Chapter One

 

Living alone was a lot weirder than I would’ve thought it’d be. I’d had my own space for brief periods since the age of eighteen, but there’d always been a home that I was supposed to return to, even if it had been the last place I ever wanted to be. But now I had a house that was mine and mine alone.

I lived alone. I was alone.

Yes, my brother, Gio Diamati, and only cousin, Sal DeLuca, each lived on either side, so I only needed to walk thirty feet for company. Still, my house was too big for one person and they had their own lives. I was determined not to be the fifth wheel.

Gio and Sal bought the house for me before I’d gotten out of school for the summer so I wouldn’t have to stay with either of them and they’d get a lot of privacy with their girlfriends. I still tended to drop by their houses more often than I probably should’ve, which meant my head had been bitten off more than once. I had a knack for showing up at inopportune times. It wasn’t on purpose.

“Mending broken fences,” I mumbled to myself as I stood on Sal’s front steps two weeks after moving to Harbor Point.

The three of us didn’t grow up together, even though we were in the same house. All part of being in a completely dysfunctional family. The guys insisted that I needed to know the family business since I was a co-owner of The Trinity Corporation. They made sense. But I wanted nothing to do with it. Yet they’d somehow convinced me to spend the summer working with Sal to learn the basics.

The idea of continuing to work on something my parents had built made me want to vomit.

Sal’s house was quiet when I stepped into it about a quarter after eight in the morning. Then I heard movement in the kitchen. I needed caffeine anyway, so I decided to join Sal there. As I came around the corner, it took a full thirty seconds for my brain to catch up with what I was seeing.

Sal, my giant cousin, was in the kitchen, naked at least from the waist up—I prayed it was only from the waist up—with his girlfriend, Bailey, backed into the island. She only wore one of his button-down shirts and he was making quick progress at getting it unbuttoned while trying to chew her face off.

My eyes would never be the same.

“It’s burning,” I yelled as I slapped a hand over my face before spinning on my heel so my back would be to them. “Make it stop. Make it stop.”

“Shit,” Bailey hissed right before I heard something that sounded like a body hitting the floor followed by Sal’s deep chuckle. “Sorry, Gemma,” Bailey said with a laugh.

I glanced over my shoulder to see Sal offering her a hand to help her up. She’d fallen on the floor. That was what I’d heard.

“Uh, I’m going to get dressed.” Bailey kept the shirt bunched together in her tight fist as she scooted by me. She gave me an apologetic look while Sal did something that appeared disgustingly like him adjusting himself.

I gagged and pretended like I was going to vomit so he’d know I saw what he’d done.

“You’re late,” Sal said with a smile as he made his way across the room toward me.

I exhaled a relieved breath when I saw he had jeans on. No shirt but at least things weren’t getting even more uncomfortable.

“Luckily,” I said back.

A smile played on his lips as he crossed his arms over his naked chest.

“If I’d gotten here on time, I would’ve had to witness whatever disgusting things came before what I just saw. I’ll never be able to have sex again.”

His loud chuckle startled me. “I think Gio owes me a beer then.”

“Asshole,” I said under my breath.

He didn’t care and told me to go get comfortable in the office while he put on more clothes, which I encouraged.

I understood why people would swoon over Sal and Gio half-naked. I was even grateful Bailey and Bianca did. I didn’t want to have to be a witness. They were my only family, though the girls would join us in the near future. I was pretty confident about that.

I sat in Sal’s chair behind the modest desk he’d put into his office on the first floor of his house in Harbor Point and spun around like I didn’t have a care in the world. He ran the company from here, even though the headquarters were in Chicago and he didn’t care about having to go there all the time. There was no way he was going to live anywhere Bailey wasn’t.

Given our fucked-up childhood of being groomed to seduce competitors and do whatever it took to get them to sell their companies, somehow Gio still found love with Bianca and Sal with Bailey. It was like they’d found their other halves while I was still searching for myself.

Last year, I’d gone out on dates a couple of times, but they had been some of the most awkward nights of my life and that was saying something. I was used to never saying no to a guy.

On each one of the three dates I’d been on since we ended our parents’ control over us, I’d been anxious and stressed. Not in a good way. I’d worried the entire time that the guy might try something with me and how I would handle it… Would I kiss him? Would I have sex with him? It had been so overwhelming that I’d barely spoken to each of the guys and when one had tried to hold my hand, I’d fallen into a mini panic attack.

That’s when I gave up trying.

“OK.” Sal slapped his hands together, rubbing them as if they were cold. “Let’s get today done. Should be pretty light.”

“Where’s Bailey?”

“Work.”

“Wouldn’t you rather hang out with her today?”

“Always,” he said so automatically that it made me smile. “But she has shit to do and if I drop the ball, all of our bank accounts stop growing, so I don’t have a choice here.”

He nudged me up from his seat. I went around to the other side of the desk and plopped into one of the regular chairs. They weren’t as much fun. They didn’t spin.

“What about a board?” I asked.

“Huh?” He glanced up from the computer screen.

“Like getting a board of directors to run the day-to-day stuff so we don’t have to.”

“We have that, Gemma. They don’t handle day-to-day but between them and an COO that we will eventually appoint, they’ll be taking over more and more, but in the end, it’s our company so we’re responsible. And we have to change Trinity’s image because it was reduced to shit under our parents. What they did to us wasn’t all they did.”

“I guess we’re lucky to have you because I want to sell it.”

He leaned back in his chair, giving me a hard stare until I started to get uncomfortable. I didn’t like people looking at me in detail like that. Like they were searching for my flaws. That was what my mother used to do.

“That’s an option. Gio and I have talked about it a few times, but even if we want to sell, we have to raise the standards and the value of the company so we wouldn’t have to worry about money once we let it go.”

“We could work, you know. We’ve all gone to college.”

His jaw clenched and he swallowed hard. When he spoke it was through tight teeth.

“And we’ve earned every damn penny this fucking company can give up.” His lockjaw slacked. “You know we’ve earned more.”

That shut me up.

None of us ever talked about the time we’d spent working for our parents. It wasn’t something we remembered fondly. Sal had started at fifteen, Gio at sixteen. But me… I’d gotten to wait until I turned eighteen due to the legal issue. People tended to let underage boys having sex with adult women slide, but they didn’t have the same sense of leniency when the girl was underage. Not that my parents ever thought the law would get involved. So I’d put in fewer years than the guys.

Humiliating, excruciating years.

I stopped talking so I could absorb everything Sal was trying to teach me but had no idea what the hell he was talking about most of the time. He said I’d understand after a while and sometimes Gio would join us, as much as Gio hated that. And I’d have to go to Chicago with Sal every now and then. The thought of returning to my hometown was exciting but nauseating. I’d barely had Gio and Sal there, but it was where I’d spent most of my life.

Once we finished working for the day right after lunchtime, Sal offered to take me to Romano’s for something to eat. I knew he loved pizza, we all did, but I was pretty sure the scenery had more to do with his choice of restaurants than anything else.

He asked the hostess to seat us in a specific area. As I suspected, Bailey came out to take our order. Of course that was after kissing him in a way that made me both embarrassed that we were in public and a little jealous because I’d never kissed anyone like that and meant it.

I was good at kissing. I had to be good at kissing. After all, I’d had enough experience.

“I’ll take a salad,” I said when they finally came up for air. “I don’t care which one.”

“A salad?” Sal narrowed his eyes on me.

“Yeah. I don’t have to let my ass grow big enough to claim its own ZIP code because my parents aren’t monitoring me anymore, ya know.”

“Can we not talk about your ass?” He rubbed his hand up and down his face like he was trying to erase an image from his brain. Bailey trailed her fingernails gently over the back of his neck.

I didn’t actually think it was my ass that concerned him; it was probably the mention of my parents. Bailey shot me a sympathetic smile, then went to put our order in. My mom had monitored what I’d eaten very carefully. I’d had to be the perfect weight at all times. It had been part of the job.

Sal and I ate in almost silence. We’d mention something from work earlier if one of us thought of it. Other than that we didn’t talk. Then I was on my own.

Sal said he was planning something for Bailey and him that he didn’t want me around for, which was fine. I didn’t want to be around for it, especially if it was anything similar to what I’d almost witnessed earlier.

I sat at Romano’s for five more minutes before deciding to leave. I didn’t have much to do. Being so new to Harbor Point, I hadn’t made any friends of my own yet and everything I did relied on Bailey and Bianca making the plans. That wasn’t fair to them or me. And having never made any real friends in my life, I was at a disadvantage.

I decided to do the one thing I was good at. Shop. Harbor Point had quite a few stores. Only a couple of them were chains, but it wasn’t too long of a drive to the bigger city nearby if I needed something more.

I meandered from store to store, browsing and not buying. At least until I got to the bookstore. I was about to go through the door behind this tall guy with broad shoulders when he stopped, causing me to almost slam into the back of him. I took a large step back as he pulled the door open, then moved aside.

“After you,” he said in a rich, deep voice.

“No, go ahead.”

“Come on.” He waved a hand forward.

I rolled my eyes, then went inside. But I would’ve sworn I heard him snort as I passed by.

The bookstore was one of my favorite places. Any bookstore worked. Since I had led such a bizarre life and didn’t have friends, characters in the books I read had become my friends. I got lost in books.

As I rounded the corner from one stack to the next, I almost tripped over the person standing at the end. When I looked up, it was into the dark eyes of the guy who’d held to door for me earlier.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I made my way around him.

“No problem.”

I tried not to keep glancing at him, but even when I wasn’t, I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye.

I’d learned that my “sixth sense” was usually right, even when I couldn’t actually act on it and this guy… He was giving off a strange vibe. I didn’t like it. So, I made the decision to get the hell out of there before I became the face on a milk carton.

“You could have said thank you,” he said to my back when I turned to get away from him.

I’d almost made it, too.

“Excuse me?” I spun back to face him.

He had this little grin on his face. Adorable and infuriating. It also pissed me off that he was so fucking attractive. Dark eyes, dark hair that was short but messy. His arms were strong, but not huge. Like maybe he played a sport rather than spent his time in the gym.

“When I held the door for you on the way in. Most people would say thank you.”

I narrowed in on him. “Thank you.” His expression turned into a much too satisfied smirk. “For doing something I could have done myself.”

He chuckled. A low sound rumbled in waves like distant thunder.

“It’s called being polite,” he countered.

“Whatever.” Another roll of the eyes and I turned away from him again.

“So are you always this pleasant or is today something special?”

“Go away,” I said over my shoulder.

“I get the feeling this is the everyday you.”

My blood began to boil. How dare he make assumptions about me? “I said thank you. Now run along and leave me alone.”

He didn’t say anything else, so I figured the encounter was done. He’d earned the honor of being the first person in Harbor Point to piss me off.

Even with the interruption, I found a few books I wanted to take a closer peek at, grabbed a table in the café, and contemplated getting a coffee. I was in my happy place. Until said tall, dark, and annoying dropped into the chair across from me with a cup of the good stuff in his hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked, letting every ounce of the annoyance I felt fill my voice.

“Trying to figure you out.”

“Why?”

“Because the vibes you’re putting out don’t match up with how you look.” He took a drink. “Everybody could use a friend now and again.”

“I have enough friends.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

Somehow he saw right through that big, fat lie.

“I figure you aren’t local because the people who live here are usually too fucking nice to chance being rude to someone they don’t know. At least not without being provoked. Yet you sure as hell aren’t happy enough to be on vacation. So what gives?”

Well, that piqued my curiosity. It was like what he’d said finally made a lot of things make sense.

“What did you mean, ‘the vibes I’m putting out’? And the way I look?”

He took another long drink, probably to buy himself some time. “Well, you seem awfully angry. And maybe you have reason to be. I wouldn’t know.”

“What does that have to do with how I look?”

“Beautiful girls are usually a little more cheerful than you seem to be.”

My cheeks burned.

In my former life, I’d heard just about everything a person could hear about themselves. I was beautiful, hot, sexy—although “so fucking tight” was one of my particular favorites. As if a girl wanted that to be the thing about them that mattered. For some reason, this guy saying I was beautiful when he didn’t seem to want anything from me was different.

I wasn’t stupid.

I knew I was attractive, pretty even, because that was by design. I worked hard at being beautiful on the outside. I’d never had bad skin because as soon as I hit puberty my mom made me go to the dermatologist four times a year. My hair was long, shiny and healthy, not quite as dark as Gio’s because it had been part of my regimen to get my hair done every six weeks, a habit I’d yet to break. I’d had highlights put in at fifteen. Exercise had also been mandatory. I couldn’t be too thin, but extra pounds would not be tolerated.

“Men don’t like chubby girls,” my mom had said over and over.

Exercise had been the one easy thing to stop doing. I hadn’t been on a run in longer than I cared to admit and sitting in that café, I made myself a promise that I’d do one soon. Even if I wasn’t under their thumb any longer, there was no reason to let myself go. Truth be told, running was one of the only times that I’d had to myself as a teenager. It was time alone with my thoughts.

“Did I just render you speechless?” He broke through all the rambling in my head. “You seem like the type to always have a comeback.”

“You don’t know me.”

“You’re right.” He nodded slowly. “My name is Cash Waterford.”

He reached his hand across the table.

I stared at it like I didn’t know the basics of human social interaction.

Apparently, all the training I’d had in being smooth and socially open had gone to waste because there I was staring at this guy’s hand, not doing anything.

Rolling my eyes again, I shook his hand and said, “Gemma Diamati.”

“Hmm… I know of one other Diamati in town. Coincidence?”

“Gio’s my brother.” Of course, he’d know Gio. Which might work to my advantage, given the fact that Gio could be scary.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Gemma. I’m gonna go so you don’t think I’m a crazy stalker, but I’ll see you around.”

“You don’t know that,” I called out to him as he walked away.

He turned, taking a few steps backward as he said, “I’ll make sure of it.”