No. I can’t allow myself to become weak, thinking that way. My father taught me all too well that emotions make you irrational and easy to beat.
Still. Maybe she is a good candidate to help me get what I want with the business. At first, I was convinced that she would just be an itch to scratch, but now I’m wondering if I can have my cake and eat it too.
Scratch that itch again and again, while also satisfying the ridiculous stipulation my father inserted in his will. Dad’s final, cruel joke, has forced me and my brothers into yet another competition over what I know is rightfully mine.
But now I have to get my head back in the game because I have some briefs to go over before the video conference call with my brothers tomorrow. They’re doing the exact same thing tonight in New York and Los Angeles, and I can’t let the sexiness of tonight’s dinner slow me down in my preparations for battle.
In fact, I shouldn’t have gone out tonight at all. I should have spent all evening in my study.
I can’t make this mistake again.
The thing is—it’s not just that Emily is sexy, although damn she is. It’s that she hooks into me in a way that no one ever has before. She’s got me second-guessing my watch, for Christ’s sake, which costs more than most people’s cars. It’s a classic.
Still, back at my brownstone I smile as I take it off and toss the watch into the velvet-lined drawer with all my others. I think of her fingers touching my skin, and how she felt when I held her tiny wrist.
How she tasted…like honey, only sweeter.
The way her legs were open, the way she smelled, the shivering of her skin as I touched it. And just like that, I’m rock hard once more.
I look at my phone, her number already secured in it, thanks to Sandra’s quick administrative skills.
Maybe I could call her, find some excuse to see her again. I could send a car to bring her here right now and we could finish what we started in the restaurant.
I shake my head. This is exactly the problem. When I should be working, I’m thinking about how I can get Emily here next to me.
I undress and change into flannel pants and a cotton shirt. In my office on the second floor, I open up my computer and start reviewing the agenda for the meeting and try to suss out what Rex and Miles will each fight me on, because there is always a fight. Our father called it competition but really it’s all-out war.
Dear old Dad loved nothing more than pitting brother against brother, even when it came to dinner. He’d purposely have the cook set out too few pieces of meat or not enough of our favorite sides just so he could watch us fight over it.
When Mother tried to give us some of her food he’d rail against her too.
I know people think I had this job handed to me by good old-fashioned nepotism but my father raised us to believe that if we weren’t competing, we were wasting space. It was nonstop, never ending, but it’s the only way I know.
I’ve never bothered with relationships—I spend time with women, of course, but usually more of a one-night stand variety. I don’t have time for dating bullshit and honestly I don’t want someone who is around all the time. Marriage is a burden of worrying about what someone else wants and needs and expects from me. Pretty much my nightmare. I just want to be left alone to work.
I give it a go for about twenty minutes, pretending to read contracts and proposals and make sure all my documents and points are ready for tomorrow but really, I’m just looking at these things. I’m not absorbing anything. It’s a waste of time so I head to bed with the intent to skip my regular six a.m. workout and get to the office even earlier than usual.
But it’s still no use. I can’t stop thinking about Emily.
I feel like I could replay the dinner in my mind for the rest of my life. Emily took me by complete surprise, which I suppose is why I had to take her.
As I lay in bed, I mentally undress Emily, taking her dress all the way off, seeing her completely naked before me.
I liked teasing her but right before I tasted her I wasn’t trying to tease her. I was thinking that if I went through with it, if I had a taste of her, I might not be able to go back. When my name came whimpering out of her mouth, I was done. She already had so much power over me, and I’d gone further with her than I ever planned. I realize now that the moment I saw her in that dress, her perfect body filling it out and those gorgeous eyes of hers, I was a goner. Nothing could have saved me.
As I finally fall asleep, I vow to myself to get my shit together the second I wake up in the morning.
“So the golden boy didn’t get the job,” my brother Rex says over the video screen. He leans back in his chair in Los Angeles and rests his head back on his hands and laughs. The bastard actually laughs.
“Don’t be a dick,” Miles scolds, but he doesn’t mean it. Miles is enjoying this as much if not more than Rex. “Really. The poor son of a bitch thought he had the job locked down and now he’s just like us.”
“Yeah, we send our condolences to the heir apparent,” Rex says. The contempt can’t be kept from his 25-year-old face. He’s the youngest, and the biggest smartass. “And you’ve treated us our whole lives like we were working for you, like you were higher than us. The arrogance on you is legendary, brother. Now we’re all on the same shit-level playing field. Miles and I have just as good of a chance of taking over Croft International as your sorry ass does.”
“Look, can we just focus on the business at hand?” I say, desperately trying to keep all emotion from my face.
These calls are always bad enough.
When our father passed recently, we had all expected that I would take the reins of this company as president and CEO of all of Croft International, across all operations and platforms. That would have made me the big boss to my little brothers Miles and Rex.
It’s what I’ve been told my entire life—when Father passed, the company would become mine, the eldest.
But Edward Croft was a ruthless man, in business and in life. In his will he changed the rules. He deemed all three of us a disappointment because none of us has settled down and become family men—a key ingredient he felt was necessary to running a corporation.
So in his will he decreed that the first of us to marry will become the true president and CEO.
Father was not a great family man, but he made himself look the part. Around the time he expanded his business from luxury hotels to resort destinations, our mother, always quiet and proper, packed up her monogrammed Louis Vuitton cases and moved to Monaco.
I was ten.
The last time I saw her was for my college graduation. She flew in for the ceremony, but Father insisted we accompany him to a wedding for the daughter of the U.S. senator to Vermont.
He wanted to present me to all the bigwigs at the wedding as if it were my coming out into the family business. Mom and I did our Croft duties all night, shaking hands, being proper, and not having more than two glasses of champagne during the entire seven-hour evening. Mother flew back the next afternoon on a company jet. That was my graduation celebration, and the last time I saw her.
The new terms of his will is just one final middle finger to the three sons—but most of all me.
Nobody sacrificed more than I did for this damn business.
I keep my voice calm, but in reality I’d like to punch through the window of my thirty-second floor office. My brothers’ faces are vivid on the screens before me, and the glee in their eyes is undeniable. My brothers and I are never a team, but when we have these calls we have to pretend to come together for the good of the company.