The Bastard

by Julie Kriss

  “Fixing things,” he said, and he hung up in my ear.

  9

  DYLAN

  The suit worked like a fucking charm.

  I hated suits—I always had. But when I woke up in LA, surrounded by rich assholes, about to become a rich asshole myself, I knew it was time to look the part. One of the things they teach you in Special Ops is camouflage.

  I drove Eli’s borrowed car to the condo building that housed my father’s expensive penthouse. I picked up my bags, including Eli’s laptop, and walked into the building, sweeping straight through the front door as if I belonged there. The doorman didn’t even blink.

  In the lobby, I approached the concierge sitting behind the expensive marble desk. “My name is Dylan King,” I said to him. “I’m Hank King’s son. I’m letting you know that I’ll be staying in my father’s penthouse for a while.”

  The concierge frowned and tapped a few computer keys. “We don’t have a notification about this, sir.”

  “Consider this your notification,” I said with a smile. I took my passport from my pocket and handed it to him. I watched him examine it, then hand it back. “I’m in charge of my father’s estate. Since I am who I say I am, I’ll be going upstairs now.”

  “Do you have a keycard?” the concierge asked me, still wary.

  “Yes, I do.”

  He shook his head. “No one has been in there since your father passed, sir. He didn’t use the place very often. He spent most of his time in Texas on that big ranch.”

  “I know,” I said, pocketing my passport, though I knew no such thing. “But I’ll be staying in LA for a while to settle the estate, so the penthouse will be my residence while I’m here.”

  The concierge nodded, convinced now. “Thank you, Mr. King. Just let us know if you need anything.”

  Score one for the suit. I walked to the elevator and pushed the button for the penthouse floor. The screen asked me for a keycard and a four-digit code. I pulled a card from my breast pocket, swiped it, and entered four numbers. The screen went green, the elevator doors closed, and I was swept upward to the thirtieth floor, my father’s penthouse.

  Thank you, Eli, I thought as I pocketed the card. I’d used Eli’s laptop to hack the building’s security system briefly twenty minutes ago. Once in, I’d set up the card validation and the four-digit code based on the parameters of the system. Computer hacking wasn’t my specialty—I’d been more of an action type in SpecOps—but I could do a few things when I needed to. For such an expensive building, the security system on this one had been child’s play.

  I could have stayed at the Hexagon, ordering room service and racking up my father’s estate’s account. But instead I was here, for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely. It was partly a fuck you to Maddy White, because sitting around obediently like her trained poodle rubbed me the wrong way. But I also had the urge to be somewhere more personal than a hotel. I hadn’t entirely lied to the concierge—I was in LA to deal with my father’s estate. In order to do that, I felt like I needed to be somewhere that belonged to the family, somewhere that was mine.

  Or it would be mine, if I took over my father’s estate.

  I dismissed the thought and waited for the elevator to chime. When it did, I stepped through the open doors straight into a penthouse much larger than even the suite at the Hexagon. It was a corner suite, with two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. It was decorated with dark gray walls and black furniture, highlighted with post-modern paintings of splotches and smears on the walls. Everything was expensive, everything was masculine and a bit depressing, and it looked like no one lived here at all.

  I put my things down and wandered into the unused kitchen, the unused bathroom, the huge master bedroom with its massive black bed. Jesus, it looked like Dracula had slept here. I’d have to change the bedspread, I thought as I eyed it appraisingly, if I wanted to seduce a woman into that bed. Specifically Maddy White. If I was lucky, that was.

  I left the bedroom and put the laptop on the table, flipping it open. I’d thought it would be strange to be in my father’s penthouse. I’d thought I might be uncomfortable in his personal space, looking at his personal things.

  But there weren’t any personal things here that I could see. The concierge was likely right, and Hank had spent most of his time at The King’s Land mansion in Texas. This had just been a place for him to sleep on the days when he was in LA on business—a multimillion-dollar hotel room, as it were. Which was exactly how I was using it.

  The penthouse fit me, like the suit.

  What the hell did that say about me?

  All those years denying who you are, and it turns out you’re your father’s son. I set up the laptop and woke it up. I opened Gmail, started a new account, sat down, and quickly sent an email to my three sisters:

  I’m back in the States. I’m in LA. I’ve met with Madison White and she’s told me about the will.

  Ronnie, you’re getting married.

  I’ll be there.

  I suppose I should go buy a gift.

  See you in Texas,

  Dylan.

  I hit Send just as my phone rang. It seemed that I wasn’t done with family business, because it was my mother calling.

  A phone call from my mother always meant that she was either drunk, in a rage about something, or both. I’d tried not giving her my number at all, but made the mistake of telling her that I was in Panama, and one afternoon she’d drunk-dialed the Panamanian embassy, demanding they put me on the phone. After that, I handled her myself.

  “Charlene,” I said when I answered the phone, because I never called her Mother.

  I heard ice clinking in a glass as my mother took a drink. “You’re in LA,” she said without preamble, her voice drunk and wounded. “Were you going to fucking tell me?”

  Jesus, did everyone know what I did all the time? I’d thought I was under the radar, but obviously I was very wrong. “How do you know I’m here?”

  “So you’re not denying it. You came back to the States after all this time, and you didn’t tell me. It’s that wedding, isn’t it? That awful little whore is getting married, and you just couldn’t stay away.”

  Of course she’d heard about Ronnie’s upcoming wedding; it was a huge society event, not a private affair. Though even if it was a private affair, my mother would have found a mole to tell her about it. “I didn’t come back for the wedding,” I told her.

  “Then it was because that stupid reality show girl got kidnapped, right? That sounds like something you’d do. Or you came back to get money from your father’s estate. I know it. Everyone on your father’s side is just so important to you, and I’m not.”

  The most enraging thing about my mother wasn’t that she was sometimes drunk and often a raging bitch; it was that she was often right. She had a bitterness radar that picked up on every little thing, especially if it was a slight. But the best way to deal with her was never to show weakness. “There’s some business with the estate, yes,” I said, as if the entire future of Hank’s multimillion-dollar empire was a minor issue. “I had to come back and take care of it.”

  “How much?” my mother asked. “How much did he leave you? He didn’t leave me anything.”

  “Charlene, you’re married to a millionaire. You have been for twenty-nine years. You don’t need Hank’s money and you never have.”

  “That isn’t the point,” she said, the ice clinking as she took another drink. “He never gave me one red fucking cent when you were born. He didn’t care. Then he tried to take you away, the bastard. And now he’s leaving you money? It’s a ploy to win you away from me. Don’t you see that?”

  I scrubbed a hand over my forehead. This shit was the reason I’d left the country in the first place. “Charlene, Hank is dead. He isn’t doing anything.”

  She snorted. “If anyone can manipulate people from beyond the grave, it’s Hank. And it’s exactly what he’s doing. Him and that tart of a lawye
r he was fucking.”

  I went cold at that. Very cold. “Enough,” I said to Charlene. “You’re drunk.”

  “Well, of course he was fucking her,” she said, oblivious to the ice in my voice. “How else do you think she got that job? It wasn’t for her legal skills, Dylan. It was for her blow-job skills. I bet he—”

  I hung up.

  I sat for a second, fuming. That pissed me off—seriously pissed me off. I didn’t always like Maddy White, but I was pretty fucking sure she hadn’t gotten where she was by getting on her knees for Hank King—or anyone. You seem to have a way with powerful old men, I’d said when we first met, and she’d bristled. Is that an insinuation? I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but now I realized she’d picked up on it because she heard it all the fucking time.

  I stood up and paced. I’d had to listen to my mother say a few stupid, drunken words, and it had made me angry. Maddy had to deal with this constantly, from day one of her career. People saw Hank the womanizer and a woman as hot as Maddy, and they thought they knew what the fuck they were talking about. They probably hinted, made jokes, talked behind her back. I’d dealt with it for thirty seconds, it wasn’t even about me, and I wanted to throat punch someone. To get anything done in a day, Maddy must have a spine of pure steel.

  If she was an ice princess, she likely had a pretty fucking good reason.

  It brought out the caveman in me. I wanted to go knocking heads, which was funny, because Maddy obviously did perfectly well without me. She’d built her entire career before I showed up—she hardly needed me to fight her battles.

  And I still wanted to fucking do it.

  It wasn’t just the unfairness of it, the injustice. It was her. She was smart and competent, but I knew lonely when I saw it. I knew lonely because I lived it. Despite the years in Special Ops and all the women I’d fucked, I’d known lonely all my life.

  It was getting old, that loneliness. My father had lived as an asshole, died an asshole, and hadn’t been able to take any of his precious money with him. I’d spent my life promising myself I’d be different than him. Trying to be better.

  All I’d succeeded in doing was disappointing my sisters and hiding from everything that mattered.

  And at that moment, as if summoned by my thoughts, the elevator door pinged open and Madison White walked in.

  10

  MADDY

  I was angry. Steaming, actually. I’d had to reschedule the important meeting and leave work—something I’d never done. Amanda, my assistant, had barely been able to contain her shock, her jaw dropping as I left the office. People had stared at me as I walked down the hall.

  Damn you, Dylan King.

  I’d worked up a good brew of anger on my way here, so as the elevator doors opened I said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I walked into the penthouse and stopped.

  The man standing there looked like the man I’d left last night, and yet he didn’t. A suit and a haircut, Max had said. It hadn’t done justice to how Dylan looked right now.

  The suit was navy, crisp and cut to perfection. A modern cut, the pants slim, the shirt skimming his torso and his waist, the jacket like a second skin. His tie was soft lavender with dark gray stripes, a color that should have looked feminine and instead looked insanely confident and sexy. He was standing at the windows, looking out, and when he turned to me I saw Dylan’s face—but neater, the beard trimmed close to his jaw, his hair cut close to his temples and longer at the top. He was breathtaking.

  He gave me a wry grin, as if he wasn’t in the least surprised to see me. “Hello, Maddy,” he said. “I knew they’d phone you.”

  “Of course they fucking called me,” I said to him, trying to swallow my astonishment and not stare at him up and down. “You knew the concierge would get on the phone the minute you left him. And you did it anyway.”

  “I told you, I didn’t want to stay at the hotel.” Dylan shrugged. “It seemed wasteful when this place is sitting empty.”

  “It isn’t yours,” I said, taking another step toward him before stopping myself. “You haven’t claimed the inheritance yet, which means the penthouse is still the property of your father’s estate. Which I’m in charge of. Which you knew. By the way, where the hell did you get a card and a security code?”

  “I have many different skills,” he said, somehow making it sound dirty. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

  “You don’t live here.”

  “Are you going to kick me out?”

  I pressed my lips together. I was mad, but I wasn’t about to call security. The fact was that, except for getting a card and a code, Dylan wasn’t completely out of line. His father had owned this place, and Dylan needed somewhere to stay. So why had he broken in instead of just asking?

  I let my gaze flicker down him and up again. “What about the suit?” I asked, declining to answer his question. “You didn’t own that yesterday.”

  “I’m sure your man told you I went shopping.”

  “With what money?”

  “None of your business.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. “Dylan, just cooperate with me for one second, instead of being the asshole loner. Just for one fucking second, okay?”

  I opened my eyes again, and he regarded me thoughtfully. He scratched his jaw. “The money actually is none of your business,” he said, “because I did a confidential side job a while ago that I can’t talk about. NDAs and all that. I got paid a lot for it, and I saved the money. That’s where the money came from.”

  There was nothing about that in the bank records we’d obtained access to. Obviously there was more to Dylan than I knew. And I was so surprised that he’d actually answered my question that I asked another one. “What do you need a suit for?”

  “The concierge would never have let me in dressed like I was. And I need the suit for Ronnie’s wedding. I’ve decided to go.”

  I stared at him. “Yesterday you were the brother who had barely bothered to see his sisters in years. Today you’re going to Ronnie’s wedding?”

  “Yes.” He stepped forward, came closer to me. I wasn’t yet used to this new Dylan—my eyes kept trying to see the man from yesterday, the man from the pictures in the file, sweaty and rugged. This Dylan moved like silk, his big, strong body tamed beneath the expensive fabric. I felt my pulse in my throat as I caught a whiff of his scent, clean and crisp and warm.

  I didn’t usually get turned on by men in expensive suits. I was around men in expensive suits all the time; they were like furniture to me. When I got laid, I liked men who were a little rough. But it seemed I got turned on by Dylan King no matter what he wore. Especially when he wore nothing—a sight I very much hadn’t forgotten.

  I was so distracted that I didn’t notice how close he was coming until he was almost touching me, the trim beard on his jaw level with my eyes. “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice coming out a little panicked.

  “Looking for a wedding date,” Dylan said. His voice was low; because he was so close I could hear it almost on a murmur. “What do you say, Maddy? Don’t tell me you weren’t invited.”

  I laughed—pathetically, maybe—and shook my head. “I was invited, yes. Out of politeness. But there’s no way I’ll go. I have way too much work to do to take off to Dallas for a wedding.”

  But I didn’t meet his eyes. I just kept my gaze on the perfect, sexy line of his jaw, because the real reason I wasn’t attending the wedding was because I didn’t want to stand there like an obvious spinster, sipping a drink with no one to talk to while everyone around me had fun. I’d done it for the engagement party, and I felt like that was enough. I’d learned a long time ago that social events weren’t my thing. People found me intimidating, and—well, not very fun. I didn’t drink much, I never danced, and I never flirted unless it was with a man I intended to screw with deadly seriousness to take the edge off. I was terrible at small talk and I mostly talked business. The end result was that people d
idn’t want me at their social events, and I didn’t want to go.

  “Forget work,” Dylan said. He put his fingers on my jaw, my chin, and tilted my face up. “Tell me you’ll go as my date.”

  I couldn’t breathe for a second. It was the first time we’d touched since I’d so carelessly put my hand on his arm at LAX. God, that had been like a firecracker going off in my hand. This was softer, sweeter, and even hotter. We were so close. I could smell him. I could hear him breathe. I could see the clean line of his neck where it disappeared into his crisp, perfect shirt.

  I kept my voice hard and casual. “This is stupid. Why do you need a date at all? And why me?”

  “Because it’s the biggest event of the year and it’s family. And everyone probably hates me. And I don’t want to go alone,” Dylan said frankly. “I want company. You’re good company.”

  “I’m not,” I scoffed. “I’m—” A bitch. A cold fish. An ice princess. All the words people had thrown at me over the years. I’d thought they’d bounced off, but right now I was wrong about that. “I’m not good company,” I managed to say.

  He kept his hand on my jaw. “I disagree. You’re the only one who is as much of an outsider as I am.”

  Finally, I raised my gaze to his eyes. He was stupidly gorgeous, with those high cheekbones and that perfect mouth framed by his dark beard. His gaze was fixed on me, as if there was nothing else he wanted to look at. I felt my eyes narrow.

  “What?” Dylan said.

  “I’m trying to figure out what you want,” I replied. “Is it a game? A bet? See if you can get the ice princess to melt? What do you win if you do it?”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he didn’t speak.

  “I’m not having sex with you,” I continued. “I told you that already. You’re a client. You’ll be my biggest client if you decide to be. I didn’t get where I am by fucking my clients, and no matter what you say, I’m not starting with you.”