House Rules (The Titans #1)

1. Phoenix

Phoenix

It’s right there, staring me in the face, daring me to take it.

Taunting me.

My fingers smooth the skirt of my maid’s uniform, drying the dampness of sweat and nerves, and I swallow past the lump in my throat.

My ticket to ride is inches away in a glass case with half a dozen other watches.

He probably wouldn’t even miss it. That one little watch could buy my freedom, could buy a whole new life.

I could move somewhere new, somewhere the ghost of my father’s memory doesn’t haunt me—that or my inconvenient, unrequited crush on the four most powerful men in the entire state of Georgia .

The Titans.

One of them is my former boyfriend; the other three his best friends. They’re all the children of my employers—the Titan-Wynn Conglomerate. Their families own a crazy number of resort-casinos around the United States.

Despite knowing how pathetic it is, I’ve been mooning over every one of the Titans since we were kids.

That watch is my means of getting away from them, away from all the people who still call me Pheebs, like they did when I was a scrawny twelve-year-old girl.

I can run away, and like my actual name suggests, I can be reborn somewhere new.

Maybe Montana or Washington state. Anywhere that bears no resemblance to Savannah and the Titans’ ridiculous floating casino and the people who live here in their resort.

All I need is the courage to reach out and take it.

The watch, with its platinum case framing a dark green face, and all its little dials—I have no idea what any of them mean—along with its dark green crocodile skin band—is a thing of beauty.

I have a hard time believing, though, that it’s worth close to two hundred thousand dollars.

It’s just a watch, right? How can it be worth so much?

How can a timepiece be worth more than a car—hell, worth more than the homes some people live in?

What parent in their right mind spends that mind-boggling amount of money on a fucking watch, especially when they know their kid is never going to wear it?

It’s ridiculous. Baffling. Irritating. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand the finer things in life, never having had them, but I do know what two hundred thousand dollars means.

Freedom. It’s more money than I will ever see, all wrapped up in one little watch that Conrad Masterson never even wears.

Not because he doesn’t like it, I don’t think.

I’ve watched him all these years. We practically grew up together at this resort, after all.

It’s a big, fancy-ass place—part of it rising tall on the banks of the Savannah River and the other part a seven-deck casino cruise ship offering a cruise and gambling experience.

There are plenty of spaces to hide, but I was close enough to see things. To see him .

Especially given our brief ‘relationship’ when we were juniors in high school.

Con turns up his nose at just about everything his parents provide for him. Poor little rich boy, he doesn’t like the pretty things Mommy and Daddy buy him.

The thought is cruel and jealous— ugly , my mom would’ve said—and not something I would typically think about anyone. Anyone except the Titans, I guess. It’s not even technically true—Con is anything but a poor little rich boy—but the idea helps me keep my distance.

Soon enough, Con and his friends won’t be my problem anymore. They’ll be just another distant memory of a time that needs forgetting.

I chew on my lip, staring at the watch through the case.

That’s if I actually work up the nerve to take the damn thing.

If I do, I’ll leave Savannah immediately.

Go a couple of towns over…no, I’ll have to go to a different state altogether, somewhere no one knows who Con Masterson or the Titans are.

Somewhere he ’ll never think to look, and since it’ll probably take him a month to even realize the watch is missing, I’ll be long gone, anyway.

I start to reach for it, then jerk my hand back. But what if he notices right away? What if he catches me? The possibility makes my heart pound, and a single bead of sweat traces my spine.

What would he do to me?

I’d be fired, that much was certain, but would he call the police?

The watch’s value is enough for the crime to be considered a felony.

I don’t have any priors, but that doesn’t matter if a Masterson is involved.

I don’t doubt that the Mastersons would pay off any number of lawyers and judges to ensure I never saw sunlight again.

They’d hold me up as an example, use me to show everyone what happens when someone steals from a Titan.

That’s the best case scenario. The longer I think about Con and the way he moves around this town with his friends, the more certain I am that they probably wouldn’t waste their time with a trial .

The worst outcome would see me dead, my body weighed down with bricks and tossed in the Savannah. Or maybe they’d take me out on their private boat and simply push me over the side once they hit the open sea.

I’ve never stolen anything before. I’ve never taken anything that wasn’t mine, not because it’s wrong or a sin or anything else the Bible beaters in this town would say as they held up their pitchforks.

They’re big on protesting the luxurious riverboat casino, even while they avert their eyes from their own pastor boarding for poker tournaments.

No. I’ve never stolen anything because I was never desperate enough to do it. Now that my father is dead, that’s no longer true. I have a decent job in housekeeping here at the resort, but I can’t cover the bills without him. I also have no reason to stay here. All I need is enough money to leave.

Steeling my nerves, I reach for the glass case.

My stomach jumps and flutters, and I tense against the sensation.

This is the only tricky part. I just have to take it, and then I can hide it in the maid’s cart waiting for me in the corridor outside, under the pile of used sheets.

Once my shift is done, I can leave and never look back .

Easy breezy.

My hand is on the case when something thuds against the hotel room door, and the lock beeps.

Panic grips my heart, and I jerk my hand back. What do I do? Pretend to clean? Act like I was leaving?

Hide. With my near-felony and that thought uppermost in mind, I throw myself into the closet, closing the door and hiding between Con’s plastic-covered dry cleaning and his black undershirts, which, despite being washed, still smell like him.

It’s the same scent as when he was a junior, clean and fresh, touched with bergamot and something spicy.

The scent is like heaven, strong and masculine while still refined and so incredibly sexy.

I close my eyes and just breathe it in for a moment, savoring what will hopefully be my last smell of Con.

Just as the thought enters my head, the man himself enters the room with some skinny blonde girl latched on to him, her hands trailing over his shoulders and chest and moving lower.

I squint through the slats in the closet door. I’m pretty sure that’s the new waitress in one of the floating casino’s restaurants, but I’m not sure which. If she’s up here with Con, she isn’t going to last long, anyway.

He won’t have her fired, but she’ll fall for him and be all starry-eyed, and start obsessing over a future with him, all while he won’t even remember her name. She’ll be crushed and heartbroken, and the broken girls always leave.

I know, because I’ve been there—one minute falling hard for a charming asshole, the next minute crying in the seventh floor bathroom. I didn’t leave, but that’s because I didn’t have a lot of options.

I know I shouldn’t watch.

I can’t help it, though. I can just see them in the tiny spaces the slats provide. The smart thing to do would be to press myself further into the closet and hide behind the safety of Con’s suits and designer clothes. But I don’t. Apparently curiosity is done with the cat and coming for me.

The girl puts her hands on his broad shoulders and rises up on her toes, trying to reach his shapely lips. She wants to kiss him. I don’t blame her. Sometimes I ache to taste those lips one more time, too, as much as it pains me to admit .

He lets her try to stretch up to meet his lips with hers, not moving a single inch to help her or close the distance. Instead, he waits until she is almost there, her mouth centimeters from his.

I run my tongue over my own lips in sympathetic anticipation.

The second her lips are about to touch his, he grabs her by the hair, his fist twisting in at the nape, and he uses it to pull her away from him. He stares at her face for a moment, then pushes her down, face first, on the bed.

“Tell me you want my cock,” he demands, and I feel my body respond to his crude words. Damn. Con’s turned into an utter jerk, but my vagina doesn’t much care.

“I want your cock,” she says on a breathy moan, twisting to sit up on the bed. I roll my eyes.

“Prove it,” he growls.

She moves to kneel on the floor and unzips his pants. He crosses his arms and glares down at her while she takes his already rock-hard cock out of his pants and strokes it. I feel my own eyes widen as I take him in .

Mother Mary, I had forgotten how big he was.

Con was my first. We were juniors—young, reckless, and drowning in secrets.

He had moved over me with the precision of someone trying not to fuck up the one good thing he’d ever had. His hands were shaking. Mine weren’t.

I remember the heat of his chest against mine, the way he whispered my name like it meant something.

And then?—

I saw him.

Maverick, standing in the shadows. Watching. His hand curled around his cock, stroking himself as if he’d been there the whole time, as if this had been part of the plan.

I should have screamed. Covered myself. Pushed Con aside and run away like an outraged virgin.

Instead, I looked him dead in the eye—and came so hard I forgot how to breathe.