is important.”
“Please, don’t let me stop you,” Graysen says.
Thanks, bro.
Megan’s eyes cut back to me. “I can’t believe you fired him.”
“So I could hire you,” I point out, my voice low.
My brother raises an eyebrow at me.
I do not want to continue this conversation in front of him. Not when my blood is boiling like it is. It’s not anger. I want to explain to her that I’m not always an asshole. She’s just caught me at a very, very bad time. “I was trying to help you?—”
“Because Cole asked you to. And I do appreciate it, but?—”
“This is you being appreciative?”
“This is you helping?”
“This is how you talk to your employer?”
“Not usually.” She glances at Graysen, looking embarrassed and frustrated. “You have to hire him back,” she tells me.
She’s trying to tell me what to do. In front of my brother.
Heat spreads through my chest. My fingers twitch, and I have to clamp them down on the arms of my chair.
“I can’t do that.” It’s amazing how calm my tone is, considering I’d like to drag her across my lap and spank her round little ass right now. Teach her some manners. Without witnesses.
“Why not?”
“Because I gave you the job. How many gardeners do you think I need on salary?”
She takes a deep, silent breath. “Okay. I understand. And I quit.”
What?
“Wait.” I get to my feet.
Megan looks at Graysen again, who’s standing back like he’s watching an enjoyable rom-com. “Again, I’m sorry for the interruption,” she says—to my brother. “Have a nice day.” Then she walks out.
“Megan—” I growl, but the door shuts behind her.
Graysen smirks, which is terrifying, since Graysen never smirks.
“Do not say it,” I bark.
“Say what?”
“Whatever the hell you’re thinking right now. She’s not available.”
“Too bad. She might make a great Mrs. Vance. Who is she?”
“I thought you already had your future Mrs. Vance picked out,” I mutter.
“I didn’t mean for me.”
“Ha.” I snarl as I drop back into my chair, and Graysen’s brow furrows in a way I don’t like. I can feel his brain running calculations again. It’s goddamn creepy.
Then he pronounces, “She’d do.”
“And you know this, because…?”
“Because she’s not afraid to get dirty, or to stand up to you. You think any of the discardable bimbos you screw is going to make a good wife?”
“You don’t know who I screw,” I say calmly. Which is mostly true. I don’t alert him when I get laid; the internet does that, apparently, and the internet is an unreliable source. “But at least I didn’t let Mommy pick a wife for me.”
The constipated look returns in full force.
“Anyway,” I deflect, “she’s Cole Hudson’s sister. And she works for me. Remember that whole lecture you just gave me about our fraternization policy?”
“She just quit.”
“She didn’t quit. That won’t hold.” It can’t, unless I want Cole to be very pissed at me.
“So, fire her.”
“Because that’ll make her want to marry me. You really missed your calling as a matchmaker, Gray.”
“You don’t have to love each other, you know. Look at Granddad and Grandma.”
“Ah, yes. The blueprint for wedded bliss.”
“I didn’t say it was bliss. But it worked.”
“Did it?”
“Getting engaged will keep women away from you while you finish your challenge,” he grinds out, “and it will drown all this playboy crap in the media. Which means it should be your top priority as of right now.”
“So you really want me to conjure a fake fiancée just for appearances? I’m not you, Graysen.”
He scrapes a hand through his hair. I rarely see Graysen lose his cool, but this whole conversation is getting under his skin.
He abhors public exposure of any kind. He probably hates having to get engaged at all, just because it’s what’s expected of him, though he’d never admit it.
Asking me to create positive press to bury the bad is like a worst-case scenario for him.
Desperate times.
“Fake or real,” he growls, like a man who has way more important shit to deal with than standing here arguing with me about my sex life, “I give less than zero fucks, Jamie, okay? Just make sure it’s convincing. You’re Prince Charming and she’s your Cinderella.”
With that, he stalks out of my office, probably wishing he were an only child.
The feeling is mutual.
I watch his black SUV roll down my driveway through the window, the vein still throbbing in my head.
At least Cole left for the airport already. Call that a win. I’ll just have to smooth things over with his sister before he hears anything.
Hopefully she didn’t already call him to complain about me.
I don’t see her in the garden from my office windows, so I go looking for her. I’m not about to go near her room, and I don’t see her out by the pool or anywhere else, so I go to Clara’s office. “Where’s Miss Hudson?”
“She left.”
“What?”
“I believe… she’s gone.” Clara rises to her feet when she realizes I don’t like that answer. “I sent you a text.”
I pat my pockets, realizing I left my phone on the desk in my office. “What text?”
“I thought you’d want to know. While you were in your meeting with Mr. Vance, she left with her little suitcase.”
I stand there, heart pounding, as I process this. The feeling that rises up in me, setting fire to my senses and stopping my breath, is unnamable.
It’s as confusing as it is unexpected.
Later, I’ll be able to look back and understand what I felt when I first heard that Megan was gone.
In the moment, it feels like a sudden and all-consuming madness, which isn’t far off.