Page 14 of Filthy Rich

“I don’t want to talk to that asshole. Just tell him to collect the claims with the receipts and send them over, and I’ll see they are paid.”

“I’ll tell him.” She walked out of my office with the dry cleaning plastic covering my favorite-but-now-ruined suit, fluttering behind her.

If all those suits combined came in at a dime under fifty grand, I’d be surprised. Yeah, well, a promise was a promise, and my word was good. I’d said I’d cover damages, and eight ruined designer suits certainly constituted as damages. Fucking waste of good money. It wasn’t being out of my pocket that bothered me really, it was the cause of the whole thing—an arrogant pricktaking advantage of a nice girl just because she was pretty and he’d decided he wanted to fuck her.

That was how it went down. I was there. I saw everything happen almost as if it were in slow motion. If Brooke had just taken Aldrich’s abuse, as he assumed she would, then no flying shrimp, no ruined suits, no damages—just another example of SOP in the after-hours corporate world. The number of hits she’d received that night alone were proved in the business cards she’d tossed at the feet of her shithead boss. That must be a horrible thing to have to put up with while you’re trying to do your job. She shouldn’t be in that situation at all. I wished I’d never gone to that fucking reception in the first place.

And I wouldn’t know her name was Brooke, or that she lived on the island with her grandmother, or that she needed a second job because she didn’t make enough money at Harris & Goode as an interior designer to pay the bills. Oh, I’d had plenty of time to think about Brooke over the last few weeks. The things she’d said to me on the phone. How much she resented the people who had fired her grandmother. The regret in her apology when she realized she’d said too much to the wrong person. And maybe even the same disappointment I’d felt when we both realized our little attraction—or whatever the fuck it was—wouldn’t be going anywhere because we came from different sides of the tracks.

I’d gone to the Starbucks twice, hoping I might bump into her accidentally.

No sign of her.

I’d come close to calling just so I could hear her voice again, but what would I say? “Your voice is so sexy I get hard like a teenage boy when you speak. Wanna go out with me?” She already suspected me for a stalker, and it would barely put me above Aldrich if you really got down to the brass tacks of what I wanted from her. And what in the mother fuck was that exactly?

I don’t think I’d yet figured out what I wanted from Brooke. Sex? To be her boyfriend? Something even more than that? I’d only cared about the sex in the past. Oh, I’d love to take my time with her in bed, and I’m sure it would be spectacular, but for the first time since I could remember, sex was not my main motivation. Why the fuck was that? What made Brooke unique in that way? Why was Brooke so tantalizing to me I couldn’t get her out of my head?

I remembered something else, too, and I suspected it was a biggie. What she’d said to Aldrich right after she broke his nose. “You put your hands on me. Nobody does that and gets away with itanymore.”

It made me crazy that Brooke had been hurt badly by some guy in the past.Who the fuck would touch her with anything other than respect? Adoration?The fuckwit certainly hadn’t deserved her.Did I?Was it important to me thatIdeserve her? I’d never had to entertain that thought before and it confused me. I didn’t really have a handle on what I was doing in regards to Brooke…at all.

Taking time I really didn’t have, I considered my options.

And then I called my brother Lucas.

“Caleb, long time, no talk. To what do I owe?—”

“Lucas, who is the girl named Brooke with an English accent living on the island with her grandmother?”

“Umm…bro, don’t you remember Ellen Casterley, the housekeeper at Blackwater? She worked there for our whole life.”

“Ellen Casterley, our sweet British housekeeper, is her grandmother?” I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.

“Yeees. Brooke came to live with Mrs. Casterley after her parents were killed in London. Brooke was like fifteen at thetime, and it was kind of big news on the island. I remember everybody talking about it—why don’t you know this?”

“That’s a fucking good question, little brother. When did this happen?”

“Oh, probably eight or so years ago. Sylvie, my housekeeper, would be the one to ask if you want better details. Sylvie and Mrs. Casterley are good friends, and she knows Brooke very well.”

I did the math. That would make Brooke twenty-three now. Eight years ago I was twenty-three, and I don’t remember visiting the island for holidays. I hadn’t been around when Brooke came to live with her grandmother. “Okay, but why would Brooke say Blackwater was closed and all of the staff dismissed? That’s not true.”

A long pause preceded the heavy sigh from my brother on the other end of my phone, and I knew something was terribly wrong. “Caleb, do you ever speak to Mom? She closed it down nearly two years ago when Dad got sick. The place is boarded up and for sale. When a buyer comes along, it’s gone.”

“No. No way would Dad ever allow Blackwater to be sold off from the family holdings. He loved it there.”

“When was the last time you were at Blackwater?” My brother’s question felt like a metal spike into my heart. He was right. Our father had loved it there. And we’d enjoyed our summer holidays there when we were kids. But then we grew up and lost interest. Or maybe it was just me who lost interest and never went back.

Too fucking long ago.

“How do you feel about putting your clueless brother up for the weekend in your fancy beach house?”

“Plenty of empty rooms for you to choose from, clueless brother. You taking your chopper or do you need me to send mine over there to get you?”

“Funny. I always take my own chopper, asshole.”

Seven

CALEB

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