Billion Dollar Bastard: An Alpha Male Step Brother Billionaire Romance (3 page)

She sighed.

“All right, all right. Fine, lose you job—see if I care.”

Her threat rang a little hollow, if only because I knew that she would care almost as much as I did if I lost my job.

“Mom, have you talked to Kyle lately?” I said abruptly, thinking back to my conversation with Anthony.

“Kyle? Kyle Stone? No, why do you ask?”

“No… No reason.”

An awkward silence met me on the other end of the line.

“He’s been in the tabloids lately,” my mother said, finally breaking that very silence.

“The tabloids? Really? What for?”

“Some sort of messy divorce,” she replied. “I’m sure he could use a friend right now.”

I sighed.

“Mom, he was terrible to me when we were kids!”

“Oh, you were kids! Kids are always terrible to each other! I bet he’d love to see you.”

“I was just curious. I don’t need a Stone-O’Lowry family reunion.”

“Then why were you so curious?”

“I…” I mumbled, stuttering and unable to come up with an excuse. “Professor Kennedy wants me to see if he would be interested in donating to the department—endowing some professorships or offering grants or something like that. Something to ease up the problems around here.”

“Well, that boy certainly has money to spend… I did read somewhere that he’s the richest man in America under forty.”

“What? Kyle?!” I exclaimed. “I mean, I knew he was rich but not… Not that rich.”

“Oh, yes—Dominic left him a pretty penny, but he did well with it. He’s got his own private equity outfit. We tried to get them as clients but lost them to Cravath. They…”

And my mother launched into a discussion of litigation and inter-law firm politics. As with the discussion of 14
th
century Scottish literary conventions, my eyes glazed over. My ears only perked up when my mom chirped out: “Well, here, I found his number, so you go ahead and give him a call…”

Reluctantly, I took the number down. By this point, I was almost at my car. I said goodbye to her and, as I got into my car, I began listening to the message I had from Lori.

“Hi, Karen, it’s Lori. Please give me a call as soon as possible. It’s about your book. We… Have some problems. Thanks.”

The message clicked off.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” I mumbled. If my mother were here, she would have smacked me for swearing. But she wasn’t here, so I could indulge in salty language as much as I want as I dialed Lori’s number rapid fire.

“This is Lori Feng.”

“Lori! Karen. What’s up with my book?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Lori…”

“Listen, Karen, I know your department is in bad financial straits now… And everything.”

“Sure. What’s that got to do with my book?”

“The Press is afraid to be associated with the scandal.”

“What?”

“And they’re afraid to take a risk on a new author if you’re part of a department that might be dissolving.”

“How has everyone heard about this already?” I all but screamed into the speaker, whipping around a corner as I navigated the narrow New England country roads that led to my condo complex.

“I know it’s rough, but at the very least, we need to slow down the timeline while this gets sorted out…”

“Lori, this is my career we’re talking about! If I don’t get my book published, they’ll push me out of the department anyway!”

“I know that,” she scowled. “I fought for you! Really, I did. But I’m only a junior editor and I got overruled, okay? I think your book is great. I think it’s important. And other people here think that too.”

“So what’s the problem?” I demanded, my voice all ice and daggers.

“Just what I said. In this business, it’s as much who you know… And who you’re associated with.”

I sighed, pulling into a stop at the side of the road.

“So, what’s the deal?” I said finally, leaning my head on the edge of my steering wheel. “Are you dropping me or not?”

“They don’t want to go that far yet. They want to wait and see. We’ll push back the publication of your book six months and at the end of that period, if the department is stable and scandal free, we can publish.”

“And if the department has dissolved, not getting published will be the least of my worries at that point, right?” I muttered. Lori sighed.

“Bingo.”

We said our goodbyes and I finished driving home.

In what had seemed like a totally rational and reasonable thing to do when I first got my professorship, I bought a condo at Glenwood Oaks, a luxury condominium building four miles from campus. It’s in the woods, set back from the road, and quiet, with a big, beautiful, serene pool. I love going for swims late at night, the cool water soothing my warm, anxious skin and my tired eyes, letting my hair spread out around me as I float alone in the pool. I’m just about the only one who uses it and as soon as I got into my tasteful one-bedroom condo, I changed into my swimsuit and stalked outside.

I began by swimming laps. After twenty or thirty—frankly, I had lost count after a while—I just began to float, lying on my back and gazing up at the stars in the sky.

It was an unusually warm night for November. The pool was heated all throughout autumn, right through till the snow started falling, but it didn’t need it tonight. Tonight, I could just float and think and think and float.

My livelihood was at stake, and I was looking at a future without a career as a professor.

It hurt.

It hurt bad.

But there was a way out of it.

Kyle Stone. God, he had been such a dick when we were younger.

I remember going on vacations with him, his father, and my mother. I guess at the time, he had been my father and Kyle had been my brother, but it sure didn’t feel like it.

I remembered how we had rented a villa on Maui for two weeks, my spring break, when I really needed to study for all the AP exams my mother had me taking, while keeping up with the violin. Kyle, meanwhile, was determined to wear as little clothing as possible, and to annoy me whenever he could.

“Whatcha working on?” I remember him asking, standing over me as I lay out on the beach with a calculus study broad spread out on my pale thighs. I hadn’t even bothered to put on a swim suit because I had no intention of actually swimming. I couldn’t understand why my parents had insisted on taking this vacation, when they knew I would be studying.

Kyle, on the other hand, was on break from college. He was a sophomore or a junior at Bowdoin then, if I remember correctly.

He wore a tight speedo that hugged his crotch tight, leaving little to the imagination. He had tanned all over and his entire body, perfectly muscled and toned, all broad shoulders and legs like a swimmer’s, shone in the bright Hawaiian sun.

“Calculus,” I mumbled, trying to ignore him. He stepped over my chair, all but straddling me, his crotch in my face. The scent of his sunscreen, mixed with his sweat, his my nose and as much as I wanted to recoil, I remember being… What’s the worth? Come on, Karen, you’re an English professor… You should have a word…

Intoxicated.

Yes, the smell of my stepbrother’s practically naked body had been intoxicating for my teenaged, hormone addled brain. But that wasn’t enough to kill my drive to succeed, my determination to study and to study my ass off.

“You don’t need calculus,” Kyle laughed, plucking the book out of my hands with the careful, practiced, precise movements of a pitcher used to winning. “You’re too pretty for that.”

“Kyle!” I wailed, kicking him hard and reaching for the book. “Give. It. Back!”

“Make me,” he said with a wicked grin.

And then he took off, running down the beach. Screaming, tears starting to stream from my eyes, I went off after him, leaving my sandals behind so the hot sand scorched my poor feet. He was faster than me and he leapt gracefully, like a gazelle in his natural element, over the beachgoers lying out on the sand, ducking under umbrellas and dodging sandcastles.

I, on the other hand, went barreling unceremoniously through a kid’s artful sand creation.

“Sorry, sorry!” I squealed as I ran past and he burst into tears.

“That makes two of us,” I remember muttering as I chased Kyle down to the water.

“Why didn’t you put a bathing suit on?” he demanded, calling back from over his shoulders. “Come on, Karen! Let’s see some skin!”

“Kyle!” I wailed. “You asshole! Don’t you dare get my book wet!”

“Don’t I dare do what?” he asked, stepping out into the water. I stopped at the water’s edge, glaring at him.

“Give it back! I have to study!”

“You study too hard. You work too much. You should have some fun for once in your life.”

“I can have fun once I’m in college!” I said, leaping for the book. It danced out of my reach as I went crashing into the water, getting a mouthful of saltwater and sand in the process. As I stood up shakily, I saw Kyle wading out deeper, tossing the book up and down, up and down.

“Karen, you look great with a wet t-shirt. You should enter one of those contests! You could get a wings dinner for all of us.”

“Shut up!” I squealed, chasing after him, falling into the water again. “You’re such a jerk!”

“And you’re such a nerd!”

“At least I’m not an asshole!” I cried again as I leapt at him once more. I have no idea, thinking back now, what I had hoped to accomplish with that ill-fated leap. I crashed into him, into his strong body, my arms flying around him, grasping his firm, naked legs and pushing him over. He definitely hadn’t counted on the ferocity of my attack and he lost his balance. We both went under. So did my book.

As we sank, I realized he had gone out further that I had planned on. It was deep here, far deeper than I was tall! We weren’t in any danger, really, but I was so upset that when my feet couldn’t find the ground, I began to thrash underwater.

Kyle’s strong arms caught me. My eyes burnt from the saltwater but in the water, amidst the sand and the bubbles, I saw him looking at me.

And then… And then he had pressed his lips to mine. I kept thrashing and crying, gasping and sucking in water, and then he kissed me.

I felt his tongue in my mouth, felt him guiding me up to the surface.

As we rose up above the water’s edge, I gasped and sputtered. I realized that I was holding onto him, that my arms were wrapped around his neck and my legs around his waist, his speedo-clad crotch pressed against me.

He held me while I sputtered and cursed him, patting my back, getting me to cough.

“You… You’re a jerk…” I whimpered as he began to take me back to shore. Once I was sure I could walk on my own, once I was sure that it was shallow enough, I kicked away from him.

I didn’t even walk and wade through the water. I began to swim furiously, angrily, tears and salt still burning my eyes as I washed up on shore, like the survivor of a shipwreck, still in my regular clothes.

My mom took me to the bookstore in town to get me another prep book. I got a perfect score on the exam despite the incident.