CHAPTER 1
Jade
The Present…
“I’m not interested,” I said flatly into my cell phone just before I hit the off button so hard I winced at the strain to my finger.
I glared at the electronic device as I tossed it on the kitchen counter. Right now, my phone was the enemy, and I wished I hadn’t dashed off my couch to answer it. But since it was the middle of the afternoon on a work day, I’d been hoping it was a request for a job interview. I had applications and resumes out everywhere. But I hadn’t exactly been bombarded by opportunities where I could really use my education.
I’m in a highly specialized field, and getting funding for new studies is difficult.
Eventually, I’d get the right opportunity. Until then, I’d be jumping every time my phone rang. Unfortunately, it was never a person I wanted to talk to right now. But if I didn’t recognize the number, I had to pick up.
The call I’d just cut off had been another local guy, somebody who claimed to know me from high school, who wanted to know if I would go out with him.
It was third such call I’d had since yesterday.
And what felt like the millionth I’d received in the last several weeks.
I sighed. Yes, I’d wanted a more active dating life. But not like this. Word had gotten out that I was suddenly a very rich woman, and not one single guy who had called had been interested before I’d come into money.
Now, every unmarried male wanted to date me.
Okay, maybe not date me. They wanted to court my money.
Honestly, I was starting to hate being rich.
Before I could start dwelling on the fact that no guy actually wanted me for me, I strode back to the living room and flopped down on the couch.
“Job interview?” my brother Aiden asked from his seat in the recliner.
“It was nobody,” I answered. “Just another guy who wants to date my money.”
I looked at the TV. “What are you watching?”
“The new big wave competition in Northern California that Eli Stone hosted. They caught some big ass waves that were well over fifty feet. It was pretty crazy. Stone is up right now,” he replied.
I looked at the television, a big screen that my brothers had insisted I get, even though it barely fit on the wall of my small cottage.
“That’s the outer edge of the Channel Islands,” I said as I frowned at the TV. “He’s insane.”
“Not much room for error,” Aiden agreed. “If he doesn’t catch the wave, he’ll end up between an enormous wall of water and the rocks.”
My heart was in my throat as I watched Eli paddling into the enormous, incoming wave.
My brothers all surfed, and they’d tried to teach me and Brooke, but neither one of us had been nearly as enthusiastic as our male siblings.
“Well, fuck me,” Aiden exclaimed. “He made it.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding as Eli rode the massive wave. “He’s going to kill himself,” I said anxiously.
“Newsflash,” Aiden said drily. “This happened last winter. He lived. These are just highlights.”
I made a face at my brother before I turned back to the television again to watch the interview that was happening with Eli Stone.
And there it was.
It was the Eli Stone persona that I was used to seeing. He’d already pulled his arms out of his wetsuit, and it was bunched around his waist. His chiseled upper body was hard not to notice, and my eyes roamed over the signature tattoo down his arm.
But the thing that really stood out was the arrogant smirk on his face. And the lack of emotion in his gorgeous gray eyes.
There was nothing that told me he was flying high from his latest extreme sports victory. The cocky smile was there, but it didn’t go all the way to his eyes.
My brother switched the TV off. “Let’s hit the pool.”
Aiden had dropped over to go for a swim. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his own pool, but I had a feeling he wanted to check on me.
None of my brothers liked the weird guys I was attracting because of the money I’d inherited. But I wasn’t sure what they planned to do about it. I’d changed my number twice, and it wasn’t like anybody was going to kidnap me. They’d need me alive if they wanted my money.
It was more of an irritant than fear-inducing.
I hadn’t really had any privacy for the last few months. Somehow, word had leaked to the public about my family’s inheritance, and if I wasn’t fielding men who seemed to be coming out of the woodwork, I was refusing requests from reporters for an interview about how we’d become connected with the rich, powerful Sinclair family on the East Coast.
Aiden and I didn’t talk much as we settled by the pool and did our laps side-by-side.
I stopped before my brother, and took a rest.
When he came to a halt, he finally asked, “So who are you dating?”
For some reason, all my brothers thought they were entitled to know every detail of my personal life even though they never shared theirs.
“Nobody,” I said grumpily. “They all just want my money.”
“Obviously all of them don’t. What’s up with Eli Stone?” he questioned as he hefted his muscular body out of my swimming pool and went to dry himself off.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I floated on a small raft in the middle of the pool. The water was heated, and I wasn’t quite ready to get out yet.
“Come on, Jade,” Aiden said. “You had the speaker on when you listened to his message earlier. Are you dating him? The guy makes us look like paupers. You can’t say he’s after your inheritance.”
No, he’s after my body.
Really, Eli’s motives weren’t nearly as repulsive to me anymore. At least he’d been bluntly honest. Unlike other men who had started asking me out only because of my money. However, that didn’t make me any more likely to answer Eli’s phone calls or messages. He made me uncomfortable in ways that I still didn’t quite understand.
Honestly, I’d been surprised to hear Eli’s voice on my messages earlier. For the last several months, he’d been persistent, and he was still calling, even though I’d never answered a single one of his messages over the last five months. But since I hadn’t heard from him for almost a month now, I was pretty sure he’d given up.
Apparently, I was wrong.
And the current message from him had been the same as all the others.
He still wanted me to have dinner with him.
And I still wanted to avoid him, so I hadn’t ever called him back.
I would have thought he’d gotten the unspoken message by now. What guy keeps trying when a woman is ignoring him?
I’d seen Eli once a few months ago. He’d been having dinner with a friend in one of his restaurants in San Diego, and I’d been with all of my family celebrating my sister Brooke’s engagement to a man she’d met while she’d been on the East Coast.
My twin was now married to Liam Sullivan, and she’d chosen to stay in Maine with her new husband.
Eli and I had actually eaten in the same restaurant, just like he’d wanted. We just hadn’t been sitting at the same table.
The accidental meeting had unsettled me, especially when I’d felt him watching me during our family get-together. We hadn’t spoken, but Eli had made it clear that he knew I was there before he’d departed.
Maybe I hadn’t answered any of his messages. But I’d thought about him a lot. I wasn’t sure why since all he wanted was to get me into his bed, and I didn’t do one-night-stands. But the way my body had reacted to him was…unusual.
“I’m not dating him,” I confessed to my older brother. “I met him once, and he’s called me several times to ask if I’d do dinner with him. I haven’t even answered his messages.”
“Ouch! That’s cold,” Aiden answered.
If I told my older brother that Eli just wanted to screw me, which I wouldn’t because there was no way I was going to discuss sex with my brother, he wouldn’t have said I was cold. He would have wanted to beat the hell out of Eli Stone.
“I’m just not interested,” I told him as I slid off the raft and climbed out of the pool. “He makes me uncomfortable.”
Aiden flopped on a chaise lounge as he queried, “Is he stalking you? If he is, you know Seth and I can take care of him.”
I rolled my eyes as I finished toweling off my wet body, and then dropped into the lounger beside him. “No guy is going to stalk me.”
Aiden chuckled. “Most likely because you can bust all of their balls.”
My brother was right. I wasn’t exactly the helpless type, and I didn’t need a man. In fact, the majority of guys I’d met did give me a wide berth most of the time. The majority of the men I’d met in the past were survivalists, just like me, and even though they might admire my skills, none of them really saw me as a female. They saw me as competition.
“Do you think that’s why nobody really wants to go out with me? Because I don’t need them?” I questioned.
I’d been on a dating hiatus since I’d broken up with the jerk I’d dated in college. The break wasn’t really by choice. I just hadn’t met anybody who showed very much interest in me as a potential date. And I certainly hadn’t met anybody intriguing, unless I wanted to count Eli Stone, which I didn’t.
“Honestly, yes,” Adrian said bluntly. “Some men want to feel like they can contribute something to a relationship with their superior skills. But you don’t want to date somebody like that. If they’re intimidated, they’re fucking insecure. You need somebody who doesn’t need to have their ego stroked constantly, or a primitive survivalist who gets annoyed because you know more than they do about hunting, trapping, foraging, and other survival stuff. You need somebody who admires your strengths instead of being intimidated by them.”
I shuddered as I remembered Eli saying he admired me. He might be an arrogant prick, but he hadn’t seemed the least bit daunted.
“I’m not very attractive because I hate fussing with clothes and makeup,” I mused. “Brooke was always way better with people than me. I was the geek who wanted to get out into the woods and explore.”
“There’s plenty of things to like about you,” Adrian grumbled. “And I’m not just saying that because you’re my sister. But some men are put off by women who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.”
“So I have to act helpless?” I asked, horrified at the thought.
The idea of being some kind of shrinking violet was never going to feel good or right to me.
“Hell, no,” Adrian answered as he reached for his water bottle and took a long slug. “You don’t need to be anyone except yourself. So tell me about Stone. Why are you afraid of him?”
I grabbed my diet soda and drank some before I answered, “I’m not afraid of him. I just think he’s a jerk. I was trying to acquire a piece of property out near Lucifer’s Canyon, so I could make sure one of the wildlife corridors stays intact. I sent an offer and made an appointment. But he wasn’t willing to sell.”
“So you’re mad because he didn’t want to sell you some acreage?”
“No. I was pissed because he made me drive all the way to his offices, wait an hour until he’d see me, and then turned my offer down flat. He could have had somebody call me and let me know he didn’t want to sell. But he was curious about why I wanted to buy it. The jackass took up a ton of my time because he wanted to ask a question. Who does that?”
“Damn billionaires think they run the world,” he said with a grin as he put on his sunglasses.
I couldn’t help but smile back at him. My family handled our sudden wealth with as much humor as possible. It’s the only thing we’d ever had to lighten our decidedly heavy burdens when we were younger.
“I don’t think I could ever do that to somebody, money or not,” I told him.
“Do you want me to have a talk with him?” he asked. “If you’re sure you don’t want to speak to him, I can get him to leave you alone.”
I was raised by my three older brothers, so I was accustomed to hearing all of them trying to protect me in some way or another.
“No,” I answered, my voice sounding somewhat panicked. The last thing I wanted was one of my brothers threatening somebody like Eli Stone. We might all have money now, but Eli had a lot more friends in high places. “He’ll give up eventually. And I can handle myself.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Of course. That’s why I haven’t answered him.”
“He’s persistent,” Adrian observed. “And you must have made one hell of an impression if he’s still calling months after you met.”
“I don’t think I did,” I explained. “Honestly, I don’t understand what he wants. I think it’s some kind of game for him.”
“His message sounded pretty sincere. He didn’t sound like a stalker.”
I had to admit that my brother was correct. Every time Eli left a message, he sounded as cool as cucumber, and businesslike, almost like he wanted to schedule a meeting. If I didn’t recall every word he’d said to me the day we met, I’d have a very hard believing he even saw me as a female.
“Aiden, he could have almost any woman he wants. Why would he want me? Why would he even want to play a cat and mouse game? Do you think he’s twisted?”
“Did it ever occur to you that he might just like you?”
“No,” I admitted. “He’s Eli Stone.”
“He sounded like a guy who was asking you out to dinner. And no man is too good for my sister. Not ever. You’re beautiful, intelligent, driven and empathetic. What in the hell else could any guy want? You can’t blame the man for his persistence. I kind of like the fact that he knows that you’re worth the work.”
I sighed as I leaned my head back against the lounger. My brothers always gave me an ego boost. In their eyes, Brooke and I would always be perfect. “Maybe he makes me uncomfortable because he actually seemed to find me attractive.”
Brooke and I had always been careful about sharing too much with any of our brothers because they had a tendency to insert themselves into any situation they judged as bad for their two sisters. But my relationship with Aiden had changed somewhat since Brooke had left California for good. I wasn’t sure if Aiden was realizing that we were all grown up now, or he was just mellowing out as he got older.
We’d become a lot closer, and we talked about a lot of things I’d previously only shared with Brooke. Granted, there was no way I discussing my sex life—or lack of it—with any of my brothers, but we did talk more about personal stuff.
Not that he or any of my brothers didn’t think they always knew what was best for their little twin sisters, even though I’d already graduated with a doctorate, finished a fellowship, and was now on the job hunt for a position as a scientist. And Brooke was married and living across the country.
I was pretty sure that some of their highhandedness would probably never change, no matter what Brooke and I did.
But Aiden, Seth and I had become much tighter since I didn’t see Brooke very often now.
“You are attractive,” Aiden said sternly. “And Brooke was not the pretty twin. I’ve heard you say that way too many times, and you need to get that thought out of your head. You two are twins, and even though you’re not identical, you look pretty similar. Your personalities are just different.”
I couldn’t argue with my brother’s point. Brooke and I had always been incredibly close even though our interests were dissimilar. And we’d gone in different directions after high school because we were different.
Brooke had gotten a degree in finance and had come back to Citrus Beach to work at one of the local banks.
I’d gone on to do a fellowship when she was already finished with her degree in finance, determined to do what I could to preserve animal species that were endangered.
My brothers had always claimed I was gifted. But I didn’t see it that way. College had just come easy for me, and science even more so. So I’d finished my Master’s by the time I was twenty-two, and my doctorate at twenty-four. My last two years had been spent doing a postdoc fellowship. So I’d essentially spent my entire adult life studying and getting educated.
I’d always known I wasn’t going to get rich as a conservationist. I’d spent a lot of volunteer hours at various conservation organizations, doing everything from analyzing animal fecal matter to handfeeding babies.
My twin had never shared my interest in ecology and wildlife, and we’d often went our separate ways after high school.
But nothing had ever broken the twin bond we had, and I was sure that nothing ever would, even though we were physically separated now.
It’s weird that I never really felt the distance when we’d gone to separate colleges, but it seemed profound now that I knew she was never going to come home again.
I was happy that Brooke had found her soulmate, but I missed her, and her absence now seemed so…final. I guess I’d never considered the fact that she might end up living somewhere other than Citrus Beach.
My twin had found the love of her life in Amesport, Maine.
And I was still in Citrus Beach and completely jobless and dateless.
Maybe that was why I felt so left behind.
I had way too much time on my hands right now.
Granted, after I’d gotten burned by a deadbeat in college, I’d been wary of almost any guy who paid attention to me. Not that it happened often, except for the ones who just wanted to marry money.
I wasn’t really alone. I had three older brothers who lived close to me now, and a younger brother who had finished medical school and was currently in his residency out of state, but it wasn’t quite the same as having Brooke here with me.
I guess I’d always assumed that my twin and I would eventually be living in the same place once our education was done. It had been far more likely that I’d have to accept a job out state or even out of the country.
It had never occurred to me that Brooke would be the one to move away.
“Maybe you should give Stone a chance,” Aiden said.
“He’s too…intense. Plus, you know about all of the crazy things he does. He’s pretty high profile for his ridiculous stunts.”
Aiden shrugged. “He has a lot of hobbies. Hell, he’s been rich since the day he was born, so maybe he gets bored.”
“He runs a huge international conglomerate,” I reminded my brother. “How in the world could he get bored?”
“It’s not a crime to have fun, Jade,” Aiden said in a serious tone. “Maybe none of us are used to having down time, but most people do. I know we all had to bust our ass when we younger, and times were tough. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore, baby girl.”
I ignored the nickname my older brothers had always used for Jade and I. Honestly, they been referring to us by that name for so long, I’d probably miss it if they didn’t use it.
“I feel guilty because I’m not off working somewhere right now,” I told him. “It’s weird knowing that no matter what I do, I’ll still be rich unless I do something completely idiotic. I’m not used to it. Are you?”
“Nope. I’ll probably never get used to it. But I’m not complaining. I didn’t really want to be a commercial fisherman all my life. And now I don’t have to be. I like being my own boss a lot better, even though I have to put up with Seth’s ugly mug every damn day.”
“He says the same thing,” I informed him.
“He sucks,” Aiden said gruffly.
Neither one of my brothers had to work together. But I honestly didn’t think they’d know what to do without each other.
“Maybe I should have taken one of the lower level federal jobs I was offered when I graduated,” I said. “Maybe I’d feel more normal.”
“Not happening. You’d probably end up out of state, and none of those positions were what you wanted.”
“Maybe not. But it feels so strange to be doing nothing.”
“You have your own charity. And you just got out of your fellowship,” he argued. “And you’re always busy teaching survival classes.”
“My survival skills are a hobby, Aiden. I want a real career where I can be making a difference. I’m going to keep volunteering because every bit of experience I can get is valuable. But I want a job in conservation, even if I have to start at the bottom.
“You haven’t really established yourself yet, Jade. Someday, you’ll be so busy that you’ll wished you could get a break. Don’t rush things. You don’t have to kill yourself anymore. Savor that for a while. Enjoy kicking back. It’s something we never had when we were younger.”
“You should talk,” I told him soberly. “I don’t see you and Seth slowing down.”
“He’s a slacker,” Aiden answered. “If I let him slow down, he’d never pick up speed again.”
I laughed. Aiden and Seth were close in age, and they were almost always together. But they loved to get underneath each other’s skin. “How are things going?”
Our brother, Seth, had been in construction before we’d inherited a fortune. He’d done long, backbreaking days to help keep us all fed, and studied every single facet of the building and real estate business along the way. Now, he and Aiden were buying huge lots of land to do their own building projects. As far as I could tell, they were becoming pretty well known as quality builders in a relatively short period of time.
“Good,” he replied. “We’re looking at some bigger projects now. We were hesitant to get in too deep until we got more experience under our belt. But things are hopping lately. For now, I think we’re happy to be working toward becoming a housing giant. After that, we’ll see.”
I was so happy to see my brothers content. The older three had worked so hard to help get me, Brooke and Owen through college. They deserved every good thing that was happening for them right now.
“I’m glad,” I told him quietly.
“Hey, are you up for pizza and a late-night movie? I don’t feel like cooking.”
“You never cook anyway,” I reminded him. More often than not, he and Seth ended up at my house looking for food. I swore neither one of them ever went to the grocery store. “And I’d love to, but I can’t. I have an overnight basic survival trip tomorrow. I have to be up really early.”
Primitive survival was something I’d been passionate about for years, and I taught classes to share my knowledge. My overnights started early.
“Your loss,” Aiden said. “I was going to offer to pay.”
I laughed, just like my brother intended. “That sucks,” I answered. “I really hate to miss free pizza.”
Really, none of us knew quite how to act now that we had cash in our pockets. We could afford to eat anywhere we wanted to eat and we’d never miss the money.
“The being a billionaire thing is still weird, right?” I questioned him. “I still wake up every morning and open my eyes wondering if all of this was some kind of strange dream.”
“And then you get out of bed and realize that you’re in a beach house that’s totally paid for.” Aiden grinned as he stood up. “Weird in only the best of ways,” he added as he grabbed his water. “Maybe I’ll go and see what Noah and Seth are up to since you’re refusing my generous offer to buy you dinner. But I’m sure Noah won’t go for taking any time off. He’s working too damn much.”
“Try to drag him away from his computer,” I requested.
My eldest brother did work way too much. He always had. He’d been responsible for all of his younger siblings, so I didn’t remember a time when Noah hadn’t busted his butt to see us fed and healthy.
“I’ll kick his ass,” Aiden said with a nod as he opened the pool gate and let himself out.
I watched as my brother headed down the beach, obviously on his way to Noah’s house judging by the direction he’d gone.
I sighed when Aiden was out of sight, wondering if it was just me who couldn’t manage to enjoy the money I’d inherited.
As of now, I seemed to be the only one still struggling with the fact that all of us had suddenly become very unlikely billionaires, and I just wasn’t sure how to leave my old life behind.
End of sample. .