Billion Dollar Bastard: An Alpha Male Step Brother Billionaire Romance (5 page)

KAREN

The car picked me up at Penn Station right at 7:45. A tall man, clad in a particularly fine black suit met me in the main hall, holding a sign with my name on it. When I identified myself as Karen O’Lowry, he immediately took on a hyper deferential attitude towards me.

“Right this way, Ms. O’Lowry. May I take your back? May I get you a coffee or water for the ride?”

We fought our way through Manhattan traffic, inching our way uptown block by block until we arrived at Kyle’s building. Kyle called ahead and let the doorman know who I was. I was buzzed in and directed up to the penthouse.

So, this was the world of the rich and famous. It made me a little sick to see how well some people lived, when everyone else is just scraping by. More than that, though, I was curious. Curious and jealous. And feeling like that, that only made me feel… sicker.

I thought the elevator ride up to the penthouse would never end. Finally, the elevator dinged to a halt. I realized it hadn’t stopped on any of the other floors, nor did it even have buttons for the other floors. This was a private elevator to the top of the gorgeous, pre-war parkside building.

The elevator doors slid open and, just like that, I was in Kyle’s living room.

And oh god, what a room. I never really realized how rich he was until I saw that room.

It was bigger than some of the lecture halls we crammed hundred or so students into. My entire condo could fit into it two or three or more times over. The walls were beautifully decorated with particularly fine art—I was sure I identified a Picasso and a Miro hanging on my ex-brother’s wall on either side of his fire place—while one wall was all sliding glass doors, leading out onto a magnificent terrace, stretching far out of my range of building, seeming to go around the entire perimeter of the building. A carefully cultivated garden expanded along the terrace, with themes ranging from a Zen Japanese retreat to a more tropical style and then roses and other flowers.

It was on the terrace that I spied a figure, dressed in a dark Navy blue suit, leaning with both hands on the railing looking over the city. He sure did cut an impressive figure against the rich, silky blue of the mid-autumn New York sky.

I stepped out onto the terrace, shivering as the cold November wind washed over me. God, but the air up here was so fresh and clean. We were so high above the muck and grime of the city, so high above all the petty squabbles and strifes that so occupied the lives of those earth-dwellers while we, cloud people, lorded over them…

“Kyle,” I called out. The figure raised his head and turned to me.

Oh, god, but he had grown up.

And he had grown up good.

He was taller than I remembered and not as skinny. Not that he was fat—simply, he had put on muscle, and he struck a powerful, imposing figure. His light brown hair was casually and carelessly tousled, the look of a man who spends a lot of time trying to look like he doesn’t really care, though I could honestly believe that it had been the wind, whipping stereotypically through his brown locks…

His face was gorgeous but strangely distant and numb, like a handsome face looking at you from out of an old photograph: partially obscured, partially abstracted by time, but still present. Still legible.

He strode towards me with precise, broad steps. Commanding steps. He stopped three feet away from me and smiled. White teeth, light pink lips, and grey eyes that flashed with his grin.

“Karen. It’s been a while. How are you, sis?”

He reached out a hand to me and I took it. He pulled me close, into a hug, and I let him, let him press me against his broad chest. It felt so damned strange, in his arms, feeling his powerful chest, just barely contained by the fine suit. I breathed in his cologne and immediately, I was transported back to the time, years ago, on the beach, when he had stolen my book and I had found myself briefly intoxicated by his scent, by the smell of young masculinity in summertime.

As we drifted apart, I smiled.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it’s good to see you too.”

“Won’t you have a seat?” he said, gesturing to a table and chair set. There was already a decanter full of red wine and two glasses. Well, wasn’t he prepared?

He poured me a glass as I sat down and then poured himself one. We clinked glasses and I took a sip of the blood-red liquid, savoring the way it melted my jaw, sending shivers up and down my spine.

“That’s a 2007 Bourdeux,” Kyle informed me. “One of my favorite vinters.”

“Well, it’s way better than the two dollar stuff I usually buy,” I found myself admitting with a smile.

“I aim to please. So…” he said, swirling the wine in his glass, letting it splash around lazily. “Tell me. What’s so special about nineteenth century literature?”

And so I told him. I told him about the importance of re-imagining American literature to include the voices of women. I brought up the poignancy of the situation of writers like Harriet Jacobs, writers not far removed from slavery. I mentioned the debt that American society owed to its former slaves. I talked about all the interesting writers that scholarship has yet to focus on.

“For instance, Harriet Jacobs got a lot of attention in the ‘90s, but there’s another writer I’m particularly interested in, Maribeth Wilson, who was a former slave who bought her freedom, ran a brothel in New Orleans, and actually wrote novels and poetry right up until the Civil War, while keeping detailed notes about all the famous customers who came to her establishment…”

“Famous like who?”

“Well, Jefferson Davis, for one. The President of the Confederacy.”

“So, tell me—what are the chances that this lady writer of yours made the beast with two backs with the President of the Confederacy?” Kyle asked, once again swirling his wine, that shit-eating grin back on his face. I scowled and kicked him under the table. He mimed being hurt.

“That’s not the point. The point is, it’s interesting. And it’s important.”

“But why, Karen, is it important?”

“Because it is! Why is anything important? Why is it important to cure diseases? Why is it important to build schools? We’ve decided that things like this are valuable—“

“No,” Kyle murmured, titled his glass towards me. “You’ve decided that this is valuable. You’re still trying to convince me of that.”

I closed my eyes. Had this really just been a trick, a trick to drive me nuts? Was he still the prick he had always been?

“It’s important, Kyle, because it helps us to understand who we are. It helps us to understand our culture and the way we became… Who we are.”

He was quiet for a few moments. He nodded slowly. And then finally, he smiled.

“All right, Tyesh. You’ve got yourself some cash.”

I bit my lip.

“Really? I swear to god, if you’re lying…”

“Really. But, listen. I want to be directly involved with this project.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean that I want to help. I can fund a professorship for an American studies scholar focused on women’s writing in the 19
th
century. That should basically be you, right? They don’t have anyone else they could give it to?”

“Exactly.”

“And then I’ll fund a few graduate student positions so you always have students to mentor.”

“That’s way too generous, Kyle…”

“And then, we’ll add in—let’s say, a full-scholarship for ten students interested in majoring in English? I think we can manage all of that.”

I couldn’t say anything. I tried several times but Kyle just raised his glass.

“Let’s drink to the future of the discipline, shall we?”

We drank and I felt myself getting hot and dizzy. This was too good to be true. There had to be a catch. There had to be one, somewhere.

But I couldn’t find one. Maybe he really had changed. Maybe he wasn’t the prick I always thought he was.

As we chatted, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far apart our worlds were. His business was so foreign for me: buying and selling companies, slicing and dicing them for a profit, making millions of dollars a month. More money than I would ever make in my lifetime.

“It boggles the mind,” I said finally, as Kyle detailed breaking up an Azerbaijani oil company into three smaller companies, and then selling each one for more than he had bought the original one for.

“What does?”

“Just… How you can have so much money—and wield so much power over people’s lives. Whether or not they have jobs. Stuff like that.”

“Someone’s bound to have that power, Karen. It might as well be me.”

“But why should it be you?”

“Because,” he said with an almost sinister grin. “I took it.”

After we finished our wine, he volunteered to show me the rest of his place. I almost didn’t want to see it but curiosity got the best of me. Besides the extravagant living room, there was a chef’s kitchen, and an indoor pool and fully stocked gym. There was a full-sized ball room and billiards room, and seven bedrooms. Finally, we came to the master bedroom, a room at least as big as my entire apartment, also joined by the outdoor terrace.

“And here, finally, we end the tour,” he announced with a smile.

He tossed off his jacket onto a chair and I found myself sinking down onto his bed. He stripped off his tie and stood before me, our eyes locked. I felt my breath coming in short, slow bursts. And then, it was hard to breathe at all.

What the hell was I feeling? Was I actually attracted to him? That was so wrong—after all, he had been my brother!

But we weren’t related by blood.

And we weren’t brother and sister now.

“You know, I’m excited to work close together in the future,” Kyle said coolly.

“Me… me too,” I murmured, on my guard, but feeling that guard melting. He sat down on the bed next to me.

“I feel like we were never close as kids.” He lay down, staring up at the ceiling. “Did you come to my father’s funeral?”

I froze.

“Uh… No. No, I didn’t. I don’t think I had the money for a plane ticket then.”

“It’s fine. You don’t have to lie,” Kyle muttered. I turned back to look at his handsome face and found him looking more like a scared, sad child rather than a master of the universe.

“I know things were terrible between him and your mother at the end. I don’t blame you. I don’t know if I would have gone, had he not been… You know. My father.”

I lay down next to him, turning to look at him.

“I know. But… It’s so tough when a parent dies. Like that.”

He turned to face me, both of our heads horizontal, cheeks pressed into the duvet cover.

“You know, I’ve never had a woman in this bed that I wasn’t about to fuck,” Kyle said, suddenly. My eyes widened.

“Well, I’m honored to be the first,” I said, getting up, my heart beating fast. Kyle just laughed.

“Relax, sis. You’re not my type.”

“Your type?” I said, my voice cracking ever so slightly. I was taken aback, to say the least. “What the hell is your type?”

“Blonde, skinny, daddy issues.”

“I don’t fit any of the criteria, I’m proud to say.”

“Well, we can’t all be perfect,” he said with a shrug. “If you don’t want to head back to Silliman tonight, you can stay here. I’ve got a guest room. Or five.”