“I apologize for the lack of follow-through you’ve seen so far. I appreciate you giving Sable Concierge another chance. My company is one I want you to lean on any time you’re in need of help.”
“Your company came highly recommended, Ms. Sawyer,” Reese said, his voice softening some. Isabella knew why. Reese’s voice did that whenever the topic of his wife came up.
“Thank Merina for me again,” Isa told him.
“I will. Your success is imminent, I presume.”
“You can bank on it.” She said her goodbyes and hung up the phone, pulling in a steady breath. One more shot. She had one more shot to pull this off. No, Reese hadn’t said it, but he hadn’t needed to. She’d fire her if she were him. Wife-recommended or no.
Last fall, Isa randomly scored a position for one of her assistants at the Van Heusen hotel with Merina Crane. Merina had suggested Isa’s company for Elijah’s transition from the military to Crane corporate. In comparison to what Merina’s brother-in-law had been through already, placing a PA should’ve been easy. Eli had already been through the physical hoops to regain his mobility using a prosthetic leg, and his warehouse home was equipped to accommodate his working at home.
The assistant’s job was to help him field conference calls, answer and forward emails, and tend to the light load of work Reese had handed down to Eli to oversee.
Eli had done none of it.
Isa had sent in seasoned help each time, and a startling number of her employees left either in tears or so angry Isa nearly lost them altogether. Elijah, regardless of the team’s sensitivity training and the day they’d all spent with a rehabilitation expert for amputees, was not an easy guy to feel sorry for.
He was “mean,” according to one of her employees, “miserable” according to another, and to poor Melanie, who unfortunately had turned in her notice after her first and only day at Eli’s, had referred to him as a “monster” on her way out the door.
Isa wasn’t having it. If Eli sought misery, he could ruin his own life, not her company’s future. She’d expected Melanie to last two days. She lasted half that. Isa believed in always being prepared, so she’d been training Chloe to run the office in case of just this circumstance. Isa could run Sable Concierge after hours, answering emails and returning phone calls during lunch or early in the morning.
As owner and operator, Isa was willing to do what it took to shove her business to the next level. If she had to work two jobs, so be it.
Elijah Crane hadn’t given her much of a choice.
* * *
Eli sat at the kitchen table and watched the hubbub in front of him, chin resting in his hand, scowl on his face. His sister-in-law, Merina, was bustling around, setting the table. She paused in front of him.
“You look like your brother when you do that.” She hoisted an eyebrow and dropped it.
“The one you married or Tarzan?”
“I heard that,” Tag said, loping into the room with three bags from Chow Main, the best Chinese food joint in town. Eli’s mouth watered at the sight of the generic paper-inside-a-plastic bag. On it, a yellow smiley face, and beneath that red lettering that proclaimed HAVE A NICE DAY!
Tag’s girlfriend, Rachel, followed him, a bottle of wine in each hand.
“Hey, Rach,” Merina greeted, setting the last place. She accepted one of the bottles and spun the label around. “Ohh, good choice.”
“It’s a customer favorite. Or was, when I bartended.”
Reese filtered in next, wearing his suit from work. Merina loosened his tie, standing on her toes to press a lengthy kiss to his lips.
“Sexy man,” she murmured.
“Vixen,” Reese commented, his hand on her ass.
Patience shot, Eli gestured at the dishes on the table and bellowed, “Can someone please explain why we can’t eat Chow Main out of the containers like normal human beings instead of dealing with this bullshit?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his family, all of whom had their eyes glued on him. Merina clucked her tongue. Reese looked mildly irritated. Rachel bit her bottom lip and stepped closer to Tag, who opened his mouth and let out a hearty laugh.
At that laugh, the tone of the room shifted back to light and fluffy, and the chattering continued as Rachel and Tag unloaded the food onto the table.
It seemed the only person Eli was capable of scaring off were assistants. His family was entirely immune to him.
“We’re here,” came a call from across the warehouse. Eli looked over to see his father, Alex, and his assistant, Rhona, file in together, her hand in his. It’d been recently discovered that Alex and Rhona were partnering in more than business, and since Eli’s old man was retired and had been for some time, Eli guessed that Alex and Rhona were partnering more often than not on a personal level.
“Hey, Eli.” Rhona pulled a patterned scarf from her neck—it was only September, so he had no idea why the scarf—and smiled brightly at him.
He lifted a hand and gave a brief wave. Rhona merged into the fray, cooing over the wine as Merina apologized about not knowing she was coming and pulled an extra set of dishes from the cabinet. A low sigh worked its way through Eli’s chest as he watched.
Happy. Every last goddamn one of them.
“Beer, bro?” Tag asked, collapsing next to him into a chair. His brother’s hair was down in golden-brown waves, his beard full like Eli’s, but neatly trimmed, not like Eli’s.
Eli accepted the bottle. “What, no frosted glass? Shouldn’t we have coasters?” He gestured to the set table, in the center of which rested a bowl of oranges his last assistant brought over. She’d probably been instructed by Reese to monitor his vitamin C intake.
“It’s been half a year, E,” Tag said, leaning back in the chair and sucking down some of his own beer. “You’re going to have to get used to us being in your face. We missed you.” That last bit accompanied an elbow jab, and Eli, though he grunted on the outside, knew they’d missed him. He’d missed them. Just because his brothers’ (and hell, now his father’s) happiness was soul-sucking didn’t mean he didn’t love them. He just wished they’d be adorably coupled off somewhere far, far away from Eli’s sanctuary.
“I can go out into public you know,” he grumbled, setting the bottle down next to his plate. “You guys don’t have to come in here and serve me.”
“Oh, but we do, Lord Crane.” Merina smiled as she leaned over and handed him a glass. “We know you don’t want to deal with the public right now. Trust me, I spent enough time with the media breathing down my neck. I don’t blame you.”
Eli liked Merina. She was tough. She was bold and clearly had enough forearm strength to pull the stick out of Reese’s ass. At least partway. Eli had never seen his oldest brother this…joyous. And now that Reese was living a utopic existence with his dreams coming true, he wanted Eli on board to tiptoe in the tulips alongside him.
No, Reese wasn’t through pressuring Eli into coming back on at Crane Hotels full-time, but he had lightened up some. As evidenced when he returned to the dining room sans tie and jacket. Unlike Tag, Reese was always suited. Tag was the opposite, typically in cargo pants and a skintight Henley to show off the biceps he pumped into ridiculous sizes.
Eli was as comfortable in a suit as out of one. He could don fatigues, jeans and tee, or Armani and feel like himself. The clothes, in his case, did not make the man. Even his body didn’t make the man, though Eli had worked his ass off to maintain his. The better shape he was in, the better he felt about the leg.
“The media doesn’t give a shit about me,” Eli said. Just the way he liked it.
“They will when we name you COO,” Reese piped up.
Eli sent him a death glare. Reese didn’t flinch. Eli’s sleeve of tattoos and surly attitude didn’t intimidate his oldest brother. Reese knew him when he sleepwalked to the neighbor’s house, so he wasn’t about to be intimidated by a grumpy ex-Marine.
“We found you a new PA,” Reese said.
“No.”
“She starts next week,” he continued as if Eli hadn’t spoken.
“Well done, Reese.” Alex took his seat. He leaned an elbow on the table and smiled through a snow-white goatee at Eli, looking very “Most Interesting Man in the World” in that position.
“You’re wasting your time. I’ve told you repeatedly, I’m not interested in Chief Pencil Pusher, but if you insist, Clip…”
Tag barked another laugh, proud to hear his nickname for Reese (Clip, short for Paper Clip) used by someone other than himself.
“You’re the most like me, Eli,” Alex said, starting up a familiar speech. Because Eli had heard it about a dozen times over the last five months, his vision had already begun blurring at the edges. “Reese has my business savvy. He was made for COO.” On that Eli couldn’t disagree. Reese bled Crane Hotel’s black and white. “Tag is my free spirit, winning hearts.”
“He won mine,” Rachel said, sliding onto Tag’s lap instead of her own chair. Eli looked past lowered eyebrows to see her nuzzle Tag, who smiled like a lovesick fool. Must be nice.
“But you, Elijah,” his father continued. “You have my sense of duty. You have a lion’s heart. That same sense is what propelled me into the service.” Alex pushed up a sleeve, revealing a faded tattoo reading semper fi. Eli turned his arm to show off his matching tattoo. They did have that in common. “But now your duty lies elsewhere, son.”
Here it came. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
“It’s time to be the man Crane Hotels needs you to be.”
Next to Eli, Tag snorted. Reese even cracked a smile.
Eli referred to this as Dad’s “Batman” speech. It always ended with that same ode.
“I’m busy, Dad,” Eli said.
“We’ll see.”
“Okay, food!” Merina gestured to the spread. Typically, Tag ate three entrees on his own, but Merina preferred to have a bite of everything on the table. If Eli wasn’t fast, she’d dig into his without asking. “Ohh, Eli. Your shrimp pad Thai looks amazing.”
He made a shooing motion. “You have to give me an extra crab rangoon if you steal my food.”
She slid a glance at Reese. “Did he used to be nicer?”
“No,” Reese deadpanned.
So it went every other Friday since Eli had returned after leaving part of himself in Afghanistan. Yes, his leg, but also two friends. While he was away, a lot had happened to him, and as much had happened to his brothers. Reese was married, Tag, practically married, and Dad…whatever was going on there.
Eli understood that they thought he’d slip into the slot saved for him at Crane Hotels now that he’d retired from the military, but for him, it wasn’t that simple. He didn’t fit anywhere. A large part of him wondered if that was simply because he felt incomplete, and not for the reason anyone thought. He cared about different things now. He wanted different things now. He glanced around the table at his family.
Reese dished out some of his Mongolian beef onto Merina’s plate while she stole a sip of his wine. Rachel slid off Tag’s lap with a smile and Tag lifted her hand to kiss it. Rhona unwrapped a pair of chopsticks and handed them to Alex.
Eli didn’t want what they had. None of it. His reasoning was simple.
He refused to want something he couldn’t have. Life had spoken. He was listening.
He didn’t need another relationship to be whole.
He didn’t need anyone.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Lemmon
Excerpt from The Bastard Billionaire copyright © 2016 by Jessica Lemmon
Cover illustration by Tony Mauro
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner
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ISBNs: 978-1-4555-6658-7 (mass market), 978-1-4555-6659-4 (ebook)
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