Chapter Eight:
Silver Dick
Sterling
“No way it’s alreadyseven,” I mumbled, staring down at the mess of emojis I’d just received from Zeppelin Bryce, the clearly childish little creature my father hired despite my vehement objections. “Where the fuck did the day go?”
My assistant Colin leaned back in his chair. “To the fourteen meetings and three pitchbooks you did by yourself,” he reminded me. “I’ve worked for you for four years and I still don’t understand why you don’t let your associates and analysts handle those.”
“Because no one knows this business or our clients — potential clients included — the way I do. And if we make mistakes, we’ll be dealing with a coup.”
Colin shifted. “You don’t really think your own brother would try to come after your job, do you?”
He already is. “He stole the Solaris expansion and the Cressler/Guertin merger right out from under me. Are you going to look me in the face and tell me Oliver hasn’t loudly expressed interest in becoming managing director?”
“No, Sir.”
“Right.” I rubbed my jaw, ignoring the exhaustion tugging at me. “Speaking of my brother, go find him. Tell him I need to speak with him about our father.”
He left with a curt nod, so I took the time to glance over my schedule for the week and the projects we had coming up, but my thoughts drifted quickly back to Zeppelin. I knew it was my father’s decision even though it was my money feeding him, paying his bills, and paying for her, so I was trying not to dwell on the fact that my life had somehow become full of emojis and rainbow-colored footwear monstrosities, and yet ... the fullness of her lips, the lines of her body, the way her grey eyes screamed spank me, fuck me, break me every time she looked at me? I couldn’t shake her.
And it was only day one.
“You wanted to see me?”
I looked up to see Oliver in all of his irritatingly scruffy, suited-up glory and pushed Zeppelin from my mind for a few moments. “Yeah, come in. Colin made himself scarce, huh?”
“Yup.” Oliver took a seat across from me and kicked a foot up on my desk. “Just you and me, bro. Something you wanted to talk about? I have a red-eye tonight.”
Of course he did.
“Where to this time?” I asked, taking in the self-satisfied look in his eyes. “The Amalfi Coast? Isle of Skye? To that little number you’ve got down in Perth?”
He huffed with amusement and stress written all over his face, then dropped his gaze. “Cancun. Got a little number out there, too.”
“Ahh, right. How long will you be gone?”
“Just a couple days. You need me back by a certain day?”
I thought about our billings, the support he had here, and how much those two things irritated me. I nearly told him to stay in Cancun. “No longer than four days. We’ve got shit coming up I need you here for. In the meantime, I called you here because I hired a caretaker for Dad. Thought you should know.”
“Caretaker? I thought you said you were putting him in a home?” Ollie tensed, just as he always did when our father was mentioned.
“Fucking tried. Stubborn bastard wouldn’t go and I can’t be there all the goddamn time. Maybe if I had a brother to help out, things would be different,” I leveled. “But I seem to have been born an only child.”
The briefest look of guilt appeared in his hazel eyes, but it was gone in a flash. “So you want me to go sit at home with him all day and what? Not work? He needs full-time care, something neither of us could do unless we stopped our lives. Don’t start with the damn guilt trips, Ster. I got enough shit on my plate.”
It was just like my little brother to assume he was the only one with shit on his plate. It took me several seconds to calm myself down and convince myself not to drag him across my desk and shake the fucking life out of him until he understood — but I knew Oliver. He simply couldn’t handle it; he couldn’t deal with losing our mom and he couldn’t deal with this.
I flashed back to all the times in our lives I’d protected him and drew on those instincts instead, nodding once. “You’re right, Ollie. I’ve got it, okay? Enjoy your trip to Cancun. Be safe.”
He looked hesitant to leave, but one real look at me had him doing what he always did: brushing it off and running. “Safe isn’t really in my vocabulary when it comes to Mexico.” He stood and headed toward the door. “Is the caretaker hot at least?”
Jealousy coiled in my gut at the question, catching me so off guard that all the anger left me. What the fuck? “Yeah, she’s gorgeous. You’d like her,” I said, trying to save it. “You gonna tell me why you’re so tense before you go?”
“Am I tense?” He reached for the doorknob but stopped before his hand made contact. “I guess I should tell someone.” He walked back to my desk and lowered his voice. “That number in Cancun? I uh, I’m going for a paternity test. She says he’s mine but he doesn’t look anything like me and I wore a condom like 90% of the time so I think it’s bullshit but ... fuck. I might have fucked up, Ster.”
“Christ, Oliver!” I stood, walking around to make sure he couldn’t run away from this. “What is this, the third time something like this has happened now?”