by Nicole Snow
“What's 'abundantly clear' is that you're still an asshole, dad. You expect me to be just like them, Hayden and Grant, and I never will be. I'm not following in their fucking footsteps. It's not who I am.”
“Yes, yes, how shameful that you have an older brother on Wall Street and another in real estate. I suppose asking you to get the stupid out of your system at an earlier age like Hayden would've been too much.”
“Hey, I never lost six figures at the horse track. I gave you a plan. Use my pilot license and the connections I'm building in the industry to revolutionize it. We could have a stake in the luxury charter service. We could do a lot with this, if you'd open the folder I gave you, and take a goddamned look. It's amazing how blind you're being.”
“Blind? You don't know the meaning of the word, Lucus. If you had any sense, you'd see you're blind, deaf, and dumb to the fact that I don't have an extra billion to piss away investing in a brutal, hyper-competitive industry just to quell your mommy issues.”
My jaw drops. There's a long pause, so dark and quiet I hear my heart banging in my throat.
“That therapist I hired to pick your brain was another failed investment, I'm sorry to say. I'm done throwing good money after bad with you, boy. Better than the money I wasted on your music lessons, I suppose. They've both led you nowhere, but at least one tried to treat your childish dreams with more dignity than they deserved. I wonder what Helene would say if she could see you now.”
“No! Don't you fucking say her name, old man. You're the real disgrace in this family.” A fist comes down so hard on some hard surface I jump, holding my breath. “She deserves better than being on your tongue. You're just pissed I interrupted your latest fling. How the fuck she had the misfortune to die hitched to a man like you, I'll never understand. Who is it this time, dad? Another maid? Or is it just another plastic slut from the clubs down in the city? I know you like their fake tits, ten times bigger than your balls will ever be.”
Mr. Shaw laughs. Deep, sardonic, and cruel. “Spare me the self-righteous bullshit, kiddo. You were too busy shitting in your diaper to shed any tears when we had your mother's memorial. You never even knew her. A mercy, perhaps, considering how much of her idealistic nonsense rubbed off on her youngest son. I'd hate to think what would've happened if she hadn't crash landed in grizzly country – that's where you'll end up, too, if you don't start using your brain.”
There's another sound, a sickening crunch. Someone screams – I think it's the older man – and I hear shoes scuffing the wooden floor.
Forget holding my breath. It won't come. It's like I have a straitjacket wrapped around my chest, constricting everything, turning me into a human pressure cooker for someone else's pain.
Where the hell is mom, anyway? Surely, she isn't hearing this crap all the time, or getting in the middle of it?
The worst part is, I'm beginning to think the spoiled asshole with the chip on his shoulder might have a good reason for it.
“Never change, you miserable fucking drunk,” Luke growls. “We're done here.”
The older man doesn't say anything. I hear laughter, thick and slurred. Then footsteps, coming toward me at a frightening pace.
I have about ten seconds to avoid getting caught eavesdropping like I did several weeks ago. I race down the hall, ducking into what looks like a small tea room with a fireplace. I can't tell because it's dark inside.
My nostrils flare, drinking in heavy breaths, listening as the young man's furious footsteps pound the marble floor. His silhouette passes by me for a second. I close my eyes, praying he won't see me.
He just keeps going. Thank God.
My heart hurts for him after overhearing the run in with his dad. It's ridiculous because it shouldn't. I'm shaking off my stupor, wondering how I'm going to get out of here. I count to sixty before I move.
I take the hallway quickly, heading straight for the nearest servant's entrance. I don't care about finding my mother anymore after the shit storm that just went down.
I'm almost to the winding staircase on the main floor when a man steps in front of me. I stall the heart attack just long enough to escape crashing into him.
“Hello.” He speaks softly, eyes narrowed, straightening his tie with one hand, while the other wipes blood from his lip. “Working late, are we?”
I've only seen his portrait before. Never the man in the flesh, until now. It's Francis Shaw, larger than life, and just as merciless. He must've stepped out to the bathroom across the hall to clean up the cut his son gave him.
“Um, actually, I came to find my mom. Family emergency.” I'm frozen. Nervous as hell doesn't begin to describe the adrenaline overload making me a statue.
“Ericka's daughter, of course.” He steps past me, continuing down the hall, stopping next to a room adjacent to the office where I heard the arguing. Luke wasn't kidding about the drunken part – he leaves a distinct plume of fine bourbon behind him. “I know just where to find her. Wait right there, please.”
He's eerily calm for a man who's just been in a fist fight with his youngest son.
Forget it. I'm out. I can't handle more weirdness. I'm running down the hall before I ever catch a glimpse of mom.
Blood racing, heart pounding, vision blurring. I hit a wall when I crash through the door leading outside. A hand reaches out, catches my wrist, and latches on like a hawk picking up a mouse.
I'm screaming before I open my eyes.
“You again?” Luke doesn't even look surprised. He's bored. “What's so interesting that you've come back here to spy on my sorry ass?”
“I'm trying to get home. I didn't hear anything, I swear!” I'm a horrible liar.
Recovering my senses, I decide to be straight, mustering up the strength to look him in the eye. Honesty hasn't done much for me in the past, but here's hoping it will. “I came looking for my mom. I thought she'd be somewhere on this side of the house, where your dad lives. I didn't mean to hear you two arguing.”
He lets my wrist drop from his grip, turning his back to me. “Better that than what you heard last time. Privacy is a fucking illusion around here, anyway.”
He's so...defeated. It makes me feel even worse.
“Listen, Lucus –“
“Luke. Nobody except my old man needs to be so formal,” he tells me.
“Fine, Luke. I really don't mean to keep dropping in on you like this. Honest accident. Both times. If I didn't have to come here to work, or chase down my mom, you'd never see me. I'm more than happy to stay out of your way.”
“Bullshit.” He turns around, the smirk he wears in place of a smile returning. “Sorry, little girl. You're too young for me, and not really my type.”
My jaw drops. “What?!”
“You heard me,” he says coolly, beginning to walk a slow circle around me. “You're not the first girl to crush all over this, magnificent human specimen that I am. I don't have time for games and I don't fuck virgins, especially when they're offering up a sympathy lay. I can pull any pussy I want.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
He stops in front of me and stares. It's a drawn out, uncomfortable, eye-fucking gaze. I hate him for making me the one who's questioning my sanity here, wondering if I'm dealing with a man or a demon who looks like an angel. But I hate him most for putting this heat in my blood, igniting a burn between my thighs I shouldn't have.
“Boo!” He throws his hands in front of my face, nearly knocking me over backward.
“Ass!” I stumble against the waist high stone wall behind me. “I'm only going to say it one more time – I'm not interested in you that way. I'm practically your employee. It wouldn't be right for all kinds of reasons.”
He eyeballs me slow and hard, shaking his head like my reasoning wouldn't stop anything. “It's not fair.”
“What? Can we please stop being so cryptic?” I want to be done so I can walk back across the overgrown path through the garden and go home.
“You know a lot
of my secrets for an employee with a schoolgirl crush on me. Can't say I like it.” He comes toward me again, and this time he doesn't stop until his arms are around my waist. I almost jump again, and for the first time, I see a thin smile on his face. “Your family's here until somebody quits or my father gets sick of you. Plenty of time for me to even the score. You know too much about me, Robbi Plomb. I'm evening the score. Before the summer's out, I'll know a whole lot more about you.”
He's trying not to laugh when I finally wriggle out of his grasp. I check behind me several times on my way out, running down the path through the gardens.
No footsteps behind me. Zero pursuit. He's decided not to come after me tonight.
Later, I learn a man doesn't need to run to start the chase. I didn't know it at the time, but it had already begun.
School is almost over. It's my eighteenth birthday, and becoming an adult feels...underwhelming.
I'm just weeks away from graduation, a couple acceptance letters from a local community college in my hand. They're not glamorous, but at least I'll knock out a few cheap requirements over the next year before I go somewhere better for acting or theater.
I haven't decided which direction yet. I love to sing, and I live for nights like these. I owned the musical stage and walked away, better and more tired for it. I'm still wearing my royal purple dress, fresh from playing young Queen Bearington, ruler of Sealesland, a fabulously wealthy European kingdom.
I'm sitting behind our family's bungalow with my friends, a couple dozen kids total in my class. I've got a bowl with German chocolate cake and ice cream to celebrate, just like the rest of the girls. My mother baked it before she took off for another round of overtime, handing me a card stuffed with an embarrassing amount of money for snacks and 'whatever,' in her words.
The boys among us break into a couple six packs one of their older brothers snuck from the liquor store. I haven't seen my friend, Jenny, for about an hour. I wonder if she's finally decided to get a little face time in the weeds with her longtime crush.
“Nothing except cake for the birthday gal? Typical, and disappointing.” I stiffen when I hear his voice.
I look up, and there's Jenny again, standing next to someone who doesn't belong here. Luke has his arm slung over her shoulder, his hand perched dangerously close to one breast. She gives him a knowing look, melting into him.
Please, somebody tell me they didn't fuck.
Tell me he isn't here to ruin my party.
“You told me last week you were going to have fun on your birthday. Do you even know how, Robbi?” Luke doesn't let up. Jenny nuzzles into him and laughs, too tipsy not to be drunk on something. I don't know if it's beer or sex.
“I am having fun, jackass,” I snap, stabbing my fork into the last morsel of cake. “It's called unwinding. You should try it sometime.”
“Nah. Think I've done plenty of that tonight with my charity case. It's not every day I suck face with a chick who's aiming out of her league.” He looks at Jenny. It takes her smiling face a few seconds to register the insult, and flatten like the melted vanilla ice cream under my fork.
“Hey!”
“Hey, what? I'm talking to Robbi now.” He pushes her away, heading for me. I swear he can smell the jealousy throbbing in my veins, and he likes it.
“Walk with me, little bird,” he says. I don't move. “Aw, come on. I came all the way out here to have a heart-to-heart for your eighteenth birthday. Couldn't let you step into womanhood and leave school without some brotherly wisdom.”
“You're not my brother, Luke. You're a fucking joke.”
He blinks, both of us surprised because I've slipped an F-bomb. It doesn't knock him off his game, whatever one he's playing, for more than a second. “Duh, princess. You don't have one, which is why you need my advice more than you think. Let's go, before I drag you inside to wash that mouth out with soap.”
There's no resisting his strong hand under my shoulder. I set my bowl down reluctantly and walk with him, onto the path. There's a small pond with several soft blue lights glowing around it. My friends are down there in all kinds of compromising positions, using their phones for light in the darkness. Maybe a few are taking naughty pics they'll regret.
There's no moon tonight. Even fewer stars. A smoky early summer haze covers everything, fed by the farms beyond Shaw property lines burning brush.
“Why aren't you out there having some real fun with your friends?” He gestures to the mini-orgy going on by the pond, just as the nearest couple moans. “No use going to college with your cherry intact. Better to get it punched now, and grow up. Then you won't have to worry about the emotions getting in the way when you're locked down in your dorm, trying to study.”
“I'm staying here, Mr. Authority. Taking a few community classes over the next year. I won't have a dorm.”
“Typical,” he says again, shaking his head, using what's becoming his favorite word with me. “I guess you won't have a boyfriend to fuck you good and proper either?”
“None of your business!” I stop in mid-step, pushing against his chest when he leans in closer. I can't stop seeing him down here by the lake with my friend, her traitor legs wrapped around him, moaning while this alpha-hole runs his tongue down her neck. “Get on something else, or this conversation is over. I don't need a sex therapist who writes bad music. Why the hell aren't you in college, anyway?”
The reference to our first meeting makes his eyes smolder like blue gas flames in the darkness. “I did the university thing downtown for about a year and a half. Business school, just like dad wanted. Didn't work out. I'm too restless to sit in a lecture hall listening to guys in shoulder patches blow smoke up everyone's asses.”
“Hm, I never would've guessed. Pretty typical, Lucus.” It's my turn now.
If he's bothered he doesn't show it. Instead, in one of his swift movements, he grabs me around the waist, pulls me close, and looks me dead in the eye. “No more games, Robbi. If you want to know the truth, I brought you out here to say congratulations. You've got a real chance to get away from the shit that goes on here. Take it, run, and live like there's no tomorrow.”
He's never sounded so serious since the night we first met. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Acting, right? Or is it theater?”
“Either. Both, maybe. I love the stage,” I say, smoothing my hands against my dress. It helps take my mind off the huge shoulders shadowing me, the gorgeous eyes looking so protective tonight, when they're usually my biggest dread.
“It's hell getting anywhere in those fields, but try, damn it. One of these days I'm going to gas up my plane and fly as close as I can get to Hollywood. Somebody here has to make it. Whoever gets there first, we'll save the other person a seat. Promise me, Robbi.”
Luke acting with me in the distant future? There's a terrifying thought.
Still, he's being nice for once. I don't have the heart to do anything except play along, staring into his eyes while I smile.
“Deal. We'll have plenty of time to talk about it since I'll be here another year, at least.”
“Whenever I come home for the holidays and breaks, you mean.”
“Home?”
He nods. “I'm leaving next week. Can't turn twenty-two and still be rotting away here while my older brothers leave me in the dust. I'm doing the commercial pilot thing. Landed a pilot job with a cargo company I'll try for a few months, while I get a feel for the industry. I'll wind up an actor or an airline executive someday, or I'll die.”
“If you make it, so will I,” I say.
He reaches for my face. The bastard makes me forget about Jenny in record time when he's touching me. His fingers are thick against my cheek, strong as the rest of him, the tips calloused from his guitar.
“Obviously. I've got plenty on you in experience, little bird. Like that sex thing we were talking about.”
Not again. Just when I was starting to enjoy the asshole's touch.
My eyelids pop open
. “None of your business,” I tell him, ignoring my body going rebel.
“What's holding you back? Don't tell me your parents don't let you date. Can't believe you get the shy schoolgirl act from your ma.”
I'm not sure what he means. Shaking my head, I stand still while he tucks my hair behind my ear, watching a heavy, suppressed growl move down his throat when he swallows.
“Like I could date here. I'm sure you've been inside these bungalows for the servants before?”
“Reed always was a minimalist. You've got his old place. He took off to the city to be my brother Hayden's valet. Sorry you've got the shitty one.”
“Yeah, then you get what I'm talking about. It's too small to bring a boy home, much less do anything else.”
“Anything? How about some details, Robbi? They're important in college, or so they say.” Luke runs his fingers through my hair again, finesse in his touch.
Like he doesn't know what I mean. He's done this to so many girls, he has to know my panties are soaked by now. I'm too ashamed to admit it, refusing to let my guard all the way down for this freak, equal parts unpredictable and irresistible.
“Can't just be the house that's got you clinging to your panties like a stripper maxing out her tease for tips. Your parents are gone half the time. I've seen the hours they keep. Fucking awful.”
“How did you know?” I press my cheek into his hand. Not thrilled where this conversation is going, but enjoying the moment too much to stop.
“I take long walks. I notice things. Half the time it's just your rusty little Toyota in the driveway. Your mom spends too much time at the house, and your old man, who the fuck knows.”
“He's drinking, I'm afraid. Comes home real late with his computer and goes straight to bed. Sometimes, he passes out on the sofa watching late night junk. I have to cover him with a blanket. It wasn't like this until we moved here.” I catch myself, looking away from him. “Sorry. That's family stuff, not your problem.”
“I'm sorry. My old man does the same crap, ever since I was old enough to pay attention. He's always got some new bimbo in his bed. Probably goes through two or three a week when he stays downtown, before he settles on a regular fuck for a few months. They haven't lasted longer than that since mom.”
