by The Male Order, Texas Collection ]- A Bride for Two Billionaires (l
“Don’t even think about it, old man.” They all turned toward Brody’s cheerful voice as he made his way across the vast lawn with his mother on one arm. Brody’s mood seemed to lift as he walked over to Pops and bent down to give him a hug.
“Aw, Mr. Stephens, I believe you’ve grown since I last saw you,” Brody teased.
“You little shit!” Pops playfully nudged Brody away from him as they all laughed.
“Isn’t it great to have our boys back?” Mrs. Bartlett hugged Brody close. Her long, wavy brown hair framed her naturally beautiful, heart-shaped face, and it always looked intentionally wild and beachy, a striking contrast to the extravagant jewelry that was widely known to be her signature. The tears in Mrs. Bartlett’s crystal blue eyes pooled above her bottom lashes as she rubbed Brody’s stomach with her left hand, her right arm around his waist. Although Mrs. Bartlett was tall for a woman at five foot nine, her son still managed to dwarf her when she stood next to him. “It’s nice to see you finally take a break from that Yellow Rope to actually come visit your families.”
“It’s The Velvet Rope, Mama,” Brody corrected. “The Yellow Rope sounds like a network for serial killers.”
“Well, whatever you call it. All I know is it has stolen my son away from me for the past decade, and I’m just grateful when you actually find time for me. Thank the heavens you finally sold it. It was taking up too much of your time. You worked so hard on that business, and you two deserve some rest and relaxation along with a homemade meal and a good night’s sleep.”
Jay knew Mrs. Bartlett was right. His and Brody’s lives had been fiercely dominated by the time and work it took to run The Velvet Rope since they started the social networking Web site when they were freshman at Stanford.
When the two young men first moved to California, they were immediately pulled into the Golden State’s energetic, non-stop party scene. After only a few short weeks of living there, the men realized their little black books just weren’t cutting it. It had quickly become complicated to remember the names of their new associates and the details of all the parties happening around town, especially when they still needed time to manage their university work. Both men were in Stanford’s honors business program, so the less time they spent trying to organize their invites, the more time they had to be successful students. In an effort to better manage their social calendars, the men had developed the idea for The Velvet Rope.
The Velvet Rope gave each user an online party profile along with a user-friendly, electronic social calendar to organize social events. The user could sign on to their usernames and scan through the thousands of social events posted on the Web site on a daily basis. Some events could be open to the public, or The Velvet Rope member could choose to only invite certain people. The users also had the option to filter the parties by location, college, theme, and even liquor selection. Last year, they’d sold The Velvet Rope to one of the Internet’s leading search engines for twelve billion dollars.
“You know, Jay and I were actually thinking about sticking around for a while. Since the company has been bought, we’ve come to realize how tired we are and how much we miss the simple life. We thought a long vacation here in Male Order, staying in our childhood homes, might give us the rest we need.” An outburst of cries of excitement and hugs surrounded the men as their parents took turns embracing each of them.
“So how about some lunch?” asked Jay once their parents caught their breaths. “We could all head to Hester’s Steakhouse. I could use a juicy Kobe burger topped with some shiitake mushrooms.” He felt his stomach roar its agreement.
“I don’t think so, young man,” said Mom, her finger waving in his face as she scolded him. “No son of mine is coming home just to have a burger. We can all come back to the house, put some ribs on the grill, and I’ll prepare some mustard potato salad and collard greens with salt pork. There’s an ’82 Chateau Margaux I’m dying to open, anyway.” Brody was as welcomed in the Stephens’ home as Jay was, and vice-versa. Jay always took comfort in knowing how much love their families had for each other.
“Oh, Mrs. Stephens, you’re the best.” Brody sweetly hugged her as she giggled. “And you know I have to have some of that famous sweet sun tea you make. No one makes it as sweet as you do.” Brody winked, and Mom visibly blushed and giggled, obviously flattered.
“I would be delighted to join you, but the town meeting will be starting soon,” said Mrs. Bartlett as she observed the time on her extra large diamond watch. Brody’s fathers always made sure Mrs. Bartlett’s jewelry fetish was fulfilled, and this was no doubt their latest indulgence. But as beautiful as she was, she was not a typical trophy wife, for Mrs. Bartlett’s charm and incredible intelligence always served Male Order well. “But you boys go on ahead. A home-cooked meal would do you plenty good. Thanks for feeding my boy, Julie.”
“Our boys, Lucy,” Mom corrected with a wink.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” exclaimed Papa Craig. He turned from his ten-foot-wide barbecue toward Brody and Jay as he opened another bottle of Shiner. “Guess what I bought your cousins.” His face twitched as he struggled to maintain his composure, but he looked like he would burst with excitement at any moment.
Before they were even given the chance to guess, Jay heard two loud engines behind him. Seconds later his twin cousins, eighteen-year-old Grayson and Gavin, rounded the corner of the house in matching lime-green GG Quad four-wheelers.
“They run about fifty a piece, but I got both of them for ninety,” Papa Craig stated proudly. Most wealthy men bragged about how much money they spent, but being new money, Papa Craig always bragged about the bargains he found.
“Grand!” exclaimed Mom with a roll of her eyes. “Ninety thousand dollars for a couple of go-karts.”
“They’re four-wheelers, dear, and they’re top of the line. I closed a big deal last week, and I wanted to celebrate with the family. I just consider it an early graduation present for my nephews.” Papa shrugged casually.
Grayson and Gavin took off their helmets as they came to a stop in front of their family. The teenaged twins simultaneously shook dark curls out of identical faces and gave their audience identical, cocky smiles. Everything about the boys, from their chiseled cheekbones to their bow-legged walks, was identical, except Grayson’s eyes were a sage green and Gavin’s were a blue topaz.
Jay could feel a smile threatening at the sight of his “little” cousins, swiftly looking more like men every summer. He guessed they must have grown a good four inches since last summer, and their boyish features were starting to show maturity in their strong jaw lines and towering forms. The twins had lived with the Stephenses since they were taken in at three years old. Their mother was a barfly-alcoholic that gave her rights up as their mother to her brother, Craig. It seemed like raising two boys took too much time away from her honky-tonks and her search for Mr. Right Now. Jay’s parents didn’t hesitate to take the twin boys into their arms and their homes, and they had continued to treat Grayson and Gavin as their own. Jay’s relationship with his cousins had quickly grown deeper over the years, more into that of a big brother.
“Ha! Nice shoes, ladies,” teased Grayson, giving them a mocking smirk. Jay and Brody looked down at the John Varvatos leather oxfords that were sent to them last year for the Sundance Film Festival, then they looked up and shot glares at the twins.
“Get off, Mary Kate and Ashley,” Brody demanded, raising his fist in warning. “It’s our turn.”
“Psh! Not on your life, woman.”
“Now!” growled Jay. His cousins were off the vehicles before he could make a complete step in their direction.
Sandbox domination never dies.
The warm sun shone through the canopy of trees in Aunt Veronica’s backyard, putting a spotlight on Taylor’s body and giving her the perfect light as she painted her toenails with the cherry red polish she picked up at Aurora’s beauty shop down the street. She worked carefully as the summer heat caressed her freshly
lotioned skin.
Since moving to Male Order a week ago, she had taken advantage of Aunt Veronica’s lawn chairs to lie out every afternoon and now had a healthy, bronze glow to her body. She had just gone downtown earlier that week to buy a vintage bikini, yellow with white polka dots and a balconette top that gave the perfect support for her ample breasts.
Taylor knew in her gut Male Order would be the perfect, small Texas town. Although it was a town built in luxury, it was welcoming, cozy, and everyone waved to her as she walked down the street as though they had known her for years. It was only a half hour down the road from Dallas, yet Male Order seemed like another planet.
With her nearest charity event a full three weeks away, she lay back and inhaled the town’s positive energy as she reveled in knowing she had no obligations for the rest of her mini-vacation. Before she had come outside, she had made a quick phone call to her hypertrophic cardiomyopathy charity headquarters for any schedule updates she would be facing once she headed back after her month-long hiatus. She had then marked reminders on her calendar for an upcoming art auction and the eleventh annual, and no doubt successful, HCM middle school tour for heart disease awareness.
Taylor hadn’t understood her mother’s apprehension toward the Male Order trip, for Taylor had never been one to listen to idle gossip. She assumed what she heard about the small Texas town was just a bunch of exaggeration. Rumor was the town had been founded by ten wealthy men who ordered ten mail order brides, but by mistake, they were only sent five. In order to preserve their investment, the men all shared a wife. But then Veronica told her Male Order was a ménage town. By town tradition, every female resident was entitled to have a committed relationship with however many men she fell in love with. Most of the women had two lovers, but Taylor had once seen a woman with five husbands at the Male Order diner.
This was all so new to Taylor. Although she always had the firm belief that people should have the right to love freely, she couldn’t deny that the idea of a ménage lifestyle had initially taken her aback. She had been raised by a conservative mother whose every action was made in attempt to catapult her status another step up the Dallas social ladder.
When Taylor was twelve, her father had died suddenly from HCM. A hardworking, dedicated man who’d worked in construction since he was fifteen, no one suspected he was sick. The congenital heart disease did what it was known to do best, and it took Taylor’s daddy away without a hint of warning. And no one missed him more than Taylor. She could still remember standing at their front door at 5:22 every afternoon as a child as she waited for her daddy to pull up to the driveway in his white work truck.
When her father died, Taylor’s mother had been forced to work two jobs to support the suddenly single-parent household. Taylor remembered how her mother would leave at 6 A.M. and return home at 9 P.M. Taylor had quickly learned to take care of herself while her mother was away. She always hoped her newfound independence would be a sort of payment to her mother for all the hard work she did to support the household of two.
A year later, her mother got a gig to clean houses in the rich Dallas suburbs. After one random night out cleaning a mansion for an unusually long ten hours, Taylor’s mother came rushing in Taylor’s bedroom, completely decked out in a French maid costume that looked like it belonged at a cheesy sorority Halloween party.
“Mama, what the—”
“Baby, it’s over. It’s all over, baby girl. All our worries are over.” With mascara streaming down her face in black tears, Taylor’s mother held her close as she sobbed on her daughter’s shoulder.
A month later, her mother married Harold King IV, a fifty-five-year-old trust-fund baby and third generation CEO of King Public Relations and Marketing, the leading PR company in Dallas for the past fifty years.
Harold was an odd gentleman. Although many considered him a kind man, he was known more for his partying than his business sense. Growing up with a silver spoon in his mouth, Harold never had to have any. He had money to hire other people for all that.
There was always a cabernet glass glued to his right hand, and he would make erratic spasms he called dance moves as he moved to the silent beat constantly playing in his head. When he wasn’t singing or dancing horribly, he was usually tripping over something.
While her father had been charming and poised, Harold was clumsy and awkward. He might not have been Taylor’s first choice for her mother, but she knew Harold was dedicated to making her mother happy, and she was thankful for that.
Suddenly, she heard a duet of singing voices thick with country-grammar flavor. The harmony broke through Taylor’s intense concentration. Her gaze followed the sound over to one of the neighbor’s backyards.
Over the picket fence, she could see an old woman in a wheelchair sitting on her back porch. Her hands rested on a white cane standing between her feet as she smiled lovingly at the two old men sitting on either side of her. She softly swayed to the beat as her two husbands each strummed a ukulele and sang her an old Texas tune in rich harmony. Taylor’s heart clenched with emotion and fascination at the sight of the happy old trio.
Being loved by two men! I can’t imagine.
Brody sped by the lush, emerald yards as he tailed Jay in the four-wheelers. Jay was more reckless than Brody, randomly flying over the street curb, his four-wheeler always landing on the right two wheels as it threatened to tip over. But each time, Jay would manage to speed off into the neighborhood even faster.
“You’re going to kill yourself, Johnny Knoxville!” Brody called out, but Jay just flashed him a crooked grin over his shoulder, not slowing down a bit. Brody couldn’t help but smile back at his longtime best friend.
This reminded Brody of the beginning of it all. The days of riding their dirt bikes through the fields of Male Order, using Lone Star beer cans for shooting practice, and jumping in the lake in their school uniforms from the highest tree they could find were all cherished memories of the carefree childhood they had shared together.
Jay had been his partner in crime since they met in pee-wee football almost twenty-five years ago. Football had transformed them from babies to dedicated athletes. In fact, their chemistry on the field, with Jay as quarterback and Brody as receiver, brought Male Order a few state high school football titles in their day. Their legacies as football heroes and successful billionaire alumni always guaranteed the men an abundance of homemade pies from the local bachelorettes when they came back to Male Order every summer to attend the annual cotillion. Brody’s mouth watered at the thought of Stacy Cavallari’s spicy-sweet pumpkin and Megan Ray’s tart, ripe strawberry.
He suddenly felt a painful tightening in his chest when he remembered the conversation he had with Mama earlier. After all these years together, all the successes and the memories and the promises, Brody just couldn’t believe Jay no longer planned to share a ménage lifestyle with him. They were both raised in households with two fathers and one mother, and Brody knew they had both been blessed with happy, fulfilling childhoods.
Since the night they shared their first kiss with Megan Ray during a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, sharing had always felt natural for Brody. He knew Jay felt the same after their first ménage in college. After that, Jay had rarely brought a woman home without insisting that Brody join in, and with Brody it was the same. When a ménage à trois didn’t happen, it was only because one was out of town or too exhausted from long hours in the office.
But Brody wouldn’t think about that now. He once again shook his fears from his mind and focused on the small, yet lavish, town around him. As Brody and Jay sped through the neighborhood streets, they began to pass by several familiar yards. Mrs. Cavallari still had the lushest bed of yellow roses in town, the Rays had installed a new pool, and the Jones brothers had built an enormous cherry wood gazebo for their new bride.
Then they passed Miss Veronica Ewing’s yard. Brody held his breath. And the world stopped.
He barely heard the mockingbirds singi
ng, or the applause from the nearby little league field, or the lawnmower humming in the next yard over.
There was just her.
Her eyes were hidden by oversized, white shades, and her dark auburn hair cascaded down one tan shoulder, her wispy bangs reaching the tops of her perfectly arched eyebrows. As she bent over in the white lawn chair to continue painting her toe nails, the round tops of her breasts pressed against her thighs, pushing the mounds of gold flesh together and daring him to take a bite. The color of her bikini brought out the deep tan of her skin, and he could feel his cock stand to attention at the sight of the healthy glow she radiated.
When she looked up at him and lifted her sunglasses, his breath caught in the back of his throat. With those doe-like, round brown eyes, those heart-shaped lips, she was a vision right out of a pin-up calendar. A beauty mark was just above the right of her upper lip. He imagined it was God’s own signature after all the extra time he must have spent on her.
Her eyes started to twinkle as she looked over Brody’s body and tossed him the sweetest, most radiant smile he had ever seen in his entire life.
There she is. Finally.
“Brody! Watch out!” He heard Jay’s panicked warning from ahead of him just before his four-wheeler ran smack into the street curb, sending Brody flying through the air only to land headfirst into the neighbor’s trash can.
Chapter 2
“Real smooth, Brody, real smooth.” Jay lifted him out of the hot, rank trashcan by one leg before Brody had the chance to shake the fogginess that flooded his head.
“What the fuck? That damn thing came out of nowhere.”
“So the street curb came out of nowhere?” Jay laughed as he began removing some of the spaghetti noodles hanging from Brody’s head. Brody decided to just ignore his friend’s smartass comments.
“Fuck, man, look at all this shit all over me.” When Jay didn’t reply to his rants, Brody looked up, only to see his best friend transfixed on the life-sized doll that now stood before them with a frightened look on her face, her eyes wide and her lower lip quivering. Brody scanned her petite body. There were no flaws present, only a pair of juicy breasts, flat stomach, and plush hips that tapered down to her tanned thighs. What a doll.
