by Jenna Jacob
Easy, princess. I’ve got your back. And if I weren’t sparring with Atilla the Hun right now, I’d be fantasizing about your front and all the luscious parts in between, too.
“Stop being a bitch to my girl and direct your venom on someone who’s earned it.”
“Someone like you?” Sylvia asked with an icy smile.
“Or yourself,” I quipped.
“Constantly fencing with you is so taxing. Let’s put our swords away, shall we?” She sniffed. “Come in, make yourselves at home.”
As Harmony and I followed her through the portal, I dragged a glance over the same floor-to-ceiling wraparound windows that afforded a stunning view of Central Park. Took in the familiar stark black-and-white art deco décor and glanced at the shimmering blue water of the rooftop pool.
It was no surprise that my sleeping berth on the bus felt ten times homier.
“Sebastian is putting the finishing touches on dinner. Can I get either of you a cocktail, some wine, a glass of champagne?”
“Champagne would be nice, thank you,” Harmony said softly.
“Oh, my,” Sylvia tittered, eyes widening in surprise. “That accent… Where on earth are you from, darling?”
“Kentucky,” she proudly announced.
“I didn’t know they had champagne in…Kentucky.”
“I believe it’s available in every state these days.”
Her sassy reply had me sending up a mental fist pump. “I think I’ll have a glass of that myself.”
“Then you can pour us all one, Rosner.”
Yes, because it was beneath her to serve herself, let alone her guests.
“Your house is very beautiful, Mrs. Walker.”
That’s it, princess. Don’t let her get under your skin. You’re doing fine.
“It’s not a house, dear. It’s a penthouse. And yes, I know. I hired the finest decorators
in the world to create this masterpiece of interior excellence,” Sylvia bragged
As I slid a glass of bubbly into Harmony’s hand, I brushed my fingers over hers and flashed her a wink of encouragement. She graced me with a wide smile that filled me with peace—at least temporarily.
When I presented a flute to my mother, she moved in on the other side of me and leaned in close to my ear. “Honestly, Rosner. I never would have pictured you with a…hillbilly. Tell me, did you find her in a personals ad in the back of a hunting magazine?”
I clenched my jaw, praying that Harmony hadn’t heard the snarky comment.
“Remember, you can take a girl out of the woods,” Sylvia continued, “even squeeze her into a Chanel dress, but you’ll never squeeze the woods out of the girl. She’s after your money, darling.”
“If you invited us here to sling nasty insults, we’ll be happy to leave.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sylvia waved my threat away while keeping a critical eye on the hired help filling the water glasses at the dining table. “Dinner will be served any moment.”
“Then keep your ugly comments to yourself,” I growled, glaring in her evil eyes.
A snide laugh bubbled in the back of her throat. Clearly, she was delighted that she’d gotten a rise out of me. Little did Sylvia know, I’d be the one getting the last laugh.
“Attention, everyone, my creation is complete,” Sebastian announced.
Balancing three plates in his hand and one on his arm, the fifty-something chef donning in a spotless apron and tall white toque waddled to the dining table. After placing each elegantly crafted entrée on the stark white linen tablecloth, he backed away and flashed a triumphant smile.
“Oh, Bass,” Sylvia gushed, ushering us to the table. “It looks simply scrumptious. What decadent delicacies have you designed, darling?”
“Tonight, I have prepared for you fillet of veal stuffed with wild rice, butternut squash, and topped with a silky, hazelnut puree. On the side is a caramelized sweet potato flambé and grilled baby portobellos infused with a savory, obscenely priced wine.”
“Exquisite. It looks divine.” Sylvia applauded before she sent the man a condescending smile. “That will be all, Sebastian.”
Priceless. Even a world-famous, Michelin-star chef wasn’t worthy of gracing Sylvia’s table since she’d hired him for services rendered. Life threw many curveballs, but one constant remained—my mother’s arrogant, entitled attitude.
“Bon appetite.” Sebastian benevolently accepted her snub and bowed before waddling through the door and back into the kitchen.
Instead of waiting for Mother to take the first bite of the meal, like I’d been trained as a child, I dug right in…sawed off a hunk of veal and popped it into my mouth. With an indignant huff, Sylvia plucked up her knife and fork. Harmony followed suit, and I watched as she placed the first bite of tender beef on her tongue. When she closed her eyes and moaned, my cock woke, stretching and eager to make her scream.
“Oh, my goodness,” she groaned. “This is… It’s delicious.”
“Of course. Sebastian is a pro.” Sylvia arched a brow. “Tell me, darling, what does one do in Kentucky?”
I open my mouth to intervene when Harmony gave a little shake of her head. The twinkle in her eyes screamed, I got this.
“I can’t speak for what others do, but I live on a secluded mountain and work hard to maintain an ecovillage with a large group of people.”
What the fuck is an ecovillage?
“I’ve never heard the term…ecovillage. What exactly is that?” Sylvia asked.
I was dying to know as well.
“Some people refer to it as a…commune. But it’s far more than that,” Harmony replied proudly.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
As Sylvia snapped her head my way, I schooled the shock charging my system, as well as the million questions pinging my brain, and met my mother’s horrified, gaping stare with a smirk.
“You…you brought a hippy into my home…my…my sanctuary?” she shrieked.
A dared a glance at Harmony, who was trying to bite back a mischievous smile.
If she’d made up the story to rattle Sylvia’s cage, way to go, princess.
On the other hand, if Harmony actually did live in a commune on a mountain, it explained why she’d never heard of our band or our music. Never attended a concert, eaten shrimp or scallops, worn makeup—except tonight—and didn’t think twice about chasing me down on a busy sidewalk in a dangerous, unfamiliar city alone.
I’d unearth the truth soon, but right now, I simply wanted to bask in the awe-inspiring delight of watching my innocent fake girlfriend—glowing with confidence—refuse to cower or back down from my snag-nasty mother.
“You mean your narcissistic shrine?”
Sylvia actually growled at my jab.
I wanted to laugh. Instead, I lifted my chin. “Why, yes…yes, I did, because she’s an amazing young woman with a heart of pure gold. If you bothered to climb down off your high horse, you could learn a lot from her. Like…how to be civil.”
Harmony sent me a shy smile of thanks while Sylvia tossed her nose in the air and inhaled sharply. “Why must you always go out of your way to disappoint me?”
A humorless scoff slid off my tongue. “I’ve asked that same question my entire life about you, Mother Dearest.” I clenched my jaw. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Sylvia. Why are we here?”
“Do I need a reason to spend time with my son? It’s been over ten years, Rosner.”
“Yet in all those years, of all the times I’ve come to New York to perform, you picked today to show up at my hotel and invite me to dinner.”
“I tried to visit you at that horrid hospital, but they refused me…refused your own mother, who was worried sick about you.”
I shook my head. “You haven’t spent a single second of your life worrying about me, Sylvia. Like I said before, cut the bullshit. Why are we here?”
“If you bothered to look at your quarterly investment statements, you’d know that the market is spiraling downward.�
�� She heaved a heavy sigh. “Private companies, like your father’s, God rest his soul, are taking a major hit. Sales are down. Our investors are starting to grumble…whispering hurtful, hateful things.”
Unmoved by her performance of persecution, I knew exactly what she wanted from me—money. Not that she needed a handout. Sylvia had amassed multiple millions, but I knew she had every penny wrapped up in the market. She was quite capable of saving the factory and the investors, but she’d take a hit in penalties if she began pulling funds from her portfolio. Sylvia wouldn’t spend a dime unless it suited her needs.
Leaning back in my chair, I watched Harmony drag her fork through her food while I silently waited for Sylvia to drop the money bomb.
“Those ungrateful, greedy bastards are implying that I’m living above my means,” she shrieked. “Have you ever heard anything so absurd?”
I glanced at my plate and nearly laughed. The woman had easily shelled out fifty-grand or more to impress us with Sebastian’s culinary prowess. Yet she was miffed at the investors who’d fronted the money that enabled her to live in the lap of luxury.
“I know you’re not heavily invested in long-term stocks, and—”
“How do you know that?”
She turned her head and shrugged. “I might have called Martin.”
Martin Edelman of Edelman Investments had been the family broker since before I was born. It had made sense to continue using his services when I became an adult, but it was past time I found a broker of my own.
“How much did it cost you to persuade Martin to divulge proprietary information about my finances?”
“Are you hinting that I bribed the man?”
“The shoe fits.”
Sylvia waved my comment away. “I don’t want to argue with you, Rosner. I need your help.”
“My help?”
“Yes. The facts are simple. You have liquidity. I don’t. I need to borrow two and a half million to shut those ghastly investors up and keep the factory running.”
Darting a glance at Harmony, her eyes were wide, and I nearly chuckled when she grabbed her glass of champagne and took a big gulp.
I let Sylvia’s words hang in the air as I took another bite of veal and purposely chewed ever so slowly. Sebastian was indeed a culinary genius, but in the end, a piece of veal was still just a piece of veal.
“Are you going to make me beg?” Sylvia asked impatiently. “From what I hear, you have a penchant for women who fall to their knees and beg like dogs.”
A curious frown settled over Harmony’s face.
“You’re not helping your cause or gaining sympathy, Mother,” I drawled.
“I don’t want your sympathy, Rosner,” she barked, slamming her hand so hard on the table that Harmony jolted. “I want the money.”
Lifting the napkin from my lap, I wiped a corner of my mouth, draped it on the table. Then I turned, looking the devil straight in the eye, and sent her an ugly smile. “No.”
She gasped and reared back as if I’d slapped her. Her beautiful face creased with rage.
“How dare you refuse me?” Sylvia stood, glaring down at me. “You owe me.”
“For what? For not aborting me like you did the three pregnancies after I was born?”
Harmony gasped as Sylvia drew her hand back and swung it toward my face.
I caught her wrist and held her with a stony glare. “It’s time to go, princess.”
“Yeah,” Harmony said on a long, low exhalation.
Sylvia yanked her hand from my hold and sneered. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was interrupting the addition to your bucket list.”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about, and I don’t care,” I barked, shoving my chair back and standing.
“I read that disgusting article they printed about your bucket list. How you wanted to sleep with a woman from every state.” She scoffed and homed in on Harmony. “Is this hillbilly your entry for Kentucky?”
Harmony started to rise from her chair but froze midway. Her crushed expression landed on me like an anvil. I briefly closed my eyes and shook my head.
“That article was a lie.”
“Oh, really?” Sylvia tsked. “I bet the tabloids would pay handsomely for some truths.”
Anger rolled through me. “Bribery and blackmail? That’s a little low, even for you.” I drawled, stepping around the table and helping Harmony to her feet.
“Tell me, Rosner, are you still fucking my ex-best friend, Angie? Or have you grown bored sticking your cock into forty-nine-year-old pussy?”
“Oh, god,” Harmony gasped, darting a horror-stricken glance between me and Sylvia.
“You didn’t tell your little hippy about Angie, did you, Rosner?” Sylvia cackled.
“Shut up,” I growled.
“It’s true. Rosner has been fucking my ex-best friend for years. It’s all quite scandalous. An ugly, disgusting, disgraceful scandal. Angie had it all. Money, prestige, and me. We headed up numerous fund raisers, took tennis lessons together, spent time at the spa…all the usual. We were inseparable until she decided she was unhappy, so she walked away from everything. Do you believe it? Walked away from all that money? She left the city and where did she go? Why, straight to Chicago…to Rosner after he left rehab. Then she fucked him…fucked my only son. I know she did because she called me, rife with grief, and begged my forgiveness. Of course, I didn’t give it to the ignorant cow. It’s quite obvious that Angie is still fucking Rosner stupid since he clearly doesn’t have the sense to help his own mother when she desperately needs it.”
Rage erupted like a volcano. Tamping down my fury, I gently cupped Harmony’s elbow and ushered her toward the door.
Sylvia raced after us, spewing more venom.
“Don’t let him fool you. You’re in danger, hillbilly. Rosner is a twisted, kinky pervert who likes to torture women. Get away from him…get far, far away from him, now, before he hurts you, or worse like he did—”
“Enough!” I roared. Nudging Harmony into the foyer, I punched the button for the elevator, then turned and strode to where Sylvia stood gloating.
“If you were a man, I’d beat you to death with my bare hands. And if you were even a woman, I’d call you a cunt,” I spat. “But you’re neither…you’re a monster…the spawn of Satan. A soulless, evil cancer that eats away the good and merciful from the people you’re supposed to love and cherish,” I yelled, wringing out thirty-two years of eviscerating rage, resentment, and rejection from the depths of my soul.
“You don’t even know the meaning of love. You’ve spent your whole life self-absorbed in a narcissistic fairy tale…so enamored by your own reflection, you couldn’t bother to turn away long enough to see the child you bore. I was as invisible to you as I was an inconvenient mistake to your husband.”
“He didn’t mean it, Rosner. You’ve—”
“Oh, yes, he did,” I barked. “Every time he uttered those words it was a slap to the face. But the kick to the gut came when I was sixteen and followed him from work one day. I parked my car at the end of the street and watched as he laughed, hugged, and played catch with his secretary’s ten-year-old son.”
“Oh, Rosner, no.” Sylvia blanched.
“I doubt Malcom ever introduced to you to his illegitimate son, but he bears a striking resemblance to me. I sat in my car that day, crying like a bitch and wishing I could be that boy for five fucking minutes…so I could experience what the love of a parent actually felt like.”
“I can’t believe you knew…knew all this time and never—”
“Oh, I knew. It gutted me. Thankfully, my young heart was a lot stronger than dear old Dad’s when he came home early and caught you in bed with—”
“Don’t say another word,” Sylvia screamed. “What do you want? An apology? Fine. I’m sor—”
“No,” I interrupted before the meaningless word could spill from her lips. “I don’t want a fucking thing from you. You’re dead to me, Sylvia. As dead
as that piece of shit you called a husband resting in a hole at the cemetery down the street.”
“I am not dead! I am your mother.”
“No. You are a heartless whore who has no power over me, my life, or my happiness because you don’t exist anymore. You’re the one who’s…invisible now.”
A sob—real or manufactured, it didn’t matter—tore from Sylvia’s throat as I turned and charged into the foyer.
Tears streamed down Harmony’s face. Pain, sorrow, and pride glimmered in her gorgeous blue eyes.
I didn’t give two shits if it shredded my control or not; I cinched her tiny waist, twirled her inside the elevator she’d been holding open, and pressed the button for the lobby. Then I drew her into my arms, meshing her warm, sinful body to mine. Harmony wrapped her arms around my waist and hugged me back. I pressed a kiss of thanks to the top of her head as the doors slid shut.
Each floor we descended, I could feel the scars marring the heart of the unloved, unwanted boy who’d grown up in a toxic, dysfunctional cesspool begin peeling off and blowing away. I’d finally slayed the dragon and was free… Well, almost.
Pushing down the guilt trying to work its way from the inky depths of denial, I cupped Harmony’s nape and began massaging her soft skin.
“Shhh. Don’t cry, princess. She’s not worth it.”
Harmony lifted her head, and I couldn’t keep from swiping her tears away with the pad of my thumb. “I’m not crying over her. I’m crying for you.”
An emotion I’d vowed to never let inside my soul again, wrapped a fist around my heart and squeezed.
Chapter Ten
Harmony
And for myself.
Crying because I’d foolishly let myself believe that under all these strong muscles hugging me so gloriously tight, Ross was a good but totally misunderstood man. After hearing the vile things Sylvia had said about him, I wanted to push him off me until I found out if his bucket list, sleeping with Angie, and torturing women, were true.
“Don’t cry for me, princess. I’m not worth your tears.”
The man Sylvia described might not be worth them, but the little boy she’d neglected and abandoned definitely was.
