The Somerset Series: A Box Set: Books 2-4

by Isadora Brown

  Julian Starr

  Somerset Times

  Business Section

  It was confirmed last night at approximately 7:06PM that long-time bachelor and self-made billionaire Lucas Cruz is currently in a serious relationship with Somerset darling and heir to the Montgomery fortune, Avery Montgomery. Ms. Montgomery and Mr. Lucas met while competing at a shot to invest in the new paranormal app LunaApp and the founders of the company, Gary and Marcy, decided to partner with both of them. It is unclear if their partnership in business will be as successful as their partnership in their personal life and we’re surprised both parties allowed their personal and professional lives to interfere.

  However, it should be noted that Lucas Cruz is the Midas of the business world – everything he touches has success. We doubt that will differ in his choice for a romantic and professional partner.

  Marlene put the paper down, staring at Avery from across Avery’s dining table. Today was their typical day to go out to lunch together – a tradition Avery still dreaded – but her mother adamantly refused to be seen in public after it was announced that Avery and Lucas were together. Avery didn’t mind one bit; she ordered Chinese food and picked it up on her own. She knew her mother pretended to detest the food but secretly, she ate Chinese food as much as Avery did. It was where Avery got her preference for it in the first place.

  “You have got to be kidding me, Av,” she said, folding the paper, keeping the article face down. “Why, oh why, did you let this happen?”

  Avery shot her mother a look. “And what are you referring to, Mother?” she asked, her tone droll as she stared at an orange piece of chicken hanging from her plastic fork.

  “The real question is, what aren’t I referring to?” Her mother slammed her palms on the table and leaned forward, capturing her daughter’s eyes. Avery didn’t bother to open them wider than the half-mast they were. “You and that, that” –

  “Dad doesn’t seem to mind him, you know.” Avery straightened and shoved the entire chicken into her mouth, raising a challenging brow. “Respects him. You know, he already likes Lucas better than Rick, and Rick and I have been together since college.”

  “Yes, but” –

  Avery’s eyes narrowed, and before she could stop herself, she interrupted her mom. “You didn’t even ask how we broke up, Mom,” she pointed out. “You didn’t even ask if I was okay or if I needed anything or what happened. You just assumed it was my fault. You assumed he broke it off with me. You assumed I was the problem.”

  “Well, I just figured” –

  “Bullshit.”

  Her mother’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?” she said, in a voice just above a whisper.

  “You heard me,” Avery said, scrunching her nose in frustration. “It’s bullshit, whatever dribble that’s going to come out of your mouth. Bullshit because, deep down, you know that whatever you’re going to say is just an excuse. Why in the hell did you send Rick to the Masquerade last night? Do you know what he did to me? What he did to Dad?”

  At the very least, Avery was happy to see her mother squirming at the question, staring at her long pink and white nails she just got redone. She couldn’t tell if her mother was blushing, but Avery did see a hint of regret in those downcast eyes.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” she admitted in a strained voice, still unable to look at her daughter. “I thought Rick was going to try and make amends” –

  “Even if he were, why would you send him to my first business function?” Avery asked. She knew it wasn’t right to have interrupted her mother, but she was so furious, she couldn’t control herself. “Mom, you know, you know how badly I want to be taken seriously. I know you know. And by sending him there, you completely shot that out of the water. Now, I look like some slut who traded Rick in for Lucas because I’m trying to be taken seriously in business.”

  “Isn’t that what happened, Av?” her mother asked in a soft voice. “You did use Lucas to help you with business.”

  Avery opened her mouth to reply but stopped. She had. Lucas was supposed to teach her about business, about how to use her feminine guiles in order to get her way. He was also supposed to teach her how to please a man in more ways than one.

  “Yes,” she finally admitted, “but not in the way Rick insinuated. I can’t rely on Dad every time I have a question. If I do, I’m never going to be Avery Montgomery, I’m going to be Charles Montgomery’s daughter. Do you know what it feels like, hearing people twitter behind my back about how I only passed a class or got a job because I’m a Montgomery?”

  “Of course I know what it’s like,” her mother snapped, her eyes vicious. “I’m twenty-six years younger than your father. Don’t you think I get nasty comments about why I’m with him?”

  Avery’s brow shot straight up. She hadn’t really thought about it. She knew the age gap between her parents but it never felt as though her dad was so much older or her mom was so much younger. Despite everything, they still somehow made it work for them. And even though Marlene wasn’t that great of a mom, she was an excellent wife. She supported Charles no matter what, whether he wanted to take his company in a modern, riskier direction; whether he wanted to invest a ridiculous sum in a start-up company; or whether he wanted to train his only child on inheriting the business so he could retire.

  “You never really said anything,” Avery murmured.

  “Of course, I didn’t,” she said, thrumming her nails on the table. “What was there for me to say? If people think I married your father for the money, let them think it. I have nothing to prove to these people. I love your father and he knows that. I know that. And you know that. And those are the only people who matter.” She paused, sitting back in her seat and folding her hands in her lap. “That’s why it frustrates me to see you try so hard to be taken seriously in this business world.”

  Avery pressed her brows together. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Her mother made a face. “You wouldn’t,” she muttered, not unkindly. “Av, look, no matter how much better you are at business, no matter that you graduated with honors from a prestigious business school, no matter that you are the daughter of one of the richest, most successful men in the world, people in business are going to look at you as inferior simply due to the fact that you have a vagina.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes staring straight into Avery’s. “Stop trying so hard to change that.”

  “You’re saying it’s right that because I’m a woman, I’m not taken seriously simply because business is a male-dominated field?” she asked, aghast. The Chinese food was getting cold, but Avery didn’t mind. Somehow, Chinese food tasted better as leftovers.

  “I’m saying men do things a certain way,” she said. “You’re a woman. You need to do things differently. Don’t try to fit in when you don’t.”

  Avery opened her mouth to argue but then shut it. She allowed her mother’s words to sink in and took a couple of deep breaths. “Are you saying to stop trying to do things the way a man would,” she said, “and start doing things the way a woman would?”

  Her mother smiled. “Precisely,” she said with a curt nod. “Those frigid bitches were talking shit about the relationship I had with your father because they were threatened by a young beautiful well-educated woman who didn’t just smile and say yes to whatever a man told me. Your father and I were real partners. We discussed things. I gave my opinion, he gave his. Sometimes, we wouldn’t agree but we supported each other. I didn’t complain to your father about it because then I’m feeding the negative energy. Instead, I had a great sex life.”

  “Mom,” Avery said, turning red.

  “No, you need to listen to this, Av,” her mother continued. “I’m being serious. Your vagina is the key to your success. If you’re getting enough orgasms, it’ll show. Sexual energy is creative energy. Energy tends to rest in your pelvis – you need to get it to flow through your body. If your father was away, I would get myself off just to ensure my energy wa
s always flowing.”

  “Mom, I think I’ve had enough of your sexual energy for one conversation,” Avery said, feeling her cheeks turn red. “Or, ever.”

  Her mother rolled her eyes. “Does Lucas treat you right?” she asked.

  “Now you care if Lucas treats me right?” Avery asked. “Of course, he treats me right. I’d never allow myself to be with someone who didn’t. The problem was, I didn’t know Rick was a bad fiancé. I had no one to compare him to. And that’s not always a good thing, but…” She let her voice trail off and she shook her head, her eyes far away. “Mom, I know you liked Rick but he’s not a great guy.”

  “How am I supposed to know that, when my own daughter doesn’t tell me anything?” her mother asked, throwing out her arms.

  Avery’s eyes descended to the chow mein in the plastic container, and she pushed them around the Styrofoam without meeting her mother’s eyes. “I didn’t know he was a bad guy, Mom,” she told him. “I had no one to compare him to. I didn’t know what was normal when it came to relationships. What was expected. Most importantly, I didn’t know what I wanted and what I wouldn’t tolerate. Lucas showed me…” She let her voice trail off. “Lucas showed me what it’s like to be a woman, Mom. And I don’t mean when it comes to sex, but what it means to truly feel feminine, powerful, graceful, and beautiful. He makes me feel good about myself. I want you to like him but I won’t force you. But your feelings don’t make a difference to mine. If you choose to make your snide comments and your faces that Daddy says you can’t hide for anything, you’re going to lose me. And as much as you aggravate me, I don’t want to lose you.”

  She paused for a moment in order to catch her breath. Marlene stared at her daughter, a contemplative look on her face. Then, her shoulders sagged and she looked out the window to the rays of sunshine spilling through.

  “You’re really serious about him, aren’t you?” she asked, defeated.

  Avery grabbed her mother’s hand, forcing her to look at Avery. “Yes,” she said. “I really am.”

  “Oh, all right,” her mother said. “I’ll meet him and I’ll keep my comments to myself. Perhaps we could all go out to dinner, the four of us, and get to know him better.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “He is pretty cute.”

  Avery laughed despite herself. She was surprised to see the pretty red blush that caressed the tips of her mother’s cheeks.

  “What?” her mother said. “I’m not blind. Av, I’m just, I’m just worried, okay? I know vampires and werewolves have been mainstream since the turn of the century. I get it. But I don’t know what it means to love someone of another species. I don’t know the sacrifices you’re going to have to make, the prejudice that’s going to play into that, the discrimination you’re both going to have to face. It didn’t help that he practically transformed in front of everyone.”

  Avery shot her mother a look. “If Rick hadn’t been there in the first place,” Avery said, but her mother cut her off with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “I know, I know.” She rolled her eyes. “That is old news, Av. Would you just let it go?” She gave her daughter the first genuine smile Avery had seen from her mother in a long while.

  “He did it for me, Mom,” Avery murmured.

  Marlene reached out and squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I know, hon,” she said. “It’s the only reason I’m willing to allow myself to like him.”

  Avery rolled her eyes but she squeezed her mother’s hand in return. It wasn’t much but she would take it.

  25

  “Doctors speculate that a new species will be confirmed by the NDS in as little as days. We’re not certain what that species will be, but some are speculating that fairies aren’t mere legend and that they’re more dangerous than humans, vampires, and werewolves combined.” A cute petite news reporter stared at the camera, her blue eyes piercing. “However, the Somerset PD assure us that they, along with the NDS, are studying this new species, learning how to contain and control” –

  Lucas snorted and rolled his eyes, looking away from the television. Avery glanced up at him from the corner of her eye. His long fingers began to trace mindless patterns on her shoulder.

  “Clive Shereen, head of a classified department of the NDS, will have a press conference in a couple of days to ask questions. It is uncertain if this is when the fairy species will be confirmed, but at the very least, it can give answers we’ve been speculating about for years. I’m Carolina Fitzgibbons, and this is Somerset News.”

  Lucas grabbed the remote from the arm of the couch and snapped off the television.

  “Do you not think fairies are real?” Avery asked from her position with her head on his chest, looking up at him with a tilt of her head. “I hear there’s royalty just like the vampire, but they each have their own courts, like wolf packs.”

  “It’s not a matter of if they’re real or not,” Lucas said. “It’s the NDS thinking they can contain a species. They can’t contain vampires or werewolves. Hell, prisons can’t even contain humans. And they want to attempt to figure out how to do that to a species that’s even worse than all three put together? I just don’t understand…” He shook his head. “It’s why I had to leave my pack. Control. Expectations.” He paused. “Even after what she did to me, they were still going to have me marry her. They excused her behavior, saying she was just exploring her youth before being tied down forever.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t marry someone I didn’t trust. So I left.”

  Avery furrowed her brow, her hand reaching up to squeeze Lucas’s shoulder. He never got into why he left his pack and, truth be told, it hadn’t been something at the forefront of Avery’s mind. Now, she wished she had asked him, if only to show that she sincerely cared about what happened.

  He looked at her in reaction to her touch and gave her a half smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “You wanna talk about it?” she asked. She hated that question more than she hated a lot of things. It felt contrived, forced, and too sympathetic for someone as strong and as independent as Lucas was. But she didn’t know how else to verbalize that she was here for him if he needed her. And she wanted to know this part of him. She wanted to know all parts of him.

  “Liv was a wolf, too,” he said, his eyes going to the glass coffee table in front of them. Avery didn’t mind; she understood that he needed to stare off in order to feel fully comfortable sharing this sort of information with her. “She’s part of the Cruz pack. Her family is really important, actually. Nearly as important as mine. Wolves are still traditional in that some of us – especially the Alpha family – will arrange marriage in order to unite packs or to keep bloodlines pure. It’s a way to guarantee a wolf pup when it’s time to mate. Do you follow?”

  Avery nodded but refrained from asking questions. She wanted him to get everything out before she began to ask for clarification.

  “When I was young, my parents arranged a marriage between me and Liv,” he said. “Liv’s family are my family’s betas – the second strongest family in the pack. It just happened that there were a daughter and a son between them, similar in age, that could possibly help balance each other out. Since it’s not uncommon for our culture, Liv and I started dating when we were young. I think we cared about each other deeply, but as I look back, I don’t know what was love and what was projected love in hopes the mating bond would appear between us.”

  “The mating bond is based on instinct between two wolves, right?” Avery asked. So much for waiting.

  “Right,” he said. “It’s supposed to lead you to your mate, whom you bond with for life.”

  “And it never appeared?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Not to me, not to Liv,” he said. He shrugged. “The feeling you get when you meet your mate… It’s instantaneous. There’s no maybe. There’s no later on. It happens the minute you lock eyes and your soul meets its other half.” He reached out and curled a lock of hair behind her ear, the pads of his fingers lingering on
the tip of her ear. “That’s what I felt when I first saw you.”

  “You-you did?” she asked, her eyes widening in surprise.

  “Of course I did.” He said it as though it was the most obvious thing in the world and the curve of his smile danced with light. “I’m sure you know my reputation. I’m not the kind of guy who settles down. When I first saw you, really looked into your eyes, any desire I had to be with anyone else went out the window. You were mine since that moment, whether you knew it or not.”

  “So that girl at the club?” Avery asked, furrowing her brows.

  “I didn’t even touch her,” he said, trying to reassure her. “And the rare occasions I had to made my body tense up with disgust.”

  “She was gorgeous,” Avery pointed out, her tone almost flat.

  “She was,” he admitted, “but once you imprint, your body is solely for your other and theirs is solely for you. I don’t think you realize what it did to me, knowing you were with Rick. Knowing he was allowed to touch you, to kiss you, to do things to your body and to your mind and to your soul that I wasn’t allowed to do? Fuck, Av. It drove me crazy. I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and claim you as my own, especially when you put your mouth on my cock and swallowed every last drop of me. I know you said the two of you weren’t having a great sex life but I still worried about the possibility of you doing that to him” –