“Good call. Any decent man would defend his woman,” Lukas said. “I’m sure you’ve been well acquainted with the feeling lately. Something tells me you don’t particularly enjoy watching the Roths slobber all over Sara.”
“You’re not incorrect.”
I didn’t enjoy it, and I definitely didn’t
enjoy whatever the fuck had happened Monday night at the pool. It was still plaguing me, and once again, I was second-guessing whether Turner Roth was in fact worth the trouble.
Abandoning this project would have been a fair idea to consider three weeks ago, when I’d yet to make progress with them. Now, with a date set for our trip to Biarritz, and the purchase finally looking serious, it was an absurd notion. If someone had told me three weeks ago that I’d consider ceasing negotiations for the sake of anyone besides my family or myself, I’d have told that person to fuck himself.
But thanks to Monday, I was having doubts.
I’d screwed up that night.
I had made sure to keep my every sense trained tightly on Sara to guarantee intervention before Turner so much as irked her. But I’d failed in that regard. I let her fall into some dark place at the end of the evening, and days later I was still working on the rage I felt over it.
Rubbing my jaw, I set my phone aside, realizing my texts had become ineloquent since I started thinking about Sara.
“Who are you texting, anyway?” Emmett asked as Lukas excused himself to take a call.
“No one.”
“Well, no one sure has you worked up,” Emmett said, eyeing my phone when it lit with a new message. I removed it from the table, but it was too late, he’d seen. “You have got to be shitting me,” he said, his entire body going slack with disbelief. I glared.
“Mind your own business, Emmett.”
“How the fuck is this not my business?” he asked, losing all humor in his voice. “I thought you were putting an official end to that chapter in your life.”
“Trust me, I am. Do you not see me trying to sell that resort?”
Emmett held onto his jaw as he shook his head and sneered. “You know, it’s fucking crazy. You’re a hard-ass ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, and then the other one percent – ”
“Your math is off.”
“Shut up. Listen to me. I don’t ever give you shit, Julian. I’m as easy as they come. You know that,” Emmett said earnestly. “So when I say that you need to cut that crazy person off, I fucking mean it. You don’t owe anyone anything. Aside from your family – your real family – you shouldn’t have to break your back for anyone.”
I was silent for a moment as I suppressed the urge to lay into my little brother.
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t possess anything resembling a shred of responsibility in his life, so he wouldn’t understand. Save for his dog, he was a man of leisure living off minority interest in the Victorian Hotel, and a couple nightclubs in the city. He’d made some good early investments off my advice, and since, he’d held no real job, had no serious relationships, and generally coasted from day to day.
I wanted to say all that.
But then I remembered the fucking disaster I left him with eleven years ago, and the fact that he didn’t actually coast by. He was stuck being everyone’s rock while I was gone, and I’d be a complete piece of shit to indulge myself by dropping those low blows on him.
“Move past it,” I simply said.
“How much money are you sending this time?”
“I said move past it.”
Emmett blew out a harsh breath of air, but after rubbing his entire face several times, he inhaled, exhaled, and he was done.
I always regarded that like a fucking magic trick every time. How he managed to move on from things so quickly was beyond me, but I envied him for it.
“Fine, well now you owe me a couple minutes talking about Sara.”
“I can’t at all grasp why you’re so interested in this topic.”
“Well, I haven’t seen you actually invested in a girl in a long fucking time, and the sooner you settle down and have kids, the sooner Mom stops bugging me about it.” Emmett shoved a handful of fries in his mouth. “You gonna take her on a real date anytime soon?”