by Katee Robert
If she followed through on the promise Beckett’s body was making, it would be good. It would be so far beyond good that there were no words for it.
That wasn’t why she’d come out here, though. She’d been tasked with searching out his secrets. If she said yes now, she’d spend the next few hours coming on Beckett’s cock, his mouth, his hands, and she’d have compromised herself and her future in the process. No matter how phenomenal the pleasure he could give her, a few hours wasn’t worth the rest of her life.
Her mother had learned that the hard way. Samara would be worse than a fool if she made the same mistake.
“Let…” She had to take a shallow breath and try again. “Let me down.”
He shifted back just enough for her to slide down his body until her feet were firmly rooted to the floor again. “You want this.”
“Yes, I do.” Taking that first step away from him felt like tearing her own arm off. It was too right to have Beckett’s body pressed against hers. As if they fit in a way that defied logic and comprehension.
That was the problem. The second he touched her, she stopped thinking, and being quick on her feet was the only thing that had gotten Samara to where she was today. She couldn’t compromise that, even for a man who made her blood sing in her veins and her entire body yearn.
He’s the enemy.
She couldn’t afford to forget that.
The next step was easier, and she paused to right her skirt. Her thighs shook with denied pleasure, but she managed to smooth her expression. Remind him what’s at stake. Get your barriers back in place. “That’s not why we’re here, Beckett. Get your things and then we’ll scatter your father’s ashes. After that, you should probably say good-bye to Thistledown Villa.”
Beckett couldn’t look at Samara. Not with her taste still stinging his tongue and the memory of her heat searing him through his jeans. She was right about stopping, right about not complicating things further, but fuck if he cared about it. They could be in his old bed, losing themselves in each other. The temptation to forget everything for a little while was almost as strong as the temptation for the woman herself.
Liar.
He grabbed an ancient backpack from his closet and looked around the room to distract himself. He’d lived in this space from the time he was a baby to when he moved out at eighteen. He hadn’t gone far—just to his brand-new condo in Houston to attend college—but it had still been a new distance that was never there before. Memories crowded the corkboard, trophies lined the shelf running the length of the room, and paperbacks filled the shelf below it. The walls were still the bright blue he’d convinced his mother to paint when he was eight. The weekend they cleared out this room and went to town on the walls was one of the last good ones they’d had before the cancer took first her energy and then her life.
All of it held significance, but the truth was that he’d taken most of the important things when he’d bought his condo in the heart of the city. Nathaniel King could be a bastard and a half, and it would have been in character for him to purge Beckett’s room of any hint of his dead wife the same way he’d purged the rest of the house.
He walked to the corkboard and took down the two pictures of his mother he’d left behind. The rest were of friends from high school who he’d barely talked to after graduation, let alone now. They were good memories, but ultimately forgettable.
“Is that your mother?”
He tensed against the urge to shove the photos in his pocket to shield them from Samara. But it wasn’t like Beckett’s mother was a big secret. She was ancient history, at least according to his father. She’d never felt like ancient history to Beckett, though. Everywhere he looked in Thistledown Villa he saw evidence of her despite his old man’s best efforts. Nathaniel King could take down her pictures, dig up the flowers she’d planted in front of the house, and even go so far as to change the curtains she’d chosen for the whole house, but he couldn’t erase the memories Beckett had with her. No matter how hard he’d tried.
“Yeah. She died when I was nine.” The woman in the picture held a baby in a blue blanket—Beckett—and smiled broadly at the camera. Her blond hair looked like it’d been tossed in the wind, and the fields of Thistledown Villa peeked out of the background. They’d played in those fields for days on end during the summers, picking wildflowers while she wove stories about the magical creatures that made their home there. Fantastical adventures his father had always been too busy to come along on.
“She looks happy.” There was a strange hushed tone to Samara’s words.
“She was.” He slid the photo into his pocket. “They both were.” Maybe things would have been different if Nathaniel wasn’t so damn determined to smite out every piece of her. It might have been grief pushing him to destroy his own memories with his late wife, but it had only ever seemed a betrayal to Beckett. She was barely gone a week before the purge started. He still vividly remembered walking into the kitchen and finding Nathaniel ripping the photos from the fridge and tossing them into the trash. Even now, twenty-five years later, anger flushed hot and painful in his chest. “My father would have been a different person if she’d lived.”
“Maybe.” Samara shrugged, her expression guarded. “Or maybe she would have lived long enough for it all to fall apart.”
Old wound.
Like recognized like, and they stood in perfect understanding for the space of a heartbeat. Beckett broke the moment, turning away to the desk taking up the corner nearest the window. He found the key taped to the underside of it and unlocked the bottom drawer. The only thing it held was a faded baby book. He’d left it here because it seemed fitting that his childhood home held the first memories that were diligently recorded by the mother whose death neither he nor Nathaniel had ever quite gotten over.
On the dark days in his teenage years, when he and his father would clash violently and then retreat to their respective wings, he’d pull out this book and remember the woman whose neat script detailed adventures she and baby Beckett had together. His first staggering steps in the grand hall that, to his mother’s delight, turned into running almost immediately. Playing hide-and-seek in the massive gardens behind the mansion. How he used to tell his mother he loved her before he went to bed every night and beg for one more story.
The book didn’t contain the memories that came later. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast in the kitchen. His mother’s endless patience as she taught him to read on the comfortable couch in the library downstairs. Playing tag and running through the house, filling the empty halls with laughter.
The only foundation he had for those memories was the house itself. The house was what drew him back time and time again. He made an effort to visit at least once a month when he was in town, to walk through the halls and reinforce his memories of his mother, to talk to the staff and ensure that they were taking good care of the place. To remember that he was more than just Nathaniel King’s son. He was her son, too.
After today he’d no longer have access to Thistledown. He’d have to find a different way to make sure he didn’t forget a single thing. To keep the memories from fading over time.
He slid the baby book into the backpack before Samara could ask any questions about it. It was one thing to share a few spare details about his mother. It was entirely another to lay himself bare for this woman who ultimately couldn’t be trusted.
Beckett hitched the backpack onto his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“That’s it?”
He stopped in the doorway. “What’s it?”
“That’s…” She motioned vaguely at him. “You took two pictures and a baby book. This room…” Another wave to encompass the room. “You don’t want anything else?”
He almost didn’t answer, but the thought seemed to bother her so much he found himself explaining. “It’s all just…shit. The house is what holds the memories, and I can’t take that with me.” Why the fuck did you deed the house to Lydia, old man? Was it some
kind of misplaced guilt? Was it one last final “fuck you” to me for not erasing my mother the way you wanted me to?
If the ghost of his father lingered in these halls, he gave no answer. Just as well.
Beckett walked out of the room and this time Samara followed without protesting. He’d left the container with his father’s ashes in the entranceway, so he retrieved it and headed for the back of the house. It would have been just as easy to go around the outside, but he wanted to say good-bye in his own way. He’d fight for Thistledown Villa. It was too important not to fight for. But he didn’t want to miss his chance to say good-bye all the same.
When his great-great-grandfather had struck oil and gotten rich, the first thing he’d done was have this absurdly massive house built. Three wings, fifteen bedrooms, five stairwells, a ballroom, two libraries, half a dozen other rooms for everything from entertaining to hiding from the family. And for what? The legacy the man had obviously envisioned where a busy family occupied this space…it never came to pass.
After cancer took Beckett’s mother, he and his father were the only ones who lived there on a daily basis, and the staff was sufficiently terrified of his father that they weren’t willing to respond to any overtures of friendship from Beckett. It was as if his father had extended welcome to his mother, but after she was gone, Nathaniel couldn’t stand anyone who wasn’t King or staff setting foot in these hallowed halls. Beckett took perverse pleasure out of bringing his friends here, of forcing laughter and chaos into the halls his father wanted silent.
Yet another way he and Nathaniel never saw eye-to-eye.
He took the door from the kitchen into the greenhouse. “My grandfather had these gardens built as a wedding gift to my grandmother.” Paths wound through the thick foliage, and there were little signs announcing the various types of tropical flowers planted along them.
“That’s one way to woo a woman.”
He slowed so she should catch up, and they walked together. “She was the daughter of a pastor, and the man hated my grandfather—probably with good reason—and forbade them to marry. They ran off to Europe, and while they were there, they visited the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid. She fell in love, and so he built this.”
Samara reached out and ran her finger along a brilliant orange flower. “That’s a beautiful story. It’s too bad he was such a horrible father.”
Beckett couldn’t argue that, so he didn’t bother. His grandfather was ultimately the reason why Lydia split from the family. There was probably a time right after the decision to name Beckett’s father as the heir when things could have been repaired. But they hadn’t been. Pride kept everyone to their own sides and so Kingdom Corp was born, and Thistledown Villa was banned to Lydia and any children she’d have. Pride is one thing every single one of the Kings have in common.
He opened the back door for Samara and they walked out onto the fields that were pictured in Lydia’s office. He glanced at Samara’s shoes. “It might be better if you stay here. The ground is pretty soft right now.” Her heels would sink right into the dirt.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
The question seemed straightforward enough on the surface. Truth be told, Beckett didn’t want to do this by himself. He might never have been on the same page as his father, but in his heart of hearts he’d hoped that one day they’d figure their shit out and admit that if they had nothing else in common, they had a love for his mother. He’d never get that chance now.
But he didn’t explain that to Samara for the same reason he didn’t tell her about the baby book in his room. He shook his head. “I got it.”
Beckett could feel her gaze on him as he walked out into the field. It was too early in the year for the wildflowers to be in full bloom, but that was fitting in its own way. He stopped in the same spot where his father used to come stand after it rained. The same spot where the picture in his pocket had been taken.
“I hope it was worth it,” he said quietly. “I hope all the backbiting and bullshit and cruelty was worth it.” I hope you end up with her. He couldn’t say it, though. No matter how much his father may have loved his mother, it didn’t make Nathaniel King a better man. He’d had a choice after she died, and he’d gone down the path that was destined to set him and Beckett forever at odds. “Good-bye, old man.” He took the top off the container and scattered the ashes into the wind.
Chapter Four
Samara pulled up in front of her childhood home, her heart heavy. Friday dinners were for her amma. The tiny two-bedroom house was clean and tidy on the inside, but anyone walking by could see the peeling paint and desperate need for a new roof. The obviously well-loved yard did nothing to elevate the first impression most people got as they walked past it on the street. Samara had offered to pay for the fixes, but her mother had shot her down so sternly that she hadn’t had the courage to offer again.
The building was about as far from Thistledown Villa as it could be and still be termed a house. Before today, that might have filled her with shame—and guilt for feeling shame—but after watching the raw memories play out over Beckett’s face, she was reminded forcibly just how lucky she was. Samara may never have met her father, but her amma’s love ensured that she’d never felt the lack. This little house might not be picture perfect or have been in her family for generations, but it was filled to the brim with happy memories. Even the bad times were never that bad, because no matter how often life kicked her, Samara’s amma never let her hope flicker.
The screen door had a tear in the bottom half that had been there since she was a kid. She’d always hated that tear, hated the lack of money it represented. It seemed such a petty thing to focus on now. She opened it and knocked.
Amma opened it almost immediately. “Samara, you’re here.” She enveloped her in a hug that almost took her off her feet despite the fact that her mother was a good six inches shorter than she was. The scent of sandalwood had her smiling despite the weight of the day. Home.
“Amma.” She hugged her back and frowned. “You’ve lost weight.”
“So have you.” Her amma clicked her tongue and pinched her arm. “Much more of that nonsense and you’ll be more shadow than girl. Come in, come in.”
She followed her amma into the little kitchen. “You didn’t have to cook for me. I’m more than capable of picking up takeout on the way here.” The protest was barely halfhearted. Takeout couldn’t compare to Amma’s cooking, and they both knew it.
“It’s not a chore when it’s done with love.” Her amma shot her a look. “And last time you offered to pick up dinner, you brought me raw fish and rice.”
Samara laughed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. “At least let me help you.”
“Absolutely not. Sit. How’s your work? Has that witch seen the error of her ways and found religion?”
“Amma, Lydia is not a witch.” She ran her fingers through her hair and absently started braiding a lock. “Things are going well. I’m personally handling the proposal for an important government contract—it’s a great opportunity. Lydia gave me that.”
Her amma huffed. “She didn’t give you anything. You worked for it. That’s not going to stop her from trying to make you over in her image.” She looked up from the samosas she was putting together and narrowed inky eyes identical to Samara’s. “Look at you. You walk like her, you talk like her, you dress like her.”
“Amma, please.” She tried and failed to rein in her irritation. They’d had this conversation more times than she could count, and she didn’t see this one going any differently than the hundreds before it. That wouldn’t stop her from trying, though. “There is nothing wrong with ambition.”
“Ambition is like salt—a little is a good thing, but too much ruins the meal.”
“I know.” It wasn’t Lydia King that her amma was opposed to—it was the world she moved in. Once upon a time, her amma had been on the same path Samara was on now. She’d come from India to attend McCombs School
of Business on a full scholarship and had all the hallmarks of going places.
Until she met Samara’s father. Devansh Patel was rich and beautiful and charming, the youngest son of a local congressman. It had been a love affair for the ages—at least long enough for her amma to get pregnant and drop out of school, losing all her scholarships—and then Devansh unceremoniously dumped her, and his family’s lawyers had blocked any attempts to declare paternity.
Left with nothing of the future she’d thought she’d have, her amma ended up cleaning the houses of people like Samara’s father and the Kings to pay the bills.
All her life, Amma had supported her in every way she could. Samara wore secondhand clothes and never had money for school lunches, but she’d kept her eye on the prize. Even after a long day of backbreaking work, her amma would stay up late to help her with whatever schoolwork was giving her trouble. Anything for Samara. She wanted her daughter to shoot for the stars in a way she hadn’t been able to.
Just not this star.
“Enough of this. I don’t want to fight. Tell me what’s new in your life.”
Samara settled in and gave her amma a purified version of what she’d been up to. She kept the stories light and entertaining, and very carefully didn’t share any details that could be upsetting. It took more effort than normal, mostly because she was preoccupied with Beckett.
She rarely questioned Lydia. The woman was a genius when it came to business, more than proving she should have been named CEO of Morningstar Enterprise instead of Nathaniel. But this situation with Thistledown Villa didn’t sit well with Samara. It was obviously a footnote for Lydia—bragging rights—and it was just as obviously important to Beckett.
It’s not my business. My job is to follow orders and keep my head on straight—it’s not to get between the members of the King family.
Dinner passed pleasantly enough once they got all the bickering out of the way. Samara did the dishes despite Amma’s protests, and she slipped a couple hundred dollars into the cookie jar where her amma had stashed her savings. It was their little song and dance. They had their ridiculous pride in common, but the truth was that her amma needed money, and if she wouldn’t take it directly, Samara had no problem hiding it in places where it wouldn’t be found until she was safely out of the house.
