TWELVE
GRAHAM
“Vero says there’s a new woman in your life.”
Bennett wastes no time diving into my personal life when he sits next to me at the bar shortly before midnight. On the heel of my conversation with Elle, I needed a drink to get her the fuck out of my head, and I hadn’t wanted to go at it alone in my apartment. She’d gotten to me today—to the point where I called her with my cock in my hand, wanting to hear her hesitant little voice question me, even as she let herself drown in the thought of me. Since the popular Manhattan watering hole was one of my first investments years ago, when I was still in college and my father was encouraging me to “make something of myself and be a goddamn Delaney,” it was my first destination.
Somehow, my older brother had found me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Approximately eighteen months my senior—for people who were disinterested in children, my parents didn’t waste any time shooting us out one after the other—Bennett is the executive vice-president of our father’s company. He’s also a turd that I avoid, favoring our oldest brother, Cain, instead.
At least Cain doesn’t offer his opinion. He doesn’t give a fuck what I do, just so long as it doesn’t screw with his money or his fetishes.
“Your doorman told me you went out, and I figured you were either with a woman or here. Or both.” Bennett signals the bartender, and I make a mental note to have that doorman’s head on a platter first thing in the morning. “I didn’t even know you were in town already until Vero mentioned it.”
“And let me guess? You pretended to give a shit to impress V?” I spit the words through gritted teeth. “Did you call her, or did you reel her in with promises of love and a reconnection?”
He jerks his head back and releases a low whistle. “Whoever she is has gotten under baby brother’s skin.” He tilts my drink, reading the label. Prick. “Who is she? Vero wouldn’t tell me much, just that you have a brand new girl named Elle.”
I should fire Veronica. I’ve been saying that for too long, but for mentioning her to Bennett? Well, that’s ground for dismissal. “Is that the way she worded it? A new girl? Was that before or after you fucked your former wife?” I was nineteen or twenty when Ben and Vero had gotten married, and they’d lasted less than six months because my brother was dumb enough to let my mother interfere with his happiness. Over the last decade, Ben has gotten remarried enough times to make Hannah Amherst look like a delicate virgin.
“Politics are making you more hypocritical.” He sneers. “My divorce from Daria is finalized, and Veronica is an adult, so what does it matter to you?”
I can’t believe he’s asking me that. He doesn’t have to work with her or see her disappointment whenever he moves on to someone else. When the day comes that V no longer wants or cares about him, I will be the first to rub his goddamn face in it. “It matters to her. And besides, I don’t marry them.”
“No, you just fuck them.”
I give him a hard look that he returns. “What do you want, Ben?”
“To see my brother. Is that too much to ask? You avoid me every time you’re in town, and Mother’s still bitching about you missing her masquerade ball a few months ago.” He drums his fingers on the bar counter. “She’s so proud of you, by the way. All she ever talks about is her son, the U.S. senator, her darling Graham, her brilliant, Harvard-educated spawn. Cain and I are shit under her custom Louboutins in comparison to you.”
And she probably listed these accolades during one of her Vicodin and scotch binges. The only times my mother has ever given a shit about me was when I brought home a woman she didn’t approve of and then when I decided to run for office. On both occasions, her opinion meant nothing to me.
I grind my teeth. “What. Do. You. Want?”
“I need your advice. An investment situation—you know you’re better at that shit than I am. And a woman problem.”
“Is the investment a woman?” I gulp my beer. “And do I look like a financial advisor or PlentyofFish to you?”
Bennett sighs like a love-struck fool, and I can almost hear the irritating notes of “Here Comes the Bride.” The motherfucker spends more time in Tiffany’s and Harry Winston than he does in his own office. It’s a wonder our father hasn’t fired his ass. “It’s Veronica. She trusts you.”
There’s a foot-wide line between trust and love. Vero loves me, but she doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw my ass. “Well, in that case, match fucking denied.”
“God, you’re a cold one.” He raps another beat on the counter, grinning and increasing his tempo when I cut him with a vicious glare. “And where the hell is that bartender?” he growls.
I tip my drink to my lips, polishing it off. When I motion the bartender over, he starts in our direction. “There. Order your drink.”
My brother looks at my bottle again, orders two of what I’m having, and turns his blue eyes on me. I search for some small piece of myself in him, but nothing’s there. Blond and blue-eyed, he looks like our mother—a failed soap opera actress turned snobby socialite. “So who’s the girl, Graham? Veronica will tell me, you know, with the right amount of persuasion.”
“And I’ll break your arm and shove it down your persuasive throat.” We’ve come to blows over Vero before. She’s better off without him. Better off with anybody else but a Delaney because we’re all fucked. The bartender brings the new round of drinks. “The girl is nobody.”
But images of Elle posted against that bathroom wall, whimpering and squirming—her hair falling over her face and her blue eyes squeezed together as her body clenched my fingers in a vise grip—creep into my skull. I have work to do while I’m here, and Eleanor Courtney with her sweet little cries and tight body have no place in my New York office.
That’s why I’m bringing her here. To force her out of my head.
I’ll get to the difficult part—unraveling her—once we’re back in her element.
“You’ve got an admirer.” Bennett’s annoying voice thankfully pushes Elle out of my mind, and I glance disinterestedly at the brunette at the other end of the bar. She’s cute, but her hair isn’t black enough, her tiny top shows everything, and she’s not wearing pearls.
I crave those pearls, just so I can pull them off.
Fucking Eleanor Courtney.
I shrug. “She’s not my type.”
“Dark hair, giant rack, and a pretty smile have always been your type.” He juts out his chin. “What changed?
“My interests. Look at you, you went from a six-foot-tall blonde from Brooklyn to a goddamn hobbit from the Upper East Side.” I don’t have to remind him of the other contrasts between the two, that Veronica is not only physically stunning but a decent person and the hardest goddamn worker I’ve ever met. “Now you’re sniffing around wife number one again. What happens after you give up on that again? MILF-hunting?”
“She must really be something.” He exhales and scratches his hand through his blond hair. “I haven’t seen you this caught up in a woman since—”
It’s like a gunshot when he brings her up, and a vein in my neck throbs. “Say her name, and I promise, I really will break your arm.”
“Since she-who-is-now-a-trigger-word,” he finishes, reminding me why I can’t stand him. Hearing him even mention her rips open a wound that’s nearly a decade old, reminding why I’d approached Elle, reminding me that she’s my pawn, and my lust for her is nothing but a game.
Her father had played, and won against, someone I cared about.
My plan for Elle seems compassionate in comparison.
Shaking his head, Bennett gets off the bar stool. “Call me when you’re not sulking. In the meantime, I’ll see you at Mother’s function next week?”
I take another drink. “So she can show off her precious Graham? Wouldn’t miss the chance to see her make up for thirty plus years of poor parenting in one night.”
“Be nice, it’s Christmas,” he says, and I shrug.
“And yet we both know it means nothing to either of them.” I can’t count the number of holidays our parents shoved us off on V’s mom so they could party, travel, fuck other people, or any combination of the three. After we all turned eighteen, we could always count on our mother to offer her opinion on our relationships—she was good at that. But this … family … act is a recent development. Something she came up with a few years ago when she woke up one morning and decided she was forty percent sure she wanted children.
“I’ll be there, though I can’t promise I’ll be holly-fucking-jolly,” I say with a bitter smile. “We can even coordinate a gift—you bring one of your friends and I’ll get a bottle of Macallan. It’ll be just like the old days.”
It’s a dick move, but I’m ready for him to leave. I’ve wanted him to piss off from the moment he sat down and interrupted my thoughts.
He gives me a hard smile. “Get a heart, Graham.” But before he leaves, he leans down and, looking down the bar toward the brunette, softly tells me, “Better yet, I’m sending The Rack over. Maybe it’ll help you forget ... nobody.”
A few minutes after Bennett leaves, The Rack saunters over, twisting her curvy hips to the rock song about getting down on one’s knees that’s playing. Stretching her arms over her head so that her shirt rides up to give me a peek at the jewel dangling from her bellybutton, she smiles sleepily then plops down on the seat my brother just vacated. I stiffen when she tosses back hair that reeks of cigarette smoke and not whatever vanilla and berry bullshit Elle uses.
There she goes again. Shoving herself, tights and all, into my head.
“Is this good? I’ve never tried it, but it looks good.” The brunette grabs the beer my brother had left, tilting it to the side and wiggling her nose at it. “I’m Renée, and you are?”
“Leaving. I’m leaving.”
“What? And hey ... I think I know you from somewhere!? Your friend said you asked him to see if I’m interested.”
Mentally, I strangle my brother for putting me in this position. Sending one of those liabilities I try to avoid to seduce me. Smiling tightly at the brunette, I slide off the barstool.
“My friend wasted your time when he told you to come over here. But to answer your question, you don’t know me. This particular beer tastes like shit, I don’t have the time or patience to go back and forth exchanging awkward pleasantries all for the sake of waking up in your messy, Marlboro-scented loft, and I’m not interested as it is.”
She blusters. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.” Reaching into my back pocket of my jeans, I signal the bartender and leave enough to cover my drinks and Bennett’s. The Rack is still glaring at me in open-mouthed surprise. “Have a pleasant night.”
As I walk away, she snaps, “With an attitude like that, no wonder you’re going home alone tonight.”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone else.”
Exiting the bar, I look at my watch—a few minutes after midnight.
Less than eighteen hours left.
I dial the most frequently called number on my phone, grinning when Vero’s sleepy voice answers. “If you want to keep your job after the shit you told my prick brother, there are things you need to do for me once the sun comes up...”