KNOCKOUT (18 page)

“Sorry,
Gwendolyn
,” he began, clearing his throat. “I really do need your help.”

“With what, exactly?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “You’ve never needed my help before—for anything. What’s so different?”

“I need to get married.”

My heart flipped and forgot to flop. “I beg your pardon?” I asked, slowly lowering myself back down into my office chair. I didn’t want him to show it, but those simple words had me shaking. Tristan wanted to get married? But what in the world for? He’d never wanted to be tied down—he’d even decried marriage to be archaic and backwards, an institution that should have been left behind in the Middle Ages. “What in the world would you need to get married for?”

“Because I actually want to claim my inheritance, Gwendolyn,” he said, no shortage of edge to his voice. His expression soured suddenly and he began to pace.

“I thought that you were already set to inherit,” I said, frowning as I leaned forward, elbows on my desk. “I mean, I know that with the new boy there’s a second heir, but you’d have priority as your father’s eldest son, wouldn’t you? I thought that was how this all worked.”

“It would be exactly that… if I was my father’s legitimate son.”

I leaned back, eyes wide as Tristan locked his gaze with mine. I’d known that Tristan’s mother had died in childbirth, but that he was born out of wedlock was something I’d never known. Though as I allowed that information to sink in, things began to make more and more sense, especially Lord Wolfe’s general coldness toward Tristan for all the years I’d known them.

“I never knew you were a…”

“ ‘Bastard’ is the common term,” he said, shrugging in an attempt to seem nonchalant, though by the sour expression on his face I could tell that the term bothered him. “I am my father’s by-blow from his days as a stallion, bedding women left and right through his years in college. My mother being one of many—though the only one that he managed to get pregnant.”

“Surely, he took responsibility—” I began, though Tristan’s sharp, barking laugh cut me off.

“Only because he was pressured,” he said, his tone scornful. “My father didn’t care much for the idea of caring for his illegitimate child any more than I liked being under his watchful gaze. I was more than happy to see him leave for London on business while I stayed behind.”

“And now, with the child on the way, you need to cement your position as the heir to his legacy,” I said, turning my gaze away from him for fear that my thoughts might again wander to more unseemly places. “Which is why you need my help.”

“Spot on,” he replied, that smirk returning as though it had never left. “I need to be married to a respectable woman—an honest man with a family of his own.”

“I have a feeling that you might not get the results that you’re expecting from this, Tristan. I don’t just try to set up marriages, I try to encourage actual relationships. I mean, if you’re expecting to marry this woman in a matter of weeks or months, then I don’t think this is—”

“Let me worry about that,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “After all is there a woman alive who can resist a man like me?”

I have
, I thought, though I fought the urge to give in to that stunning smile whenever I saw him. I could already feel my heart fluttering, my pulse rising just from the way he moved and spoke. Maybe this was the best thing that I could do for him—and me.

If Tristan was married off, then he’d be gone and out of my hair. I’d be free from the constant temptation to maul my own stepbrother, begging him to ravage me just like I’d dreamed of. I licked my lips nervously. This might be the answer to my problem—a permanent solution to something I’d thought solved years ago. Though part of me cursed the thought I’d never get what I’d always desired—desired, but knew that I could never possess.

“All right,” I said after a brief silence. “I’ll help you, but first we have to get a few questions out of the way.”

“And before that,” Tristan said, coming just a little too close to me, that smarmy grin on his handsome face, “I think your big brother could do with a hug.”

“
C
ome here
,” I said as I walked around her desk, my arms spread wide to envelop her in a hug.

I was honestly surprised she’d even agreed to my insane plan, much less the prospect of finding me a wife in such short order. To be truthful I was hardly sure whether my plan would work at all, but I knew little Gwennie liked a challenge. Especially when it involved matters of the heart.

“I—no! Tristan I can’t—” she tried to say as I pulled her into a tight embrace. I could feel her body tensing as I pulled her against me, and I distinctly hear her let out a little gasp. More like a squeak, really—that same mousy sound she used to make whenever I got too close, like that night in the kitchen before I left for Afghanistan. She’d been making that sound, and so many more, and as soon as I heard it, something dark and primal pulsed through my groin. Was Gwen still hot for me after all this time?

Interesting
, I thought, trying to hide the smirk on my face. Knowing my goody two-shoes stepsister still wanted me was validating, to say the least. And intriguing…

“Have a seat, please,” she said, her voice stiff as I pulled out of the embrace. Her face was flushed as she tried to straighten her outfit, her hands trembling. I knew I had a mission—a goal that all of this was for—but seeing Gwen after all of this time brought back the thoughts I’d get when I caught her staring at me as we grew up. She’d been so awkward, all arms and legs as a teen, but about the time she turned eighteen something had happened. All of a sudden she had curves and an ass that I would have killed to get my hands on. All of this, however, was stymied by the fact that on no circumstances was I allowed to lay a land on sweet little Gwennie, no matter how much I would have liked to. She was my stepsister, and the scandal alone would have gotten me disowned right before it gave my father a coronary.

That only served to make me want it more.

“I have a few questions I need to ask you before we can get you matched with one of the women I have on our client list. Just standard personality question on what you’re looking for in a match,” she said, clicking a few times on her mouse.

“Ask away,” I said, leaning back in the comfortable office chair opposite her. “I’m an open book.”

“Two open for his Lordship’s liking, I would say,” Gwen whispered, though must have realized how loudly she’d said it all too late. “I… I mean…”

“It’s all right,” I assured her, smiling a bit as I relaxed. “I know very well what my father thinks of me.”

Gwendolyn must have gotten more than her share of tirades about my behavior after I provided scandal after scandal for the entertainment of the country. It was one of my favorite pastimes, to be quite honest; often, I would wonder how much I would have to do in order to put my father into an early grave.

My stepsister shifted in her seat before clearing her throat.

“Are you looking for a woman who is among the aristocracy?” she asked, trying to refocus herself back onto the task at hand. It was almost adorable the way she tried not to think about how much she still wanted me.

“Not necessarily, but I wouldn’t be opposed, no,” I said, my eyes trailing over the line of her blouse, imagining the way she looked naked. “So long as they didn’t have their head up their ass.”

“Any interests you’d like to share with your potential matches?”

“Well, I do love a good football match,” I said, smirking as I watched her eyes flicking toward me every now and then from her screen. “And I suppose a healthy enjoyment of literature is a bit of a must-have. After that, maybe an enjoyment of classical music.”

“When have you ever liked literature?” she asked, her eyebrows raised incredulously.

“Since always and forever, my dear stepsister,” I said, my grin widening as her substantial shock to such news. “It’s always been one of my secret loves.”

In fact I’d gotten top marks in every literature course since primary school, a fact that my father never once gave one lick of attention to. He’d have much rather focus on my failings than congratulate me for my accomplishments.

She blushed deeply and cleared her throat again, trying not to let her mind dwell too long on the fact that I was sitting here while she was almost drunk off of her ass. I wondered just how easily it would be to get her to take those clothes off. I knew I could if I tried, and I knew that I’d have enjoyed it… but there was another task at hand. As much as I wanted to claim Gwendolyn, I knew business had to come first, and sadly, a sense of propriety along with it.

“Any preferred physical type?” she asked, swallowing thickly as I considered.

“A redhead, preferably. A woman who’s about my height—maybe slightly shorter—curvy rather than skinny, I think,” I said, pondering just what I’d always fancied in the women I’d bedded countless times.

“I see,” she said, her cheeks still flushed a nice rosy pink with embarrassment. “I think that’s about all that I have right now… If I need to narrow things down a little more, then I’ll contact you.”

“Sounds like a plan, then,” I said, smirking as I stood slowly from my chair. “I hope I’ll hear from you soon then.”

“I’ll try to get you a match by tomorrow evening and arrange a date for the two of you,” Gwendolyn said, rising as I did and offering her hand awkwardly. “After that, we’ll see where everything goes.”

“I’ll be eagerly awaiting your call, my dearest Gwennie,” I said smirking as I watched her face redden with annoyance. “Yes, I know, ‘don’t call you Gwennie.’ ”

“Goodnight, Tristan,” she said, summoning some resolve after my purposeful little jab.

“Goodnight, Gwendolyn” I said as I turned and walked out of her office and into the night. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I walked a few blocks out alone in the early hours of the morning, enjoying the crisp night air as I gathered my thoughts.

I thought about the days when Gwendolyn and I were younger, teens who would have liked nothing more than to have never known one another, yet secretly harbored an unforgivable lust for each other—though “secret” could have been a strong term. I used to catch her staring at me all the time, her pale cheeks made rosy by all the naughty thoughts I was sure were running through her brain.

I happily recalled the night before I’d left for Afghanistan, the way she felt underneath my touch as I slipped her cami up her body. The way she’d writhed for me, her lashes fluttering, her fingernails dug in to the palms of her quaking hands. Was my Gwennie still a virgin? Part of me—a very
southward
part of me—was desperate to know, and had been ever since I left her dripping wet the night before my deployment.

Oh, what a dolt I was back then. I’d made assumptions about her character, writing Gwendolyn off as a girl who was just the same as any other I’d seduced. But she was stronger than that, not at all the shade of her mother I’d imagined she’d turn out to be. As punishment for my pride, I’d spent years wondering what it would have been like to have had her, to have consummated our forbidden affair. I wondered if I’d ever get the chance to know.

I also wondered if she even realized that the perfect match I’d described to her back there in her office fit her to a “T.”

I
sat
in silence behind my desk after my brother left, walking so casually back into the night as though he hadn’t just completely flipped my life upside down. He had a habit of that, though, turning everything on its head just for the sake of a good laugh. But is that was this was? Did he just want to play with me?

It was certainly easy to think so after he’d practically named me as his perfect match to spend the rest of his life with. My heart was thumping like a war drum as I stared into the empty space that he’d occupied only moments before, looking so absolutely fabulous without even trying. All those memories of the two of us growing up together flooded back like a dam had burst in my head. It was almost too much to handle.

Tristan had been an absolute terror when we were in our teens. He’d discovered girls long before the two of us had met, and was more than popular with the younger members of the serving staff. His father, of course, never approved of the way he conducted himself, but I admired his freedom more than I admitted. My mother had always had me under a tight leash, constantly dictating my behavior and my choices in friends—even controlling which pieces of my wardrobe would be worn on different days. It was like I had two mother rolled up into one—both of them overbearing and controlling.

But my stepbrother could do as he liked, disapproval be damned. The fact that he was so bound and determined to gain back his father’s title after the announcement of my soon-to-be brother’s birth came almost as a shock, given Tristan’s utter aversion to authority, which was just what I had thought when he’d joined Her Majesty’s Royal Army. It was as though just as you thought Tristan would go one way, he decided to veer in a completely different direction simply for the thrill of throwing everyone else in the world off their kilter.

And how he was trying to get married—married to a woman who was, for all intents and purposes, the exact same as myself in personality and temperament. Just the thought of that had my mouth running dry. I felt my chest tighten as I bit down on my lip nervously. How could he do such a thing? How, after all of this time could I be the perfect match for him and he had never once said a word? If anything I had always felt as though Tristan
hated
me when we were younger, his constant chiding that I was a stuffy, stuck-up mother’s-girl still ringing in my ears like church bells.

“No matter,” I said to myself in the darkness of my office as I pressed the pulsating power button on my computer to bring it to life. “This is for the best, after all.”

Even I had a hard time believing that.

With trembling hands I brought up the database of my female clients, all of their personality traits indexed and coded so that I could simply type in my stepbrother’s preferences into the required fields and before I could even blink there was a list of gorgeous women almost a hundred strong. Surely, one of them would be an appropriate match for Tristan. One of them might just be my future sister-in-law if this crazy plan of his actually worked.

Despite my forced professionalism, I couldn’t shake the feeling of my stomach having dropped somewhere close to my feet. The thought of Tristan with someone else, some woman that he barely knew brought a sickening taste to my mouth. Deep down a part of me wanted to close down the database and simply tell him that there had been no matches, that no woman I had in my considerable list was what he wanted. I think I wanted more than anything for him to realize that it was me that had always wanted him—me that was his perfect idea of a woman. Did he even know that the kind of woman that he wanted had been sitting in front of him all this time?

He’s your stepbrother
, I thought, chiding myself on my incestuous desires. To even think of the things that I wanted to do to Tristan would have been enough to cause a scandal the likes of which the aristocracy hadn’t seen in a decade. Sure the two of us were not technically related, but the bonds of marriage mean a lot to the rest of the world, and scandal is something that I know that my mother would not at all appreciate.

That doesn’t make me want him any less
, I answered my own chiding. I knew that if I set Tristan up—got him married to some member of the aristocracy—then he’d be lost to me forever, and I’d lose any chance that I had at making him mine like I’d always wanted. But he
was
my stepbrother, fruit of the forbidden tree, and I knew that just one taste would be enough to have me smote low and ejected from the garden of my family’s favor.

I knew that my feelings for Tristan would never come to fruition, never give me the satisfaction of having him in my arms, inside of me the way I’d dreamed about since I’d become an adult. But maybe that was for the best.

If I could get Tristan tied off to someone that spent most of their time away from London, and away from me, then I could protect myself against the thoughts that I knew would betray me sooner or later. In a way having Tristan matched was my only hope of protecting myself from the effect that he head on me.

I began to work my way through the list, clicking through the collected entries Tina and I had spent our professional lives cultivating. Blondes, brunettes, and even a few exotic redheads crossed over my screen, though I felt utterly unsatisfied with all of them. None of them felt right for Tristan. I’d met countless times with each of them, and no matter how well they seemed to match on paper I felt as though Tristan would never have them for his wife. Something didn’t seem right.

It’s because you want him for yourself
, I thought, my stomach tying itself into knots. I hated myself for thinking it, for telling me the harsh and unwanted truth and I could only have wished for a comforting lie. I wished I was only protective of him, wished that I was simply playing the role of the dutiful sister in charge of her brother’s romantic interest—that I merely wanted him to have a more suitable chance at love. All of this was true, but with the condition that
I
was the one that he fell for.

I rested my head in my hands in frustration. I couldn’t just disregard all the women who matched my stepbrother’s parameters for his ideal match. He was counting on me to find him a woman that would make him a suitable wife and these women were all also hoping that I would find them a romantic match, as well. I had two people whose wishes I needed to make come true, regardless of what I wanted—needed—to have.

Romance, for me, had been touch and go all of these years. Holding down a boyfriend was difficult, harder still when marriage is expected to happen fairly quickly, especially where my mother is involved. She’d been trying to get me married off since before I was even old enough to walk, scheduling playdates with the boys she’d see as the up-and-coming members of high society that she hoped I’d fall all over as I grew into a young woman. It never worked out well. High society can make men into monsters, their heads filled with entitlement and expectations of what a woman is meant to do for them. I had little time for useless men like those.

Tristan had always been different, though. While he was an arrogant pig at times, he still maintained a kind of charm that always made my heart start to hammer like I’d just run a mile. He could be kind and cunning, that grin of his always belying the inner workings of that gloriously brilliant brain of his. That quick wit was never in short supply, never failing to bring a smile to my face whenever we’d been stuck at one of our family’s dinners while the two of us were in our teens. Just the fact that he was back in town had brought me back to the feeling of being a teen once again, awkward and shy, just hoping that my dashing stepbrother would notice me and take me into his arms like I’d dreamed of since the day we met.

None of these women are right for him
, I thought, shaking my head as I poured over the list again and again. But I knew that I had to pick one for him no matter what I felt. I needed to end this fascination with him, this sinful desire that I knew would never be brought to fruition. I needed to be free from my own wants, from the very thing that could ruin my life and my reputation.

“You have to do this, Gwendolyn,” I said aloud in an attempt to steel my resolve, to bring myself to let go of the man that I had desired for almost a decade. It was like torture, but it had to be done. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Duty. That was what it meant to be British, wasn’t it?

After another few minutes of agonizing over who I would give Tristan to I settled at last on a pretty little blonde woman that had enlisted my services almost a week previously. She had exactly the kind of traits that my stepbrother was looking for, exactly the right personality that he was looking for in his ideal match. She was even prettier that I was.

But she’s
not
you
, I thought, grimacing as I began to draft the email to inquire whether the young woman would be interested in my stepbrother’s company. She had notes detailing her eagerness for a match, for someone who could excite her and make her laugh—and fulfill her sexually.

I felt my heart grow cold as I wrote to the young lady, Patricia Attmore. It felt like I was signing my own death warrant, and once I sent that email Tristan might as well have been gone forever. I swallowed nervously, trying to calm my nerves, strengthen my resolve as I moved my cursor over the “send” button in the upper right corner of the screen. Tristan would be mad not to take a woman like Patricia and beg for engagement, and the logical part of me hoped that he would to save both of us from a scandal, but it wasn’t the logical part of my brain that was screaming the loudest in my mind.

I closed my eyes, tensing for some kind of harsh immediate repercussion as I let the email out into the world of the internet to find its destination in the blink of an eye. I was almost disappointed that the world hadn’t crumbled down around me, perhaps then I would have felt that the utter devastation in my stomach would have been justified. I almost felt like a fool; a foolish schoolgirl with a foolish little crush that would have never gone anywhere much less amounted to anything.

Buck up, Gwendolyn
, I thought, taking a slow, calming breath through my nose before letting it out through my quivering lips.
It’s better this way. And even if you can’t have him, then at least you can give him the life that he deserves with a woman that he loves. That’s your job, after all.

“But
I
want him,” I whispered to the chilly silence of my office, reclining back in my chair as I wiped a spot of errant moisture from my eyes.

But you can’t have him
, I told myself.
You can’t let your feelings get in the way of your job. This is what you do
.

I was already tipsy, and it was bad enough that I was practically talking to myself. I felt enough like a loon already, and pining over my stepbrother was hardly going to help matters. No matter what I desired, Tristan deserved my best work, and I was determined to give it to him.