Billion Dollar Bastard: An Alpha Male Step Brother Billionaire Romance (10 page)

KYLE

It hadn’t been hard to make the arrangements. Once I took Nicholas’s suggestion into account, along with what Masha had told me about Karen’s research, New Orleans had been the obvious choice.

I picked Karen up in Connecticut on Wednesday evening and drove her to the airport. I was delighted to see that she hadn’t just worn slouchy airplane clothes, but was actually wearing a smart and flirty short green dress.

“I thought I should wear something fun,” she said with a quick and easy smile. She hopped around, dancing in a circle for me to see. I approved. Oh yes.

I loved the way it showed off her long, slender pale legs. I hadn’t seen much of her body so far, but damn it all, I liked what I was seeing now. She worked out. She was more athletic than I had initially imagined.

And I was planning on giving her a workout before our trip was over.

As we stood in line, waiting to board the plane, Karen’s face was alive with delight. She had her nose buried in a guidebook, which promised a tour of the best literary sights in New Orleans. I, however, was not used to waiting.

“One moment, sis,” I murmured, stepping out of line and grabbing a flight attendant by the arm.

“Back in line, sir,” she said curtly. I flashed a smile.

“Of course—I just think there might be some mistake. I don’t think we ought to be waiting in this line.”

“You’re in the first class line, sir—what else do you want?”

I gently pressed my passport into her hand. Her eyes widened when she saw my name.

“Oh… Mr. Stone… I didn’t realize… One moment.”

She darted to the head of the line, whispered a few words to her colleagues, and gestured frantically towards us. Karen’s eyes were as wide as theirs were as we cut the line, gliding through onto the airplane.

“Mr. and Mrs. Stone, so good to see you. Welcome aboard, welcome aboard. Sorry about that mix up—you’re of course welcome to board the plane before all the other passengers.”

“Oh, we’re not married,” Karen said quickly, smiling.

“My mistake, ma’am—enjoy the flight, and if there’s anything at all—don’t hesitate to ask.”

In moments, we were comfortably ensconced in huge first class seats—the only kind I’m willing to fly in these days. I stretched out my legs, lazily picked at a copy of the Financial Times, and flagged down a flight attendant.

“What’s your best champagne?”

“Oh, sir—we’ve only one, Mr. Stone.”

“And it is?”

“Er, a prosecco.”

I shook my head.

“That won’t do. Send someone to the duty free shop and buy a bottle of Dom Perignon.”

I handed her my American Express card and turned back to Karen.

“Air travel, in general, is barbaric, but at the very least, we needn’t be barbarians about it.”

She just laughed.

“Kyle… I’m amazed. Do you really live like this all the time? This isn’t just an act to impress me?”

“Impress you? I’m not trying to impress you. You’re just coming along for the ride.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“I assure you,” I said with a smooth as silk grin. “This is just how I live every day.”

“Why did we get to cut that line? Do they just know you that well?” Karen asked, her eyes searching mine. I replied with my own grin.

“I happen to own a fifty-two percent stake in this airline. I’m essentially their boss.”

“Oh? Why don’t you just travel by private jet?” she asked, her voice teasing.

“Do you know how expensive a private jet is? Not to buy, but to maintain. I had one for a few years but it was absurd, just a waste of money. I don’t like to waste money. I like to enjoy it.”

As if on cue, a red-faced flight attendant dashed down the aisle, pushing his way through struggling, lumbering passengers. Clutched in his sweaty hands was an ice cold bottle of 2004 Dom Perignon.

“Not a moment too soon,” I announced as he stopped, catching his breath and fumbling to open the bottle. I snatched it out of his hands, deftly stripped the wrapper off, and popped the cork. A bit of champagne bubbled out.

“Flutes?” I asked the flight attendant. He nodded and dashed off. Meanwhile, Karen wasted no time.

“You might not like to waste money, but I don’t like to waste champagne,” she declared, snatching the bottle from my hands and slurping the run off. She winked as me as she inhaled the bubbles and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Not very professional, Mrs. Stone.”

“I’m on vacation. You’ve never seen me away from the department.”

“I’ve seen you in my bedroom.”

Her face darkened.

“And how’d that work out for you?” she asked.

“Not as well as I had hoped, I admit, but I’ll give you time to come around.”

“Keep hoping.”

“I don’t have to hope.”

The flight attendant returned with our flutes. In a strange twist, he held them both out while I poured our drinks. I knew that wasn’t what he was supposed to do and he knew it too, but Karen didn’t seem to care.

“I always get what I want,” I said finally as we clinked glasses, toasting as the plane filled up with passengers—passengers not lucky enough to be my guest in first class.

KAREN

Kyle may always get what he wants, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for him.

As soon as we arrived in New Orleans, we went straight to the hotel. But I didn’t bother accompanying him up to the room.

“I’ve got a meeting scheduled with Maribeth Wilson’s great-great-great-grand-daughter at the Tulane University archives,” I said as we pulled up to the hotel, magnificent in its colonial, old French glory. Kyle raised an eyebrow. I did so like the way his handsome face contorted, annoyed when I made my announcement. Poor, poor Kyle. You can’t have everything you want, boy.

At least, not right away. Not just yet. Not… Oh, damn.

I danced out of the car and hailed a cab. As we raced off to the next neighborhood over, I glanced back to blow Kyle a kiss. His face was dark, annoyed. He looked extra cute when he was annoyed.

Oh, god, was I actually thinking about him as… As cute? I hated that I was thinking those thoughts but there was no denying it, no denying that I thought he was cute.

More than cute. Sexy.

Hell, more than sexy. Sexy as hell. Broad shoulders, chiseled face, those eyes too, and perfect hair every day. And the way he wore a suit… It was more like making love to the fabric. I’d love to strip one of those Hugo Boss numbers off him.

Damn it, girl, calm down. You’re here to do research, not jump your ex-stepbrother’s bones.

But it’s not the worse thing in the world if I end up adding some extracurriculars to my school work, right?

No. No. No.

I had to focus, had to do work. I couldn’t get involved with Kyle. That was that. There was nothing else to it—it would cause a scandal and the department didn’t need another one. Besides, the damage it would do to my career… It could cause irreparable damage. I’d never recover.

I’d… I’d have to go to law school. My mother would be so happy.

A stately older woman met me on the steps of the Tulane library. Amidst all the slouchy, lazy looking college students in sweatshirts and jeans, she stood out: she clearly had dressed up for this occasion. She wore a gorgeous purple gown with a long matching beaded necklace and a light lavender sunhat that gave her the appearance of possessing a huge, beautiful halo.

“Jemma? Jemma Wilson?” I asked, approaching her and extending my hand.

Jemma’s wrinkled face broke into a smile as she took my hand.

“Karen! Oh, hun, it’s so good to meet you in person and put a face to the name. Now, let me get a look at you…”

She drew me close, her old eyes squinting into my face through her thick glasses.

“Oh, and such a pretty girl! Here, I thought you were going to be some old fuddy-duddy professor…”

“I only completed my doctorate last year,” I explained. “So I’m still fairly young. Especially for academia.”

“Lovely, lovely,” Jemma murmured, taking my hand. Before I knew it, we were striding arm-in-arm into the archives. The security guard clearly knew Jemma and tipped his hat to her, buzzing us in without another word.

“I’ve been coming here every week or so for the past twenty years to work on Maribeth’s papers… You know, preserving, editing, copying, digitizing them. We’re hoping to put out a complete volume in the next few years,” she explained. I realized that she must have destroyed her sight pouring over the manuscripts—this woman, a former schoolteacher who, in her retirement, had become enraptured with her ancestor’s writings and began to catalog them.

“That’s fantastic. You’re doing such great work. I’m sure Maribeth is proud of you.”

We chatted some more, and then, Jemma left me alone with the manuscripts. Most were in the form of diaries: old bound books that Maribeth had kept for years and years, writing every single day and sometimes more than once in a day, detailing her thoughts, scribbling out poems, or sketches of clients who frequented her brothel.

I began to page through them. I had no idea what I was looking for, exactly. I knew I wanted to write about the difficulty Maribeth must have faced as a woman trying to write in the South so shortly after the Civil War, how this would have forced her to make diaries her primary medium: writing only for herself, an audience of one. I wondered if maybe that was the only kind of audience available to a woman in the South back then.

The hours ticked by that afternoon as I immersed myself in Maribeth’s lurid descriptions of New Orleans’s exotic underworld: of the returning Confederate soldiers eager to spend whatever money they had left on evenings of pleasure with colored hookers, of the flowing cocktails at her endless parties, of the many lovers she took personally.

Amazingly, so much of her diary was taken up with talk of business: how to expand, how to advertise, how to eliminate her competitors. I wondered if Kyle would find it interesting. Maribeth had been, by all accounts, an extremely accomplished businesswoman in a difficult business and had faced, of course, no small number of obstacles owing to her race and gender. And yet, in spite of all of it, she had succeeded—she had made a fortune over the course of her life and died rich, an almost respectable member of New Orleans society, kept out of the best homes and parties only on account of her race—not even on account of her profession.

Then I came across an entry that gave me pause:

“August 24
th
1871—

I saw Thomas O’Grady off today. He is bound for Chile where he believes he will find work. He is not a literate man and has always refused my offers to teach him letters and figures. He is Irish and the Gaelic race, as I understand them, prefer to work by the sweat of their brow than by the wit of their brains. It hurts me to think this is what the old masters would have said of the Negro race.

I will miss his handsome strong ruddy face and the way he held me late at night. I will miss the way he sweated and the way he sighed in my own embrace, constitutionally unused to the heat of our Southern clime. I fear that Chile will be no relief to him and though I explained this to him, he is adamant.

He offered me to come with him. With my learning and wits, he said, I might learn the Spanish tongue quickly (easy, he thinks, for I already speak French like a Parisian) and I might set up business down there where I understand that Negroes are not so hated as here. We might be married and though business will not be so healthy as it is here, Thomas believes we might have a life together.

I confess this offer gave me many sleepless nights. I have struggled with my feelings over it. Every fiber of my heart demands that I accompany him, that I cast my fate in with this man I love, but every cell of my brain, so accustomed to calculating costs and salaries and percentages and equities, sees only ruin and my brain, I am afear’d, has won over my heart.

There was no shortage of tears on my part and Thomas’s, and some harsh words, though we kissed those away. Thomas sang me a song of his village in Ireland, a Gaelic tune whose words I could not understand, and he played the fiddle too. He fiddles beautifully and I shall miss the way he fiddles on the terrace while I draw us a bath in the morning, the smoke of his pipe clouding around his head in our thick humid air.

There shall be others I know but none like Thomas perhaps. Oh, have I made a mistake? My heart might rend itself in two now. Already he is out to sea.

All ready he is gone.”

This entry, like all the others in Maribeth’s papers, was signed, simply, “MW.” There were a few dark spots next to the signature and I wondered if, perhaps, those were… Could they be… Tears? Tear stains?

Here was a woman who had built success, built a future, a life for herself in a hostile world—but at what cost?

At the cost of love. At the cost of her heart.

I felt tears welling in my eyes. I felt so close to Maribeth now. I ached for her. Ached for the choices she had had to make so many years ago, in the city where I now communed with her works.

I could have sworn that I felt her drawing me close, drawing close to me over the ages. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. A text message.

It was Kyle. I knew it without even looking.

“Maribeth…” I whispered. “What should I do?”