She had been a kid, barely eighteen at the time. Sweet. Innocent. And, damn, she had wanted me.
And I’d wanted her.
I wanted her now. Wanted her sexy ass and that smart mouth with more than a bit of attitude. Damn, I liked that attitude.
The intercom on my phone buzzed, and my assistant let me know that Brennan was on his way in. Brennan spent most of his time looking for new opportunities for us. We were building the business quickly and aggressively, and while Brennan was a master at security and making sure things ran smoothly, he also had a knack for seeing opportunities in broken down properties.
He was here to talk about investment opportunities, that much was clear by the look on his face.
“What’s up?” I found myself holding my breath.
His face had a pinched expression, and his eyes held a hint of anger in them. “It’s just like we thought.” I knew where he was going before he even finished the next sentence. But I also wasn’t one to interrupt people when they spoke. I had been raised better than that.
“The complications we’re facing in securing the remaining plots on the peninsula project? All thanks to the Duffys.”
I leaned back in my seat as a surge of anger shot through my system. Dammit.
“Why am I not surprised? I had a feeling they’d find a way to fuck with me with this.” The pen I had been spinning in my hand dropped to the desk with a clatter.
I didn’t continue immediately. Instead, I looked around my expansive office. I hadn’t skimped on cost when I had it professionally decorated, and I found its stainless steel accents and dark wood comforting. The glass windows surrounded me in the perfect amount of light. Perfect. It was all perfect. And now I was finding it a little bit suffocating as my mind searched for options on how to deal with a family of rivals bent on derailing my business.
The massive project I was putting together on Columbia Point was more than just another deal. To me, it was like my grand opus. It was bigger than anything I had tried in the past, bigger even than anything my father or my brothers had ever attempted in their lives. It was a chance not only to rehabilitate a part of the old neighborhood that had been underutilized in the past generation but to put a little pride back in the neighborhood.
The point had been home to a facility owned by the university, but they never used it to its full potential. It was mostly a place where drug addicts and prostitutes hung out, and it was a place that the majority of upstanding citizens in the neighborhood avoided at all costs. An eyesore. A liability.
For now.
One of the first major businesses that I managed to put in at the point belonged to my brother, Finn. I’d given him a sweetheart deal on the rent for the land that just about kissed the waterfront. On it, he built a luxury hotel that he named The Capstone on the Point. We’d all been nervous at first, wondering if people would take to the idea of the point being anything but a risk.
Since the hotel was huge, it was a destination for tourists and businesses alike. Finn had obviously shared in my optimism because he plunked down a pretty penny to build the thing. As a matter of fact, Amelia’s father’s company had built quite a bit of it.
But after the hotel, not only had getting the original owners of some of the land to sell to me been more difficult, it had also been harder to get potential businesses to take meetings with me about leasing the spaces.
And now it was starting to make sense.
“What do we have on them?” I asked Brennan.
“Not as much as I want. Yet.” He walked toward one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked down at the streets below. “We have confirmation from a few reliable sources that they’re out to end your plans, but I don’t have hard evidence at this point.”
I wasn’t too worried, and Brennan didn’t seem to be either. We’d get our smoking gun soon enough, especially when dealing with idiots like the Duffys.
“The old man still involved?”
Kevin Duffy had been an old high school rival of my old man’s. They’d both grown up from nothing and earned hard-scratched livings the only way they knew how. My father and his brothers, as ruthless as they seemed to me, were nothing when compared to Kevin Duffy. I’d heard rumors as a kid that he shot his own brother over a deal gone south, something unheard of in the Irish families around our neighborhood. You might beat your little brother up a bit for acting like a fool, but family was still family.
Kevin’s sons, Jake and Bryan, were running the show now, it seemed.
“He wrapped his truck around a pole a few years back, remember?”
I thought a moment before the memory returned. That’s right. He was in a wheelchair now and more miserable than ever. His wife eventually had to put him in a nursing home because the sad bastard wouldn’t stop trying to hang himself in the modified bathroom they’d had to build in their house.
“So, Jake and Bryan are doing this?”
Jake was older than me, maybe forty-five at this point. Bryan was probably pushing thirty and was in the same high school class as my little brother, Matthew, and Amelia’s older brother, Jack Jr.
“From what I understand, they know the stakes and the amount of money possible here,” Brennan said. “They’re sending muscle to the area around the hotel to mug a few people and rough them up so the hotel’s reputation will go down. There was a trash fire in one of the empty buildings on the pier too. From what I gathered, it’s just the beginning.”
I exhaled a long breath. It wasn’t like the Duffy brothers had plans of their own or anything. I wasn’t biting on their territory and stealing money from their pockets, but their criminal racket seemed to thrive in the peninsula area, and their petty drug pushers had been allowed free rein of the place for years.
And now I was cleaning it up, and they weren’t happy.
“So, not only are they attacking my future project,” I said, my voice quiet despite the anger raging in my veins, “they’re trying to scare my neighborhood tenants as well?”
I owned land all over the old neighborhood and leased it out to tenants I screened fairly heavily. I wanted Dorchester to keep some of its identity and not get swept up in a sea of cheap franchises. So far, I’d done a decent job of it. One of my shopping centers and mixed-use developments won an architectural and design award from a national magazine a few years ago, and the write-up about combining residential condos on the upper floors with shopping and entertainment businesses on the lower floors had been glowing. The positive PR only pushed the value of my company higher.
But there were always people who wanted to see you fall — who wanted to keep the residents of their own neighborhoods under their heels.
And those people pissed me off.
“Something else,” Brennan said, turning back to me.
I waited. Shit. This wasn’t good. “Go on.”
“I caught wind of a rumor from one of our informants,” he said as he stepped closer to my desk. He hesitated, the muscles in his jaw popping. “They said that Jake Duffy has been passing money and bribes to JJ Byrne for a few projects they were trying to get started on the east side. Byrne’s an idiot and can’t do shit without his old man, so from what I could gather, he’s in deep shit, and the old man doesn’t know how badly.”
I tried to wrap my head around what he’d just said.
“His son’s been stealing from him?” It’s what it basically amounted to. Did Amelia know? I shook my head, pressing my fingers to my suddenly throbbing temple.
Brennan nodded. “Using company equipment and labor to do under the table projects for lowlifes like the Duffys? Yeah, basically. He was also behind a few undercut bids on projects we were hoping to get ahold of.”
We weren’t in the construction business, but some of the rentals we built required buildouts, and these things were occasionally required in contracts before I could buy them. And sometimes the whole deal had fallen to shit before I could get it inked because either the team we hired didn’t show or made a
giant mess of the situation. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if JJ Byrne had sabotaged us somehow.
Son of a bitch.
“Just thought you should know since I saw you checking out his sister the other day,” Brennan quipped. He wore an amused expression, but I didn’t think it was funny.
“You worry about your job, Brennan, and I’ll worry about who I’m checking out.”
My tone said it all. He knew he’d crossed the line a bit too far today, and without another word, he was gone.
A few moments later, my line buzzed. It was a direct line that only my brothers, sister, and my mother had access to, so when it rang, I answered it.
It was usually Finn with news about the hotel, which was the only reason I never let it go to voicemail. I immediately wished I’d let this particular call go.
“Declan, I need money.”
My eyes nearly rolled into the back of my head at my mother’s voice. She always needed money, and she never called unless it was for more cash or to pick her up after another corrective surgery. And I couldn’t just send a driver, either. One of us had to be there in person to collect her, or my mother swore she would have a stroke of bad luck and die on the operating table. My sister, Cat, was away at college, and my three brothers had long ago learned to just ignore her.
But I was still a sucker for the most part when it came to my mother. It was a small part loyalty to one’s mother, but mostly it was because I knew how petty Fiona Declan was and that if she were to actually die because one of her children didn’t pick her up from her Botox injection, she’d be one petty-as-hell ghost and make my life miserable.
Besides, if I hadn’t gone to fetch her after Tuesday’s “resurfacing” as she called it, I never would have randomly run into Amelia Byrne. And that had been fortuitous indeed.
“You have money.” I knew for a fact she did. She’d burned through the nest egg my old man left her when he died, but my brothers and I kept her account plenty padded with monthly allotments.
Too bad she spent like a third-world dictator.
“It’s not enough, darling,” she said, the pout in her voice obvious. I squeezed my fist and prayed for some divine patience with this woman.
“How much?”
Her rent was paid for by a trust my dad had set up for their walk-up. She had a private chef leave her meals in her fridge three times a week. She had a dog walker, a housecleaner a few times a week, and a standing appointment for her hair every Thursday — which I knew about only because I paid for all of these. What she was lacking was clearly a mystery to me.
“I’d like to go shopping in the North End, and I simply cannot show my face without at least five grand on me,” she said breathlessly, like she was some Hollywood royalty and not the widow of a grimy South Boston tough guy.
I could argue with her and draw out a fight that would result in her hanging up on me and torturing me for weeks with passive aggressive texts and emails, but it was far simpler to just give the woman the damn money, as much as it irked me.
I called it the “mother tax,” and it was a running joke with Finn, who was nearly as successful as me and paid out nearly as much to Mother Dearest each month.
“It’ll be in your bank this afternoon. Was there anything else?” I wanted to end the phone call quickly and get on with my day.
“Actually, there is,” she said. “Do you remember Claudia? Claudia Vickers? She was the news anchor you dated a few years back.”
Of course, I remembered Claudia. She had the most annoying laugh I’d ever heard, though she was a bit of a wild woman in the sack, which had been the only thing that kept us afloat for the six months she — and obviously my mother —considered us to have dated.
“I remember,” I said, my impatience growing. If this was going where I thought it was, I was going to be pissed.
“Well, Declan, seems she’s back in town. She got an evening anchor position at WXMA, and she’s been back almost four weeks. She said she tried reaching out to you but never heard back.”
Oh, yeah. I suddenly remembered the familiar e-mail address popping up in my inbox a few weeks ago but had deleted it without bothering to read it. I wasn’t interested in anything she had to say.
“What’s your point?”
“Tone, Declan. I’m still your mother.” She sniffed, and I could almost imagine her examining her nails. “My point is that you should take her out to dinner to welcome her back. She was a dear friend and could use a friendly face right now. Promise me you’ll contact her soon?”
I grimaced. Hell, no. I wasn’t going to be strong-armed into taking my ex-girlfriend, the one who brayed like a donkey when she laughed, out to dinner. But I also wasn’t interested in continuing the conversation.
“I’ll think about it,” I said quickly and hung up the phone before she could put any more machinations into motion on my behalf.
Claudia Vickers. I shuddered at the name. No, thanks.
Amelia Byrne, however? Yes. That was a name — a face, a body — I could meditate on all night.
***
Later that night, Amelia was still on my mind. I somehow made it through the last few hours of my agonizingly slow day, and when I found myself at home after I’d eaten and showered and was lying in bed, my mind continued to stray back to the dark-haired beauty.
I wasn’t the type to get so fascinated with a woman, especially a woman I hadn’t even seen in years. I spent a few moments trying to add up just how long it had been since her graduation night, and I realized seven years had passed.
“How much you’ve changed, Amelia,” I said into the darkness.
I couldn’t shake the image of her long dark hair, hanging past her shoulders in sexy waves. I had sat so close to her at the medical center coffee shop that I could smell the coconut shampoo she used. Each time she moved, I caught her unique, intoxicating scent.
She had smelled divine and looked equally delicious. My thoughts wandered to her pink, full lips. They looked sweet and delectable, and I was certain they tasted that way too.
My cock pulsed, suddenly aching to be inside the beautiful woman, and I could almost imagine myself hovering over her, savoring that sweet moment when the head of my dick pressed against her opening, seeking entrance into her warmth. That moment as I slid in, her heat and muscles claiming me as I claimed her.
With a groan, I pushed my boxers down my hips before wrapping a hand around my rock-hard shaft. No other woman had driven me to touching myself since college — I simply didn’t need it. But I couldn’t shake the fact that Amelia had gotten under my skin over the past couple of days. She was something I wanted to explore, I wanted to consume.
Even if she was dangerous.
I tightened my grip as the fleeting thought surged forward, a reminder that she might loosely be connected to people trying to sabotage my business. But as I began to stroke myself, I quickly pushed that thought away.
I was good at reading people, and I would’ve read any bad intentions Amelia had for me or my business immediately.
No. I believed her when she said she was here to help her old man for a short time before disappearing from my life again.
I couldn’t explain why, but the thought deeply unsettled me. It even made me angry.
Pushing the distraction away, I concentrated on Amelia’s face as I stroked. I was painfully hard and desperate for release.
What had she done to me?
To get myself in the right place mentally, I closed my eyes and imagined how it would feel to kiss Amelia as the grown woman she was now, not the silly half-drunk teenager she had been.
In my fantasies, she was warm and soft and sweet. In my mind, she moaned as my tongue delved into her sweet mouth and my hand gripped the back of her head, pulling her closer to me. Amelia’s fantasy body went soft against me, acquiescing to my demands, knowing instinctively what I wanted from her.
And she gave it to me. On her hands and knees, that tight little ass was in the air for me
now. Her long, dark hair streaming down her flawless skin.
As the scene played out, my grip tightened, my hand working faster.
Embarrassing as it was, I knew my thoughts of Amelia were going to make quick work of my task. I sucked in a deep breath at the thought of gripping her hair and pulling her head up as I drove into her from behind. As I imagined the throaty yell she’d give as my hand reached around to push her to her limit, I was done.
Literally.
I growled as long, thick ropes of semen splashed on my belly, the release sudden and intense. White spots dotted my vision. Damn. Just the thought of being with Amelia had given me the most powerful orgasm I’d had in years.
With a half-frustrated sigh, I stood up from the bed and toweled myself off before heading back to the shower.
I laughed, thinking I might have just made things worse for myself. I was pretty sure there was no getting Amelia Byrne out of my mind anytime soon.
CHAPTER SIX
Amelia
The worst job interview in recent memory happened on an otherwise innocuous Tuesday afternoon. I’d been caught fairly unprepared, but in my own defense, my mind had been going in a million different directions between Pop’s medical issues and running into Declan at the medical center.
Declan.
Just his name made a chill run up my spine, and the acid in my stomach soured a bit. I was sure I came off as a bit bitchy and distant in our two-minute interaction, and I’d normally be appalled at being so unfriendly and rude. But damn it. That man raised from the dead every insecurity I’d long buried in the past seven years.
I’d been scouring job ads online for a solid three days with nothing interesting popping up. There were a couple chef jobs that certainly looked like they’d be a good fit, but they were obviously permanent positions for people looking to make permanent homes in Boston.
Not me.
I was looking for a chef going on maternity leave or taking a sabbatical who needed a couple of months coverage a few times a week. Pop was paying me a decent wage to run the books at his place now that JJ had basically dropped off the face of the Earth, but I didn’t want to leave Boston completely empty-handed when the time came. Finding something else to do would give me a little bit of savings and keep my skills sharp.
Claiming Amelia Page 4
