Open.

Closed.

Open.

I waited.

Closed.

Yep, Terry was on a tear that morning although what he had set his sights on, I couldn’t say. No one knew what went through that man’s mind half the time.

I sighed deeply and turned my attention back to the computer screen, trying to block out my lawyer’s obsessive opening and closing of drawers in the next room. It was the downfall of working at the home office—the soundproofing was awful.

Of course, I hadn’t expected to have company on the days when I worked from home.

Certainly not my OCD attorney, I thought wryly. It was probably time to remodel the house and add extra insulation. My, how things had changed since my father ran Bryant Land Holdings. His vision of the company had been three high-rise condos on the east coast before the housing market had exploded. It was sad he hadn’t lived long enough to see what I had done with his baby.

Now, I was running a multi-billion-dollar empire from the sprawling estate off the coast of Biscayne Bay on my private island. It was supposed to have been a sanctuary, an escape from the skyscrapers and bustle of city life but Terry was making it very difficult to forget the woes which waited for me in the city with all his thumping around in the neighboring office.

Such motion was indicative that something was truly bothering him. I was biding my time because I knew in a matter of minutes, he would be knocking on my door, demanding some piece of paper or another and I would be forced to talk him down. I would need the couple extra minutes to hone my inner Zen for that.

To make matters worse, Eloise was calling—again. I had set my cell ringer to silent but that didn’t stop my insane step-sister from continuously phoning as if her persistence was going to break me down and not make me force her to wait longer. How little she knew me.

She hadn’t broken me in the twenty years we’d been related and I wasn’t losing my edge, no matter how much she wished for it.

No sooner did Eloise give up calling did Terry knock on the door, trading the present mishap with the original.

“Julian? Can I come in?”

It wasn’t like he gave me much of a choice and the door flew open, displaying the disheveled lawyer at the threshold.

It truly never ceased to amaze me that a man who made eight figures could perpetually carry the resemblance of a homeless person in Hialeah. In fact, I think I’d seen better put together hobos than Terry. We lived in Florida. The world was our oyster. Even if he wanted to wear khakis and Hawaiian shirts, he could have done it with a modicum of style.

But that was Terry.

“If I say no, will you leave?” I asked hopefully and as always, he ignored me, making his way toward the massive desk which I sat behind. It had belonged to my father and while I personally saw it as an eyesore, it also made me feel closer to the old man. We hadn’t been all that tight in my youth. His priorities were as follows: Bryant Land Holdings, Madeline, Bryant Land Holdings, us kids. But I still missed the bastard. He had done his best for me and his wretched wife and step-daughter while he was alive.

No matter what Madeline and Eloise say about him, I thought grimly. They had no problem trashing my father’s good name in his death but trashy was what suited the Sinclair women best.

“I can’t find the Hoover Street file,” Terry explained nervously, pacing around the front of the desk. I half-expected to see him wring his hands like a father waiting in a maternity ward.

“I’ve looked everywhere, Julian. It’s not where it’s supposed to be.”

I gritted my even, white teeth together and stifled a groan of annoyance. Like the antique desk, Terry was another throwback from my father’s reign at Bryant. I adored the man, sincerely but his old-school mentality drove me to the brink sometimes.

“Terry,” I said patiently. “I told you, all the property files have been uploaded into the system for convenience sake. The paper files have been moved into storage in New York. What are you looking for? It’s literally at your fingertips, whatever you need.”

Terry stared at me blankly and for a moment, I wondered if I have slipped into another language while talking. I was fluent in three but I didn’t think that was the problem in that instance.

“What? What, Terry?” I demanded, unable to hide my exasperation. The phone was lighting up again. I wasn’t going to get any work done that day, not when I was required to babysit all the pains in my ass at once. I needed an assistant just to wrangle these nitwits.

“I don’t understand why we can’t just keep the files on hand. It’s a huge inconvenience to fly to New York every time I need to look something up.”

I stared at him.

“Seriously?” I heard myself ask. I couldn’t believe he didn’t grasp the concept of what I had just said. A bemused guffaw escaped my lips but it only served to upset Terry more. I quickly stifled my amusement and turned to the computer.

“You don’t need to fly to New York, Terry. Everything is at your fingertips. Come here.”

I gestured for him to come closer and he shuffled toward me. Through my peripheral vision, I wondered if he thought I was plotting his death. He certainly wore an expression of concern.

“Terry, you’re one of the biggest real estate lawyers in the country. How is it that working with technology is such a chore for you?”

He shrugged, a sheepish expression crossing his face.

“Val does everything for me,” he replied and I grunted. I wanted to slap some sense into him, to remind him that Bryant Land Holding accounts held proprietary information, things that should not be entrusted to his latest bimbo assistant but I held my tongue. As I said, Terry had been a permanent fixture around the family since before I was born. He hadn’t screwed us so far so I had my fingers crossed that beneath his ineptitude for computers, he was still in control of his razor-sharp intuition.

“Are you going to answer that?” Terry asked suddenly, noticing the phone lighting up on my desk.

“It’s Eloise,” I replied nonchalantly. “Go ahead.”

Terry couldn’t hide the grimace on his face and I snickered.

“I didn’t think so. Here, look.” I pointed at the screen, logging in through my admin account and pulling up the Hoover Street property in Washington. It was remarkable that I could keep the land owned by Bryant in my mind. There were hundreds, some with similar sounding names even but I suppose I had learned them by rote as a child. Later, I had acquired more of them on my own. They weren’t just buildings and lots to me—people lived there and businesses existed in those structures. I had visited all of them personally and was able to conjure them in my mind’s eye when discussing them.

“Here. Everything you need on the property, all right?” I told Terry, sitting back so he could scroll through the information I had found. He blinked with myopic blue eyes and I watched as the widened with wonder.

Oh come on! I grumbled silently. You can’t seriously be this shocked to see this.

I knew I had personally set him on the computer in this very fashion at least six times previously. Maybe he really was getting too old to retain new knowledge.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I wonder how accurate that is.

“Fascinating,” he murmured and I snorted.

“Not really. It’s a spreadsheet.”

I left him to look for whatever it was he needed and rose from my high-back leather chair to stretch. I needed an espresso anyway. I could afford to give up my screens for a few minutes.

“I’m grabbing a coffee. Want anything?”

He shook his head, claiming my seat and leaned forward to scroll through the page as I turned to leave the office.

“Your sister’s calling again.”

The word “sister” caused me to shudder but I didn’t bother to correct Terry. It was hard to say if he called Eloise my sister because he believed she was or it was a passive/aggressive stab at annoying me.

Oh, and it did annoy me. Being related to Eloise by blood was almost the worst thing I could imagine. To that day, I couldn’t reconcile what my hardworking father had seen in her gold-digging mother.

The apple certainly doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?

Sighing, I whirled back to snatch the phone off the desk. I was going to have to answer sooner or later. Eloise would just jam up my voicemail and block my incoming calls with her persistence. I relented. Better I answer now when I was idle than in the middle of something. Sooner or later I’d be forced to talk to her.

“What?” I snapped, spinning back toward the door.

“And good morning to you too,” she purred. “I’ve been calling you for two days. When did you get home?”

I grunted. I knew she’d been calling for two days. I’d been avoiding her just as long. Moreover, why was she calling me to shoot the breeze? That girl really needed a job. The thing was, the only job she wanted was mine.

“Yesterday. What do you want, Eloise?”

“How was Vegas?” she continued, apparently unwilling to get to the point. I considered disconnecting the call but I reasoned she would just keep at it until I answered again.

“Vegas was Vegas, Eloise,” I sighed but as I said it, I was reminded of the dream girl who had flittered in and out of my hotel suite on my last night.

I still couldn’t be clear if she was real or not but the horde of new clothes in size four which littered the sitting room told me I had either entertained someone that night or I had been on one hell of a trip.

I hoped it was the former, even if I couldn’t remember much about her. Once in a while, I would get a whiff of her cheap but sexy perfume, undoubtedly something from Walmart or the likes. It suited her, not because she had been so obviously without money but because she was so achingly uncomplicated somehow.

So uncomplicated, she didn’t even have a name, I thought, mildly irritated with myself for not having learned it. Or maybe I had and forgotten it.

Calling her “Kitten” in my sober, sane mind was horribly embarrassing.

“Hello? Are you still there?” Eloise chirped in my ear and I was forced back to reality.

“Yes, Eloise, I am. What do you want? Why are you calling my phone like a madwoman?”

“Oh, so you did notice me calling,” she laughed but as always, there was little mirth in her tone.

“Eloise, can you kindly get to the point?” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “This is getting tedious as always.”

“I have a friend I think you should meet,” she announced and I snorted with contempt.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I told her firmly. “Anything else?”

“I think you should hear me out without reacting,” she said in that condescending tone which made me want to reach through the phone and throttle her. “I’m not full of shitty ideas all the time, Julian. How about when I set up the buyout for the Lausanne property. That was a good idea, wasn’t it? How come you always dismiss me?”

I rolled my eyes heavenward and prayed for mercy. There was nothing like arguing with a narcissist.

“Fine,” I conceded, padding down the floating staircase toward the kitchen. Laura was dusting the front foyer and I grinned lazily at her. She continued to work and I idly wondered why I was surrounded by such unpleasant people. They had always been there, I suppose and had flittered into my subconscious without me noticing. It was a wonder I wasn’t more of a bastard.

Not to say I wasn’t one.

“People are starting to talk about you, big brother.”

“Don’t call me that!” I hissed before I could stop myself. I knew she had only said it for a reaction but it did push my buttons.

“Fine,” she grunted. “People are starting to talk about you, Julian.”

“That’s nice,” I replied, stifling a yawn of boredom. “I’m glad I make for good subject matter.”

I reached for the espresso compressor and ground some beans down. I hoped the noise bothered her.

“It won’t be good subject matter when our company takes a hit, Julian.”

“Our company?” I echoed in disbelief. She just didn’t give up, did she? Never had there been a breath of discussion that Eloise would be involved with Bryant. She was a Sinclair, not a Bryant. I wonder what it was going to take to drive that home.

Probably a two by four.

“Julian, I’ve been hearing very disturbing rumors about you,” she continued, sighing. “Okay, Eloise, I’ll bite. What rumors?”

“People think you’re gay, Julian.”

I began to laugh, the noise starting in the pit of my belly and flowing upward to escape in amused bursts through my mouth. I had never heard such a ridiculous assessment in my entire life. There was no one in the world who could possibly believe that I, Julian Andrew Bryant, was a homosexual male.

Not that I cared how people chose to live their lives and it wasn’t an insult to my masculinity. How could it be? I knew who I was and I loved the female form more than any man I knew. While it tickled me that someone might spark that rumor, I knew there was no validity to it. I had no doubt that my step-sister was talking out of her ass but the amused glee forced me to press her for more details.

“Where did you read this? Is my gay love nest in the National Enquirer?” I snickered. “Oh, wait, who is my lover? Ryan Gosling? Please tell me it’s Ryan Gosling?”

I was probably getting too much enjoyment out of the idea but it was truly the first I’d ever heard anything like that and it had been a long while since I’d giggled like a kid.

“People are talking, Julian. You can mock me all you want but you haven’t had a girlfriend in years. They’re calling you a confirmed bachelor now which is code for—”

“Eloise,” I snapped, my good mood evaporating as I realized she meant whatever she was saying. “Even if this is something that’s happening, who gives a shit? It’s not true and even if it was, this is 2018. Being gay is hardly the scandal of the century.”

“Are you gay? You can tell me. I love you and I will always be here for you—"

“Oh my God! I’m hanging up now.”

“No! Wait! Listen to me,” she urged. “It’s not a big deal what people think in the big cities…I guess although I think you’re being a little too liberal minded in my opinion. Even so, think about how many properties we hold in the Bible Belt. Those folks aren’t apt to be as forgiving about something like this. It’s all about appearances, Julian. Think about the company. People have boycotted business for less than a gay CEO.”

I wished she would stop insinuating that Bryant Land Holdings belonged to her also but that was a matter for another time. It dawned on me that her talking like that bothered me more than the apparent rumors about my sexuality.

“Eloise, I am not gay,” I said flatly, no longer a fan of the conversation. “And I think you’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she replied but there was no conviction in her voice. “But even if I am, what harm will it do to meet with Genevieve?”

I already hated her friend because I saw how the conversation had gone full circle now.

I’d been taken by Eloise’s double talking and landed back where she wanted me.

Genevieve.

“Jule?”

“I’ll meet your insipid friend,” I growled, eager to get off the phone with her. Suddenly, Eloise’s words had filled me with doubts. She was right—like any business, the image of the CEO was everything. I was going to have to talk with the head of PR and Marketing to get a handle on how serious an issue I might have before me.

Gay. Seriously? Of all the dumb ass rumors to have spread about me, that was the last one I was expecting.

But, that was big business after all. I had learned a long time ago to expect the unexpected.

“Gen is lovely,” Eloise chirped. “You two will hit it off, you’ll see. And in the end, everyone wins.”

I found myself staring at the phone, wondering what my step-sister had to gain from any of this. What did she care if there was gossip about me? No matter how she spun it, the company genuinely had no bearing on her life. There was something else going on there, something playing in the back of her mind.

I knew Eloise Sinclair didn’t do anything without a benefit to herself.