RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (53 page)

Chapter 3

The more I stewed over the fact that
my mother—a woman of almost fifty years—was pregnant by my stepfather, the more
I considered bleaching away the thought with a few bottles of
much-too-expensive wine. I honestly couldn’t believe that they’d even managed
to pull it off, what with my mother having sworn from hell to horizon that
she’d never again go through the burden of childbirth after I’d been born.

That was the beginning of our very
strained relationship. I loved my mother, I supposed, as all children did. But
I also recognized that she was a class-A narcissist, and I’d spent my childhood
imagining her as both a misunderstood saint, and the monster hiding under my bed.

For all the “trouble” she’d went
through to bring me into this world—something she never, ever let me forget—she
expected me to be her crutch in return. I was never doted upon, except in
public, where my mother might advance her station in life. I vaguely remembered
the few years we’d lived in a New York apartment with a bunny-eared TV set and
cans of creamed corn to eat every night. I was very young then, no more than
two or three, but trauma has a way of giving even your oldest memories teeth.

Mother had been so unhappy then. And
she’d blamed it, mostly, on me. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she’d still be
that senator’s mistress. I was to blame. I’d created this mess. So in her mind,
it was only “fair” that I got her out of it.

I suppose it was all those soap
operas she watched that first gave her the idea as to how she could better
herself once again. I was to be part of this charade, perhaps even the most
important part—I’d be playing the role of the sophisticated, well-educated
daughter who deserved more than the American education system could provide. My
mother, by comparison, was the widow of an English attaché who’d perished in
the September 11
^th
attacks. Mother was nothing, if not
opportunistic. I think her family crest might say something like, “Never let a
good tragedy go to waste.”

This ruse meant I’d had to learn a
posh British accent, study endlessly to meet the academic benchmarks of a “gifted
European child,” as my mother put it, and endure countless etiquette classes
meant to train the upper crust in exhibiting their classist natures with style.
This started when I was barely old enough to read, but my mother spared me no
leniency, nor did she spare me the back of her hand. Among other things.

I shook my head, trying not to think
about it. She’d changed after she met her new husband, let go of that chain
she’d wound around my neck, if only a little. I was still expected to never
embarrass the family or sully her name, even indirectly. How a woman so frigid
could conceive a child at all was beyond me.

But apparently one thing had led to
another, and now not only was I going to be a big sister, but I was also
expected to act the part. I was a busy woman, a woman who had better things to
do than help my mother especially on any kind of emotional level—if my mother
could even comprehend any emotional help I could offer.

I looked deep into the crystal
wineglass in my hand, pondering the ripples that this one little event would
have on the rest of my life—hopefully not much, seeing as I was not even set to
inherit my stepfather’s assets or title. But there was still a sensation in my
gut that filled me with an unexplainable sense of impending dread, as though
this small little thing would change more than just the number of heirs my
parents had at their disposal.

I took a long, slow drink from the
deep red liquid, letting the taste of the wine flow over my tongue before
setting the glass down on the table. I sat there in the dark of my office
wondering just how much of the bottle I’d already managed to tear through.

This
shouldn’t be bothering me as much as it is
, I thought, leaning back in my comfortable office chair. I
let myself become wrapped in the stillness and silence of my empty office. I’d
sent Tina home early after the debacle with Lord
Adderby
,
she’d had more than enough to deal with and we were thankfully free of any
other appointments that day. I had more than enough time to sit by myself and
collect my thoughts after being blindsided so thoroughly by that horrific news.

Why
was
I getting so upset about this? It was my mother’s issue, and
whether I made it a point of being in my soon-to-be half-sibling’s life was
mine. Maybe I felt sorry for the half-formed fetus gestating inside of my
emotionally distant mother, wondering if—given his place as a male
aristocrat—she hoped that her new son would give her some sense of pride that I
could never have done. It was that thought that prompted me to pour myself
another glass of wine.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the
quiet air, trying my hardest to fall into a sweet drunken oblivion. At most
this was an inconvenience, a minor hiccup in my life that would hopefully
affect me only in the slightest of ways. I had my own life apart from my mother
and I intended to keep myself out of her silly little play at being the mother
of a noble.

***

I was startled from the gentle
twilight between waking and sleep by a harsh knock on my door—no, my
office
door… I was still in my office!
I’d almost forgotten where I was, my brain still addled by the copious amounts
of wine I’d imbibed before.

How
long have I been asleep
?
I wondered. I glanced over at my desktop only to find that it was somewhere
close to two in the morning.

Another knock on my door brought me
closer to the surface of reality, and I began to wonder who in the world would
be at my business at this late hour. And for that matter, how had they gotten
past the door by the front desk? If it was some kind of
burglar
then I doubted they’d have the courtesy of knocking.

“We’re not open,” I called out to
whoever was intruding upon my quiet and somewhat sad round of lonesome
drinking. “You’ll have to come back another time, I’m afraid.”

I strained to listen for whoever
might be out there, expecting a reply but only silence followed. I’d almost
begun to think that they’d simply left, surprised that one of England’s upper
class had been satisfied to have been turned away so easily.
However
I was soon proven that none of my wishes were going to be honored.

I heard the sounds of the lock
scraping and clicking, and within a moment I saw my door start to swing slowly
inward, the scant light pouring in from the waiting room outside. To say that I
was furious would have been an understatement. Someone had just walked into my
own office without my permission, much less a word of greeting. But something
in the back of my head told me that I should be more than annoyed, I should be
panicking. Who had just done all this? Was I going to be murdered? The alcohol
pumping through my blood made those important questions seem so very trivial as
I looked at the masculine silhouette highlighted against the open doorway.

“I told you that we are
closed!
” I said, standing shakily from
my chair. “Please leave! Come back during normal business hours.”

The man laughed, a cocky chuckle
that brought thoughts to my head that I’d seldom had since I was only a
teenager. A shiver ran down my spine. I recognized that laugh, having heard it
so many times when I was younger, but it was the face I was having trouble
placing. Where did I know that laugh from?

And then it hit me all at once like
a ton of bricks, practically smacking me right in my forehead as I saw that
gorgeous face as clear as the last day I’d laid eyes upon it. It couldn’t be
him, not after all of this time, not after the fight that he’d had with his
father—
my
father… Well,
step
father, anyway.

“Tristan?” I asked, squinting my
eyes against the light beyond the door.

“You
do
remember,” he said, stepping farther into the dark room and
closing the door behind him. I was thankful for the darkness, the beginnings of
my hangover already starting to rear their head. “And here I thought that you’d
forgotten me, after all of this time.”

Forgotten?
Forgotten?

I was lucky that after several years
of my stepbrother’s absence, my thoughts of him had become limited to only once
or twice a day.

Good Lord—
forgotten him.
As if I could ever forget my first real crush. As if
I could forget how badly I’d wanted him, even when I told myself that I didn’t.
How he’d made me tremble in the kitchen of our old house, my breath thick in my
throat, his voice husky in my ear.

Come
on, love. Don’t you want to piss your mother off?

“How am I supposed to forget my
stepbrother after the exit that you made?” I asked, trying to keep my mouth
from hanging agape. Tristan’s sudden rush to join the military was something
that none of us had expected—me most of all. And the night that the two of us
had nearly... I fumbled for something to discuss other than that time we’d
nearly fucked. “That fight you had with your father was legendary. I think
there are old women still scandalized by it to this very day.”

Lord Wolfe was in a rage like I had
never seen before in my entire life, bellowing at the top of his lungs, spittle
flying from his mouth as Tristan and he stared one another down face to face.
Not that fighting between the two of them was uncommon. In
fact
I almost thought that they both too a certain pleasure in angering the other,
seeing how far they could go to push one another into another argument…. I
wasn’t sure how Tristan could have stood for that all of his life.

“What can I say? I like to make a
spectacle of myself,” he chuckled again. It was a sound that had angered me so
when we were teens together. The way that he could turn anything into a joke.

Tristan always seemed to have that
arrogant smirk on his face, as though he was always one step ahead no matter
what. It drove me insane when we were younger, always acting like he knew
everything
, and yet all the while
utterly oblivious to the fact that I had harbored the deepest crush for him
than anyone else I’d ever known.

It was an illicit thing, of course.
For all the inbreeding that had plagued the royal lines in the past, the
aristocracy was doing its best to rid itself of that image now. The fact that
Tristan and I weren’t blood-related hardly mattered when reputation came into
play. So I’d weathered the storm of my hormones and tried not to think too hard
about my stepbrother’s lilting accent, the mischief in his eyes, or the way his
lean muscles rolled when he took off his shirt to go swimming in the lake near
his father’s estate.

But then, there was that one
time—that fleeting moment we’d had before he left for the military. The night
I’d been certain Tristan was going to undo me, a silly little eighteen-year-old
virgin, right there in the pantry well after we were supposed to be in bed…

I physically waved the memory away.
No. Now was not the time to think of that. We were adults now, and we knew
better. Or I hoped I did, anyway.

“You certainly do,” I said, trying
to compose myself with all haste. “And still, after all this time, you think
that you can just come and go? Leave for years at a time, and not expect me or
anyone else to bat an eye?”

I hadn’t realized that my temper had
gotten the better of me, my face still tingling from all the blood rushing to
it. Even I was shocked by the suddenness of my ire, so many old memories
brought up at once had apparently been more than my self-control could handle.
I had been holding these feelings in for all this time, bottled away with the
hope that I’d never need to confront them ever again. I never realized that my
stepbrother would ever return, not so suddenly, at least.