I chuckled but my heart was racing.
“Well you know, there’s time.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
He pointed to the glove box and nodded for me to open it. When I did, I saw the velvet box inside and I exhaled.
“Oh, Mal…”
“I was seeing this massive big wedding with all the frills but we can just elope. Today.”
I stared at him and then looked back at Jake.
“What does elope mean?” he asked innocently.
“Your dad wants to marry me.”
“Good. It’s about time,” Jake replied and I laughed.
“I guess I have my answer,” I told Mal, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “I’ll marry you today, anywhere you want.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded, swallowing the lump of emotion in my throat.
“Yeah.”
Our fingers entwined and he nodded slowly.
“All right. Let’s make it happen.”
“Wait! We’re still getting Chinese food, right?” Jake demanded and we laughed.
“Yes, of course.”
“And I still get to keep that ring, right?” I teased.
“Good God, what am I marrying into?” Mal protested.
“Only the best family ever,” I promised. “The one we made ourselves.”
- THE END -
Sneak Peek: Accidental Soulmates
Prologue
THE DREAM
From somewhere behind him, a blast of raucous laughter caused him to start, distracting him from the blazing machines inside the casino.
Julian turned his head slightly to the side, toward the noise and eyed the overweight, bleached blonde who couldn’t have been from anywhere other than Texas. The machine screeched and winnings poured out the lip in a waterfall of coins.
“Lookie, Patrick! I dun won four hundred smackeroos!” she chortled in a voice which fit her obnoxious appearance perfectly. Naturally, it was wrought with a deep Texan drawl.
Patrick, who apparently stood at her side, nodded approvingly and grinned a toothless smile.
“Ya sure did, Colleen! I knew you’d make our rent this time!”
Even as he thought it, a voice echoed his sentiments perfectly.
“Charming,” someone muttered from his left, her low, sultry tone laced with contempt. Julian’s eyes traveled toward the woman at his side who watched the scene with a full mouth twisted in a fusion of disdain and something he couldn’t quite decipher.
Wistfulness?
Longing?
It was difficult to read, especially since she had such a classically beautiful face, almost as if she had descended from royalty with high cheekbones and large, guarded eyes. It wasn’t as if she was suspicious per se but shadowed by the woes of life. It was hard to say what she might see in the scene which made her sad—the fact that they had won or that they were a couple.
“You’re not a fan of the machines?” he asked and she cast him a look of surprise. For a moment, Julian felt that he was invisible and she was staring directly through him with her golden-brown eyes.
Am I here? He asked himself and he idly wondered if he had spoken the question aloud. The ecstasy he had taken in his suite was causing his body to tingle in a peculiar way and if he looked at the girl a certain way, he saw her split in two.
I’d like to split her in two, he thought, a wide grin forming on his generous mouth, the abrasive woman at the slots all but forgotten.
Taking drugs was not really his scene but the impromptu vacation to Vegas had brought back some old college boy in him and he reasoned that without supervision, he was entitled to let loose once in a while.
“I really haven’t had much experience in casinos,” the raven-haired girl replied and Julian’s eyes moved along the slender lines of her neck toward the swelling breasts threatening to spill out of her too-small t-shirt.
He wondered if she had done that by design or if she just desperately needed a new wardrobe.
Julian suddenly had the irresistible urge to take her shopping.
“Casinos are overrated,” he told her, extending his hand toward her. “I know a much better way to see Vegas.”
She eyed his extended hand and for a moment, Julian thought she was going to slap him. The heady feeling of the drug made him laugh at the image and he almost welcomed the feel of her palm on his cheek. He was feeling much more brazen, not to say he was ever shy. But at the same time, he felt as if he might shatter into a million pieces if she didn’t accept his hand. In the end, she took it, raising her head back slightly to look up at him with an almost childlike wonder.
“Show me,” she told him.
* * *
He didn’t catch her name—or perhaps he never asked. It didn’t seem important as the hours flew past, her throaty laughter bringing him higher. Every second he spent with her brought him closer to the need to possess her.
Julian found himself calling her “Kitten” because she reminded him so much as a sexy little beast but there was something inherently wicked about her, a mischievous undertone beneath those serious eyes which he was dying to unleash. He knew she would be a wildcat in bed…if they got that far.
Something primitive inside him told Julian they would.
He fulfilled his desire to take her shopping, insisting that the extravagant wardrobe be sent to his suite and the afternoon flittered into night, Julian losing himself inside her golden eyes.
“Are you real?” he asked her at one point and she cocked her head to the side, a long strand of hair dripping over the luscious curve of her breasts. It was a pressing question, one which echoed over and over in his mind like a chant. Julian licked his lips, the desire to taste the cream of her skin overwhelming him.
“Are you?” she replied, spinning to fan him in a strand of black tresses.
There were champagne and lobster at the Chart House and drinks at Caesar’s. Slowly, his memory began to fade and all that remained was the haunting glow of her strange eyes which tantalized him lured him back to his rooms at the Palazzo.
When he finally gathered her in his arms, it was everything he had envisioned from the moment he had heard her voice.
“Kiss me,” she ordered him. “Hard.”
He didn’t need to be told a second time and when their lips crushed together, it was as if she had cast a spell on him. The bulge in his pants poked dangerously through the material of his crotch. He could feel her heat through the worn material of her denim jeans.
She tasted sweet and liquored but when their tongues met and Julian’s hands cupped the breasts which had been taunting him all night, the feeling that he was floating consumed him entirely and he was spun toward the ceiling, watching their clothes falling to the floor, among the packages he had purchased for her.
Why didn’t she change into one of the dresses I bought her? He wondered irrelevantly but there was no time to consider her reasoning, not when her mouth moved along his ripped, naked pecs and toward the belt of his pants. She paused to tease his taut nipples with a lashing tongue.
Julian’s palms reluctantly fell away from the full Cs and atop her silken crown of hair, sighing heavily as her hot breath touched the skin of his waistline. His organ was rigid, ready and waiting for her to take.
A warm, soft hand cupped his sack, moving his shaft into her mouth and down her throat with a fluid, easy motion. She was hot and wet, her mouth hoovering around him in a vortex of desire.
Julian groaned, closing his eyes, meaning to relish the sensation but suddenly, it was over.
When he opened his eyes, the black-haired vixen was gone and he lay sprawled against the still-made king bed of his hotel room.
He was fully dressed in a tuxedo he had not been wearing the previous night. Sitting up, he gazed about, blinking gritty eyes. The ecstasy had depleted the water supply to his body and he desperately needed hydration.
Did I dream that woman in a drug-induced haze? He asked himself, half-
crawling, half-stumbling toward the bar. But when he arrived in the sunken living room, he saw the thousands of dollars in women’s clothing sitting untouched in piles.
“Kitten?” he called out weakly but as he said the word, he felt foolish and clamped his mouth together.
Warily, he searched for his wallet to see if he had been robbed but neither his watch nor almost two thousand dollars in cash he carried had been touched.
Confused, Julian sat on the sofa and tried to piece together what had happened but the more he prodded his memory, the more fleeting it became.
It was not until Eloise began to call his phone an hour later that Julian was forced to accept that he had probably made up the black-haired girl in some ecstasy-induced illusion. Even so, Julian couldn’t help but feel a bizarre sense of loss as if he had let someone get away even though he had no real way of knowing if she existed.
1
Julian
Open.
Closed.
Open.
I waited.
Closed.
Yep, Terry was on a tear that morning although what he had set his sights on, I couldn’t say. No one knew what went through that man’s mind half the time.
I sighed deeply and turned my attention back to the computer screen, trying to block out my lawyer’s obsessive opening and closing of drawers in the next room. It was the downfall of working at the home office—the soundproofing was awful.
Of course, I hadn’t expected to have company on the days when I worked from home.
Certainly not my OCD attorney, I thought wryly. It was probably time to remodel the house and add extra insulation. My, how things had changed since my father ran Bryant Land Holdings. His vision of the company had been three high-rise condos on the east coast before the housing market had exploded. It was sad he hadn’t lived long enough to see what I had done with his baby.
Now, I was running a multi-billion-dollar empire from the sprawling estate off the coast of Biscayne Bay on my private island. It was supposed to have been a sanctuary, an escape from the skyscrapers and bustle of city life but Terry was making it very difficult to forget the woes which waited for me in the city with all his thumping around in the neighboring office.
Such motion was indicative that something was truly bothering him. I was biding my time because I knew in a matter of minutes, he would be knocking on my door, demanding some piece of paper or another and I would be forced to talk him down. I would need the couple extra minutes to hone my inner Zen for that.
To make matters worse, Eloise was calling—again. I had set my cell ringer to silent but that didn’t stop my insane step-sister from continuously phoning as if her persistence was going to break me down and not make me force her to wait longer. How little she knew me.
She hadn’t broken me in the twenty years we’d been related and I wasn’t losing my edge, no matter how much she wished for it.
No sooner did Eloise give up calling did Terry knock on the door, trading the present mishap with the original.
“Julian? Can I come in?”
It wasn’t like he gave me much of a choice and the door flew open, displaying the disheveled lawyer at the threshold.
It truly never ceased to amaze me that a man who made eight figures could perpetually carry the resemblance of a homeless person in Hialeah. In fact, I think I’d seen better put together hobos than Terry. We lived in Florida. The world was our oyster. Even if he wanted to wear khakis and Hawaiian shirts, he could have done it with a modicum of style.
But that was Terry.
“If I say no, will you leave?” I asked hopefully and as always, he ignored me, making his way toward the massive desk which I sat behind. It had belonged to my father and while I personally saw it as an eyesore, it also made me feel closer to the old man. We hadn’t been all that tight in my youth. His priorities were as follows: Bryant Land Holdings, Madeline, Bryant Land Holdings, us kids. But I still missed the bastard. He had done his best for me and his wretched wife and step-daughter while he was alive.
No matter what Madeline and Eloise say about him, I thought grimly. They had no problem trashing my father’s good name in his death but trashy was what suited the Sinclair women best.
“I can’t find the Hoover Street file,” Terry explained nervously, pacing around the front of the desk. I half-expected to see him wring his hands like a father waiting in a maternity ward.
“I’ve looked everywhere, Julian. It’s not where it’s supposed to be.”
I gritted my even, white teeth together and stifled a groan of annoyance. Like the antique desk, Terry was another throwback from my father’s reign at Bryant. I adored the man, sincerely but his old-school mentality drove me to the brink sometimes.
“Terry,” I said patiently. “I told you, all the property files have been uploaded into the system for convenience sake. The paper files have been moved into storage in New York. What are you looking for? It’s literally at your fingertips, whatever you need.”
Terry stared at me blankly and for a moment, I wondered if I have slipped into another language while talking. I was fluent in three but I didn’t think that was the problem in that instance.
“What? What, Terry?” I demanded, unable to hide my exasperation. The phone was lighting up again. I wasn’t going to get any work done that day, not when I was required to babysit all the pains in my ass at once. I needed an assistant just to wrangle these nitwits.
“I don’t understand why we can’t just keep the files on hand. It’s a huge inconvenience to fly to New York every time I need to look something up.”
I stared at him.
“Seriously?” I heard myself ask. I couldn’t believe he didn’t grasp the concept of what I had just said. A bemused guffaw escaped my lips but it only served to upset Terry more. I quickly stifled my amusement and turned to the computer.
“You don’t need to fly to New York, Terry. Everything is at your fingertips. Come here.”
I gestured for him to come closer and he shuffled toward me. Through my peripheral vision, I wondered if he thought I was plotting his death. He certainly wore an expression of concern.
“Terry, you’re one of the biggest real estate lawyers in the country. How is it that working with technology is such a chore for you?”
He shrugged, a sheepish expression crossing his face.
“Val does everything for me,” he replied and I grunted. I wanted to slap some sense into him, to remind him that Bryant Land Holding accounts held proprietary information, things that should not be entrusted to his latest bimbo assistant but I held my tongue. As I said, Terry had been a permanent fixture around the family since before I was born. He hadn’t screwed us so far so I had my fingers crossed that beneath his ineptitude for computers, he was still in control of his razor-sharp intuition.
“Are you going to answer that?” Terry asked suddenly, noticing the phone lighting up on my desk.
“It’s Eloise,” I replied nonchalantly. “Go ahead.”
Terry couldn’t hide the grimace on his face and I snickered.
“I didn’t think so. Here, look.” I pointed at the screen, logging in through my admin account and pulling up the Hoover Street property in Washington. It was remarkable that I could keep the land owned by Bryant in my mind. There were hundreds, some with similar sounding names even but I suppose I had learned them by rote as a child. Later, I had acquired more of them on my own. They weren’t just buildings and lots to me—people lived there and businesses existed in those structures. I had visited all of them personally and was able to conjure them in my mind’s eye when discussing them.
“Here. Everything you need on the property, all right?” I told Terry, sitting back so he could scroll through the information I had found. He blinked with myopic blue eyes and I watched as the widened with wonder.
Oh come on! I grumbled silently. You can’t seriously be this shocked to see this.
I knew I had personally set him on the computer in this ver
y fashion at least six times previously. Maybe he really was getting too old to retain new knowledge.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I wonder how accurate that is.
“Fascinating,” he murmured and I snorted.
“Not really. It’s a spreadsheet.”
I left him to look for whatever it was he needed and rose from my high-back leather chair to stretch. I needed an espresso anyway. I could afford to give up my screens for a few minutes.
“I’m grabbing a coffee. Want anything?”
He shook his head, claiming my seat and leaned forward to scroll through the page as I turned to leave the office.
“Your sister’s calling again.”
The word “sister” caused me to shudder but I didn’t bother to correct Terry. It was hard to say if he called Eloise my sister because he believed she was or it was a passive/aggressive stab at annoying me.
Oh, and it did annoy me. Being related to Eloise by blood was almost the worst thing I could imagine. To that day, I couldn’t reconcile what my hardworking father had seen in her gold-digging mother.
The apple certainly doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
Sighing, I whirled back to snatch the phone off the desk. I was going to have to answer sooner or later. Eloise would just jam up my voicemail and block my incoming calls with her persistence. I relented. Better I answer now when I was idle than in the middle of something. Sooner or later I’d be forced to talk to her.
“What?” I snapped, spinning back toward the door.
“And good morning to you too,” she purred. “I’ve been calling you for two days. When did you get home?”
I grunted. I knew she’d been calling for two days. I’d been avoiding her just as long. Moreover, why was she calling me to shoot the breeze? That girl really needed a job. The thing was, the only job she wanted was mine.
“Yesterday. What do you want, Eloise?”
Can’t Get Over You: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 12
