Bossy Brothers: Joey
Page 1
Contents
Bossy Brothers: Joey
DESCRIPTION
CHAPTER ONE - JOEY
CHAPTER TWO - BROOKE
CHAPTER THREE - JOEY
CHAPTER FOUR - BROOKE
CHAPTER FIVE - JOEY
CHAPTER SIX - BROOKE
CHAPTER SEVEN - JOEY
CHAPTER EIGHT - BROOKE
CHAPTER NINE - JOEY
CHAPTER TEN - BROOKE
CHAPTER ELEVEN - JOEY
CHAPTER TWLEVE - BROOKE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - JOEY
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - BROOKE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - JOEY
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - BROOKE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - JOEY
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - BROOKE
CHAPTER NINETEEN - JOEY
CHAPTER TWENTY - BROOKE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - JOEY
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - BROOKE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - JOEY
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - BROOKE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - JOEY
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - BROOKE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - JOEY
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - BROOKE
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - JOEY
CHAPTER THIRTY - BROOKE
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - JOEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - BROOKE
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - JOEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - BROOKE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - JOEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - BROOKE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - JOEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - BROOKE
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - JOEY
CHAPTER FORTY - BROOKE
EPILOGUE - JOEY
END OF BOOK SHIT
Bossy Johnny Cover Reveal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BOSSY BROTHERS BOOK TWO
Edited by RJ Locksley
Cover Design: JA Huss
Cover Photo Sara Eirew
Copyright © 2019 by JA Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-950232-10-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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DESCRIPTION
Six years before my phone rang and changed my life forever, I made a mistake.
I met a girl, we had some fun, and then we had a baby. And I fell pretty damn hard for my daughter. I was going to be there. I was going to give her everything I never had. I was going to have a family.
And then her mother disappeared and took my baby with her.
And now she’s done it again. Because that call that changed my life was from my five-year-old daughter asking me if I knew where her Mommy was.
Then came the lawyers. And the demands from her super-rich, super-powerful messed-up family. And the little fact that my ex didn’t just “disappear” she was “presumed dead”.
I don’t live a traditional lifestyle and I’m not in a traditional relationship.
But I can pretend if I have to.
And that was the plan when my two “best friends” and I decided to hire “professional liar” Brooke Alder to be my fake fiancée.
It’s totally gonna work. As long as MY super-rich, super-powerful, messed-up family doesn’t get in the way.
Bossy Brothers: Joey is book two in the Bossy Brothers series and features a delicious, burning hot, MMFM, surprise-baby, fake fiancée story with a twist that proves committed couples don’t just come in two’s, mistakes can be a good thing, and for some people—non-traditional love is exactly the kind they should fight for.
CHAPTER ONE - JOEY
I can see the Bossy Building from Wald’s hotel penthouse. The sun is coming up over the water to the east and the spire is backlit by an unearthly glint that makes me shudder.
Never, I decide. I’m never going back up there again.
Whatever that dinner was last week, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want anything to do with it.
Emma made sure that my cousin, Zach, and my little brother, Jesse, both packed a bag and left with her so they’re safe now. As safe as they can be with the last name of Boston.
But my older brother didn’t leave. Johnny stayed. I tell myself he stays because he has to, but… I’m not really convinced that’s the reason.
When we were all kids Johnny wasn’t cheerful and charming like Jesse. He wasn’t easygoing like me, either. But he wasn’t dark the way he is now. I never once looked in his eyes when we were kids and saw… nothing.
He was always in charge. He’s oldest, after all. But he wasn’t a bully. So I try to remind myself that he wasn’t born this way. He was made this way.
It’s probably not fair of me to judge him, since I barely know him. But I do. I judge Johnny pretty hard.
Someone moans behind me so I turn around and look at the living room. Naked bodies everywhere. Mostly girls. Wald isn’t out here. He’s probably sleeping in his room. But Huck is. He’s face down on a couch. His long, muscular body gently rising and falling as he snores lightly.
There’s a naked brunette sleeping on his back. Her skin is bronze, her limbs long, and her dark, tousled hair falls over her face. Hiding it like she’s a secret. Her body fits into the curve of Huck’s back like they are two pieces of a puzzle.
They’re not. She is no one to Huck. Just someone he probably fucked last night and then… he probably flopped over, exhausted, and they ended up like this by accident.
I consider shoving her off him for a moment. That’s gotta be uncomfortable for Huck, right?
But then I realize I’m just projecting. It’s me who’d hate a strange girl all tangled up with me like that. So I let it go.
Huck is one of those likable, friendly guys who hugs. Hell, he’ll kiss you too, if you let him. He even tries to kiss me every once in a while.
I smile and think about the last time he did that. Which was last week, actually. We were at the airport in Tokyo waiting for the jet to be fueled. I had to come home because Johnny called me. He was growling out something about a scandal and I was just being moody and pissed as I stood in front of the window and watched the business of the airport outside. And Huck just came up and put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and then the next thing I knew he’d pulled me into him and was kissing me on the lips. Then he pushed me off and walked away.
There were some people in chairs sitting nearby. Trying to pretend they didn’t just see that as they looked down at their phones and chuckled.
But they saw.
And I smiled, so it worked.
Here was my problem that day.
Every year I do this charity bachelor auction. I don’t know why. I don’t even remember how this tradition started. I do it though. I think I do it because for some reason I hope it’ll be the trigger for change.
I stay away from this city most of the time. Tokyo is home. I do my thing with Huck and Wald. We run our business, we party, we fuck, all that shit.
But once a year I come home for this charity auction.
And nothing ever happens. Nothing ever changes. It’s the same people every year. It’
s like I’m on a loop of sameness.
But then my little brother, Jesse, takes my place in the auction this one time. One damn time. And the whole world erupts into chaos.
Just what the fuck? I don’t get it. I don’t understand how some people move the world the way they do. How Jesse just being alive changes things.
I guess I never understood why some people matter more than most.
It’s not like any of this recent change Jesse triggered is good, either. So I’m not jealous of Jesse and how he affects the world so easily. Right now his life is one long shit-show of confusion and what-the-fucks.
But he has this… power to make things happen and I just never got that.
I will never understand it.
It’s not a quality I can cultivate or get better at, either. It’s just something intrinsic. Something inside him that makes people want to look at him, and react to him, and do something different.
Anyway.
There are empty bottles of whiskey and beer everywhere in the penthouse. Clothes strewn about. Random shoes, and ties, and t-shirts too.
It was a good party.
But it’s always a good party.
I’ve known Wald and Huck since college. We all rushed the same fraternity together. Got accepted, got in trouble, mostly graduated—Huck had to do an extra semester online to finally get his diploma, but he majored in philosophy so that thing barely mattered.
And then we just took off. We did that whole Europe backpacking hostel-staying thing for almost two years. We got jobs in Thailand as drug lord wannabes—I stop to chuckle at that. It was a pretty fuckin’ fun three years in Thailand. Then we hit up Australia for a while and became surfers. After that we did Asia. Singapore, and Taipei, and Seoul. Then we did Shanghai, and Hong Kong, and finally, we ended up in Tokyo.
And over the course of that whole adventure we somehow became business partners. Like… real businesspeople. Wald has kind of a nerdy side. His real name is Waldo, so there’s really no other way for that guy to turn out. And unlike Huck, he took college seriously and majored in computer engineering with a specialization in cryptography.
But Huck is one of those people persons. Just a likable guy who can sell pretty much anything to anyone. So that’s his job now.
Me? I’m just the money. I have so much fuckin’ money it’s sick. That could be why we were so successful out of the gate. I mean it certainly helped to have limitless funding for the launch.
But Wald came up with this idea to offer specialty encryption for banks and shit. Dude just sat down one day at his laptop and banged out some code. Didn’t come up for air for eight months while we were in Hong Kong. He lived off milk tea and pineapple bread.
He was so into this new idea Huck and I kinda forgot about him for a while. Just did our Hong Kong thing. Which was mostly just fucking, and drinking, and clubs.
Then one morning Huck and I came home and found Wald in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee wearing a gray business suit. To this day I don’t even know where he got that suit. And he said, “Brush your teeth. I got us a meeting.”
So we did. And we went to this meeting. Turns out it was at a bank. And on the way over there Wald told Huck what to say. We got a new thing that will help them, blah, blah, blah.
And this whole ride over I was thinking, Yeah, no one in their right mind is investing in our product. My hair was too long, Huck hadn’t shaved in like three weeks, and unlike Wald, we were both wearing shorts and t-shirts because we didn’t have suits. Hell, I didn’t even know what the product was.
I don’t think Wald cared though. This obsession with his new cryptography program kinda cancelled out all his well-practiced social norms training. Huck was waxing poetically about something, as usual, and I stopped giving out fucks over a decade earlier.
So I was pretty sure this new business adventure of Wald’s was going nowhere.
Turns out I was wrong. A year later we were in Tokyo and my family money wasn’t even funding us anymore.
I remember thinking… Huh. I never saw this coming. And for a moment I thought… maybe I do matter? Maybe I can change the world?
But it wasn’t me who made the business. It was Wald. And it wasn’t me who sold the idea. That was Huck.
So no. Nothing had changed.
The day I graduated college Johnny called me up and said, “Go away. Go far, far away. Anywhere you want. Do anything you want. Just stay away from me, and this city, and the Bossy Building. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t come back.”
By this time in our lives Johnny had been an uptight asshole for several years. I mean, for sure you do not fuck with my brother. Ever. He will smack your face with a baseball bat if you look at him wrong. But this… directive was a little over the top.
Don’t come back?
Fine, asshole. I won’t.
Except once a year for that charity auction.
It hits me now that the annual bachelor auction was probably just me trying to piss off Johnny.
It never worked though. He never even called me up when I was home for those few days a year. Didn’t return my calls either.
I figured I’d be a fuckup forever. That was just my lot in life. A pretty simple life of drinking, drugs, parties, and travel. My two best friends coming along for the ride was just a bonus.
And here I am. Still doing the whole party thing, but it’s different now. A weekend thing, mostly. This is the first real party we’ve had in a long time and I think the only reason Huck and Wald set it up was because after I came home from the Bossy Building last week I was in a funk.
I couldn’t think straight. Seeing that shit show of Johnny’s kinda fucked me up.
I told Huck and Wald they should stay in Tokyo when Johnny called me home, but they said, “Nah. We are a team. We stick together.” So they came with me.
Which I truly appreciate now. If they weren’t here… fuck. I don’t know what I’d do. Maybe I would’ve went home to Tokyo, got drunk, and put the whole thing out of my mind.
That’s definitely a Joey move if ever there was one.
But I don’t think so. Because last week there was this little voice inside me whispering, It’s time.
Time for what? I’m not really sure. But time for something.
Wald rented this penthouse straight away and Huck just decided he was staying here too. I have a place at the Bossy, but I’m not going back there.
Not ever.
“It’s time to leave,” I whisper back to that voice last week. That’s what time it is. When the voice doesn’t answer back I say, “Time to get the fuck out of here and go home.”
And by home I mean Tokyo.
Because this place… it’s just not home anymore and I don’t want to be a part of whatever creepy shit Johnny’s doing.
Somewhere in the penthouse a phone rings.
My phone, I realize from the ringtone.
I glance around, listening. Trying to figure out where it’s coming from. Then head down the hallway, ear against doors, until I stop in front of yesterday’s jeans and realize it’s in yesterday’s back pocket.
I fish it out and stare at the screen.
Blocked.
Normally I’d never answer this. But it’s like five AM and people don’t call at five AM unless they’ve got something interesting to say. So I tap accept and say, “This is Joey.”
Heavy breathing on the other end of the phone. Not the sexy kind. Is there such a thing as sexy heavy breathing on a phone? I’m doubtful. But it’s not that kind.
It’s the kind when you’re too close to the microphone and it picks up noise it shouldn’t.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hello,” a small, sweet voice says.
“Um…” I don’t know what to say. Because I’m pretty sure this is a kid. But I rally. “I think you have the wrong number.”
“No,” she says. A little kid. Very little. Then she breathes too hard into the phone again. “Is this you?”
; My eyebrows go up. “Who’s this?”
“Maisy,” she says.
“OK, Maisy. I think you dialed the wrong number.” But as soon as I say that I realize that’s probably not what happened. Nobody dials numbers any more. You press contacts. So this call came from some phone that has my number in it. “Is your mommy there?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
My heart skips a beat at this. I don’t know why. I don’t even like kids. But the thought of this one being home alone with a phone that has my contact number in it unsettles me.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she whines.
“Do you need help?” I ask. Because now I’m a little worried.
“Maisy,” an older voice says. A man. “Who are you talking to?”
“Joey,” she says.
And this time my heart doesn’t skip. It sinks.
Because I know who this is.
“Hey,” I say, a little bit urgent. “Maisy?”
“Hmm?” she says.
“Where are you?”
“Give me that,” the man says.
And then the call drops.
I look at my phone. It beeps three times. And the word BLOCKED stays lit for just another moment before it disappears.
“Fuck!”
“Who was that?”
I whirl around to find Wald standing in the doorway of his bedroom, shirtless, pair of old surf shorts hanging off his hips, his big hand rubbing his cropped hair.
I open my mouth to say something but find I cannot get the words out.
“What?” Wald says. “Why the fuck are you looking at me like that?”
“Dude,” I say, then just… stare at him.
“What?” he says, louder now. “Who the fuck was that?”
“Wald,” I say, shaking my head.
“Will you fucking tell me already? Just spit it out.”
“It was my kid, Waldo. I think it was my fucking kid!”
CHAPTER TWO - BROOKE