Billion Dollar Bastard: An Alpha Male Step Brother Billionaire Romance (2 page)

“Gatsby dies in the end, Nick,” I grumbled. “Your choice of reading material is not making me feel anymore confident.”

“You could always start a charity or a foundation,” Nicholas suggested finally, setting down the book. “Something that’ll get people distracted, that’ll make them think of you as a philanthropist, rather than a wife-beating billionaire.”

“I’m not…”

“Damn it, Kyle!” Nicholas roared, turning on me. “I know you’re a fine, decent man but that’s not what you pay me for. I’m telling you what this says you are! That’s what you pay me for!”

He strode up to my desk, pointing at the tabloid.

“And this says you’re a rich playboy who slaps around his ex-wife, a girl barely out of college! It doesn’t say anything about her using drugs or cheating on you or kicking you out of your house! All it says is that you were seen with your hands on her outside of a nightclub!”

Nicholas was one of the only people I’d let talk to me that way, and even then, it was hard not to leap over my desk and throw a left-hook into his jaw.

Hell, if I did that, he wouldn’t even hold it against me. And not just because he’d be too busy holding a package of frozen carrots against his cracked jaw.

But that would’ve been a waste of time.

And besides, he was right. Right about every damned thing.

“Fine. Fine,” I growled. “I’ll look for… Something. Some way to give back.”

“Think of it as a long term plan. Look at Bill Gates—billionaire to philanthropist. Don’t see it as a chore. See it as an opportunity.”

All right. I would try to see it as an opportunity.

At least this seemed like something I could, literally, throw money at. My favorite way to pass the time.

KAREN

All faculty meetings operate in one of two moods: boring as hell, or depressing as hell.

Based on the way it started, it seemed like it would be a combination.

I could feel my eyes start to glaze over as one of the other professors began talking about her truly interminable research into the citational systems of 14
th
century Scottish monastery manuscripts. She was going to conference to present next week, so it was well within her right, I suppose, to monopolize our time with her medieval trivia.

But that didn’t stop my eyes from wandering out to the green, the jewel in the century of campus. Fresh-faced, ruddy-faced students lounged all over, the picture of languid, easy-going collegiate life. Some studied on blankets, while others flung Frisbees between them, laughing and squealing.

I saw groups of sorority girls picnicking, shooting eyes as the fraternity boys who were in the process of grilling and playing football, acting like complete cavemen: look, fire! Look, acts of strength and big, big muscles!

Oh, I knew what those girls were going through. I had been there before.

It’s easy to fall in love with a quick, carefree smile and a set of cut abs. I knew that all too well. In fact, Tyrone seemed to know it because I had an email from him, as I discovered when I clicked into my inbox in desperation, trying to stave off complete death from boredom.

I delighted it immediately. It felt good.

I should be paying attention, I decided. This was my career. It was my career that was important, not Tyrone. Not the boys and girls outside, and their primitive mating rituals. The work I was doing in here was the reason I WAS here. Even if it was boring.

“Next order of business,” Anthony Kennedy, the chair of the department, and my mentor began, his voice beset by obvious sleepiness and fatigue as the Scottish woman from the 14
th
century sat down. His handsome, lean older face had developed a conspicuous set of particularly deep and noticeable wrinkles in the last few months, coinciding with his appointment as Department Chair and the lawsuit against Gary Towson—the ancient troublemaker who started this mess.

Of course, no one could prove that he had groped a female undergraduate back in 1995, but she was finally suing and the senior faculty almost universally had his back, had voted to divert department funds to fight the suit. He was, after all, one of the most illustrious professors we had, and (almost) universally loved by all his students.

And so, the department was in serious financial straits. It was this that Anthony found himself dealing with, facing down the row of stern pale, grizzled faces that demanded success from him, demanded a solution to the problem they had created.

“We’re hoping that we can reach out to private sources for additional funds to make it through the rest of the year,” he said carefully. Judging from the sweat on his brow, he was nervous. I had never known him to be nervous and the fact that he was—that scared me.

“So, what? We’re supposed to be fundraising now?” someone said. This set off a chorus of grumbles and murmurs from around the room. I watched helplessly as Anthony sighed and called for calm.

“Don’t think of it as fundraising. Think of it as alumni engagement. Think of it as… As lobbying. I don’t know. Think of it as whatever you want, but it’s what we have to do if we want to continue to exist as an independent department within this university.”

“Maybe we don’t?” someone else said. “I hear the Modern Languages department gets free Italian catered every Friday!”

“That might be true,” Anthony said seriously, glaring down his interlocutor. “But they also have room for only ten professors.”

The math was easy to do. We had twenty-one professors. Eleven would have to go, at least.

I was doomed to be among that eleven. I just knew it.

The meeting moved on, going through discussions of course syllabi, scheduling dissertation defenses, and taking suggestions for where to hold the faculty Christmas party—as if we didn’t have more important things to spend money on. Professor Towson smugly suggested the most expensive restaurant in town, a Michelin-starred establishment that could, over the course of a single meal, easily bankrupt the department.

But what did he care? His job was destined to be safe, and the lawsuit was destined to die away in court, at the cost of my job.

As the meeting finished up, Anthony waved to me.

“Karen? Could we chat?”

I felt a deep bit of anxiety in my chest. Normally, when Anthony wanted to chat, it was to ask about my book deal, or articles I was writing, or the classes I was teaching.

Now, I felt positive that he would be telling me to start looking for a new job.

The thought of not teaching, of leaving that classroom with my students completely enraptured by what I was saying—it tore me to pieces. I saw their faces, each one: smug, ruddy lacrosse players and sorority girls with fake tans, and smart girls from the ‘hood on scholarships, and nerdy computer science boys just trying to fulfill a last requirement before graduating—where else but a university, this university, would they all be brought together to discuss and learn about the power of books, the power of reading?

And now it was going to be taken away from me. I felt selfish. It was really the students who would suffer, the students whose tuition dollars were ultimately being used to defend a pervert in court. But there was nothing I could do to stop from feeling like everything I had worked for, everything I had always wanted—it was all about to be torn away from me.

“How’s class?” Anthony asked as the last of the other faculty dissipated from the meeting and we sat back down, this time next to one-another. His face had softened as he shed his armor. No longer did he look so stern and stony—now, he just looked tired.

“It’s good. I’ve got the kids reading Harriet Jacobs for Monday.”

“That’s good. Powerful stuff.”

“Some of the best.”

“You’re right.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Karen, I hate to ask you about this, but do you know someone named Kyle Stone?” Anthony finally said, not meeting my eyes.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times before answering.

“I… Sure, I do. He’s my step-brother. Well, he was my step-brother. Our parents got married when we were in high school and divorced a few years later. He was away at boarding school and college most of that time, so I didn’t see him except on holidays…” I replied finally. Kyle Stone was a name I hadn’t heard for a long time.

“He’s done quite well for himself, hasn’t he?” Anthony suggested, his voice breaking a bit. I saw immediately what he wanted.

“I… I don’t know if I could ask him to donate. We were just never all that close. Honestly, he was a total asshole back them—he’d pull my hair, make fun of me, everything—incredibly immature.”

“I understand, I understand…” Anthony said and sighed. “I didn’t want to ask because I suspected as much but it’s just…”

“…he’s a billionaire,” I replied. Anthony nodded gravely.

“A lot of it he inherited. From his dad.”

“Your stepfather.”

“Ex-stepfather,” I corrected him quickly. “Our parents divorced. It was a second marriage for both of them. Neither ever got to the ‘third time’s the charm moment,’ though.”

“Oh?”

“Kyle’s father, Dominic Stone… I know he killed himself a few years ago…”

Anthony’s eyes widened.

“Karen, I’m so sorry… I had no idea…”

I shrugged.

“I mean, he was never really a father to me, so it just leaves me cold… My mother was upset, as you might imagine, but she didn’t even go to the funeral. There was already too much bad blood there.”

“So, you absolutely wouldn’t feel comfortable contacting Kyle?” Anthony said, finally. I shook my head.

“I just can’t… I don’t think there’s anything left for me to draw on there. Does that make sense?”

Anthony nodded and smiled, a bitter look in his eye.

“I really should be asking the other faculty to get their rich former students to donate… But you know how they are.”

I smiled sadly, laying my hand on his.

“Something will turn up. The University will bail us out. Something will come through.”

“I’m… I’m sure you’re right,” Anthony said, rising to leave. “I’ll see you after Thanksgiving, then. Take care of yourself.”

I watched him walk out of the spacious meeting room, down the richly decorated and sculpted halls of our building. For a place so old and wealthy, the University truly outdid themselves in piling on the ivy, piling on the markers of old world extravagance and privilege.

And poor Anthony Kennedy, my mentor, fit so poorly in the middle of it, in the middle of the richly carved oak paneling on the walls and the coats of arms of the wealthy families who had once donated to the University and to the department specifically. He walked slowly, at about half the speed a man his age would normally go, and he was no young man, not anymore. He limped too, the result of an old war wound acquired in Saigon, back in 1968 during the Tet Offensive. He never talked about his time in the war and I didn’t blame him, but I couldn’t help but wonder about it.

And I wondered if he ever considered which had been easier—the war, or a peace time career in academia.

When I finally looked down at my phone again, I saw I had two missed calls and two corresponding voicemails. One was from my mother and the other from Lori, the representative from Oxford University Publishing who had been preparing the book version of my dissertation for publication. I started to call back Lori but I decided to call my mother first.

Sometimes, family really does come first.

“Antonia O’Lowry’s office. Miranda speaking.”

Miranda was my mother’s secretary. As a partner at a big time, giant law-firm managing a group of nearly two hundred other lawyers, my mother doesn’t mess around. Fortunately, Miranda knew me and as soon as I began to speak, I imagined her stern, clipped face softening.

“Hi, Miranda, it’s Karen. Can you transfer me to my mom?”

“Oh, Karen, hi, girl!” Miranda squealed. We were on good terms. “Sure thing, you got it. Your mom just got out of a meeting and she should be back at her desk—yeah, there she is. Just a moment.”

The phone clicked and began to ring again. Now, my mother picked up.

“Antonia O’Lowry.”

“Hi, mom.”

“Oh, hi, good of you to call me back. I hope I’m not taking up too much of your valuable time.”

I found myself rolling my eyes, even though my mother couldn’t see them. She made a huge deal of the fact that I didn’t call her enough—in her opinion, at least. As far as I was concerned, a call a week was more than enough. I tried to tell her I was busy, and that might have worked for some people, but when your mother is the only female partner at a big law firm, pulling eighty hour weeks and working twice as hard as the boys to prove her worth, she knows a thing or two about busy.

“How’s that mess with the department?”

I instantly regretted ever mentioning any of that to her. I tried to summarize it in such a way that didn’t make it seem like things were so bad, but I still heard the dismay in my mother’s sighs as I recounted the meeting.

“That damned fool Towson…” she grumbled. “You know what you should do, is…”

“Mom!” I growled. “I’m not going to stand up and denounce him in front of everyone, or whatever it is you want me to do—that’s who you are. Not me.”