Chapter 4
Grayson
The moment I step out the side door leading into the family estate's garden, I know it's a mistake.
The manicured lawn is full of New York's finest, all smartly dressed and with fixed smiles, mingling and greeting each other, holding polite and non-controversial conversations, seeing and being seen.
Some loiter by the trimmed hedges deep in discussion, while others lounge under the gazebo, wine glasses in hand, listening to the orchestral quartet we've hired.
There's a table set up with charcuterie and caviar appetizers, and waiters and waitresses in black suits and dresses mingle with the guests, offering trays of wine and fruit juice.
A waiter spots me and starts to head over, but then hesitates, probably because of my stormy expression. I don't blame him.
I'm not known to be a pleasant man, even on a good day, and I'm even worse when I'm pissed.
I'm definitely pissed right now.
I've been tricked. Duped by my own flesh and blood.
"Damn you, Steph," I mutter, wondering if I still have time to escape. My mother spots me across the room, grins, and waves. Shit, too late.
My sister, Stephanie, also spots me at the same time, and sends me a wide, shit-eating grin.
She knows exactly what she's done, and she's enjoying every minute of it.
She knows I hate crowds, but it's the gender makeup of the crowd that makes it even more obvious what my family is up to with this little get-together.
It's at least seventy percent single women, beautiful, age-appropriate women, standing around and sending me glances underneath their eyelids.
Of course, there are men here too, cousins and family friends scattered around to present a thin veneer of normalcy.
But it doesn't hide my family's intentions. In fact, it's blatantly obvious what they are up to.
They're trying to find me a wife.
My sister extracts herself from her current conversation and heads across the lawn to me, smiling wickedly as she approaches, and takes me by the arm to give me a gentle kiss on the cheek.
"Here you are, darling brother. I thought you'd never get here. Come and greet our guests, they're longing to meet you."
"Not a party, huh?" I question wryly, mocking the words she'd used over the phone to persuade me to come. "There'll be almost no one here but family, right?"
"Oh, come on. Most of the people here are family." She laces her hand through my elbow when she reaches me, sucking on the tiny straw of her scotch glass and leaning in to whisper. "And one of them could potentially become family, if you catch my drift."
I could hardly fail to "catch her drift." Subtlety is not Steph's strongest suit. I shoot her an annoyed look, and she giggles.
"My money's on the tall Amazonian blonde with the big bosom, by the way.
She's Australian—some kind of big shot in track and field athletics, I believe.
She's over here getting her doctorate in elite performance at NYU.
She hasn't taken her eyes off you since you got here.
She's all poised and in control on the outside, but she looks like she has the perfect amount of crazy in her eyes to be really hot in bed.
I bet she has some stamina too—phew, I wonder if she kills her partners after she's mated with them.
If so I imagine it would be by suffocation. What a way to go."
"I'm glad you're enjoying this so much."
"I'm glad I'm enjoying this too. Oh, and the little brunette over there by the pond.
The one in the cute pinafore dress. Her name is Anaya, and if I loved you as a human being, I would tell you to go for her.
But she's too much of a sweetheart for you, and you would chew her up in a second, so you're to leave her alone. "
"Earmarked her for yourself, have you?"
"Might have done. I might be planning to cover her in maple syrup, and then slowly lick—"
"Isn't your flavor of the month going to be mad when you bring a different girl home?" I interrupt my disgustingly horny sister's lewd musings.
"We have an open relationship," she says. "And if she gets mad, well then I guess that's it for us. Plenty more fish in the sea."
I shake my head. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a disloyal, borderline chauvinistic pig?"
"Please, like you don't sleep around."
"I don't give them false hope like you do.
" Every woman I've been with has known the score.
We get together, we fuck, and we go home.
My secretary sends them some flowers and a nice bag in the morning, and we never see each other again.
No sleepovers. No repeat performances. I don't give sweet words and false promises.
I definitely don't start anything even close to a relationship with them.
My sister, on the other hand, likes to play games with the people she dates.
They do this thing where they go super intense and physical for the first few weeks, and then they cool off on each other, sleep with other people, and then come back together, on rotation ad nauseam until one of them gets sick of it.
It's so fucking confusing to me. Back when I did have a girlfriend, I didn't even think of being with someone else.
Oh yeah? And where did that land you?
A dull anger pulses at the thought, and I scrub it away. Now's not the time to think about Marina. There are way better things for me to be mad about.
"Why do they keep doing this?" I murmur, as she drags me in.
"Because mom is worried about you, and they want grandkids before they die."
"Why don't they get on your ass about this shit?"
"Because they know I'm a lesbian, you idiot.
They don't expect grandchildren from me, and anyway, I'm a girl.
Even if I did marry a man and have children, my kids wouldn't continue the Wolfe name.
" She makes a face. "Well, at least that's how Daddy sees it.
Mom keeps accidentally leaving adoption pamphlets in my condo.
Between you and me, I think she just wants grandchildren to coo over and spoil, regardless of their name.
" We finally reach where my parents are standing.
My father is half a foot shorter than me, and balding with a rounded belly, but my tall, willowy mother, older now, but still showing the poise and symmetry that had made her a top runway model back in the mid nineteen eighties standing beside him, beams at him like he's the best thing since sliced bread.
"Oh, is that my wonderful son in the flesh?" She claps and gets on her tippy toes to embrace me. "I can't believe you're finally here. I was starting to think you'd found another family."
"I would have, but I've been busy. We acquired a few dozen new portfolios last month, and the logistics have been challenging."
"I understand that work is hard, but you need to relax sometimes too." My mom rests a hand on my cheeks. "My poor baby. You look exhausted every time I see you."
"I'm fine." I would be even better had I not attended this marriage market disguised as a family dinner, but I can't tell that to my mom. I have a soft spot for her. If it were just my dad and Steph, I would have torn their heads off. "I'm not sure how long I can stay, though."
"At least stay long enough to meet a few people." She gestures to the woman next to her and says, "This is Alyssa. She's Elma's daughter. You remember Elma, right?"
"Vaguely," I admit. She's one of the various women at one of my mother's various social clubs.
"Amazing! Well, Alyssa here is a social media influencer."
My father snorts. "That's what they're calling jobless people these days."
My mom smacks him in the arm, as the girl's face reddens and she says, "Actually, we just cracked a million followers on Instagram last week."
"Oh yeah? And what does that mean in real money terms?"
"Michael!" my mother gasps.
"What? I'm telling her the truth so she reconsiders her career."
Mortification glows on Alyssa's face, and my mom looks furious.
My father, on the other hand, looks like he couldn't care less.
He came to America from Ireland and built our family empire up from nothing.
Now that he's older, he doesn't have a lot of respect or patience for the new online money-making schemes.
On top of that, he has a naturally abrasive personality and will pretty much say anything he thinks, no matter who he offends.
Oh, and he's extremely judgmental.
My mom is judgmental, too, but in a different way.
When another woman we're standing with introduces herself as a chief financial analyst, my mom goes, "Does that not require a lot of time to do?"
"Yes," she says proudly. "I work twelve hours most days."
My mother makes a face. "Oh, no, dear, that won't do. How do you plan to raise kids with that kind of career?"
The woman's eyes flare open at the criticism, but she attempts to smile. "Well, I suppose I can figure that out when the time comes."
"It'll be too late by then. You need to figure it out before. Oh, and who did you say your parents were again?"
"Uh… Jennifer and Mathew Bluhm?"
"Hmm." My mother purses her lips.
My sister leans in to stage-whisper to me, "It's a no-go. Ten years ago, Jennifer Bluhm nabbed the Cavalli dress that Mom really wanted at couture and wore it to Majorca before Mom could. She'll never forgive her for that."
"Don't be ridiculous, Stephanie," my mother says. "I could never hold a grudge against that woman, especially over a dress that looked infinitely better on me."
"Right." My sister snorts. None of them seems to care how mortified the woman they're talking about appears, even as she makes a polite excuse and walks away with a last look at me.
If I were her, I would leave the party entirely, but she seems to still be sticking around to try her luck at joining the Wolfe dynasty.
Although I don't know why.