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He seems to — Chester is good like that — but I certainly can’t. Where does that Ferry prick even get off thinking that I would want or need his fucking PR influence like some kind of social climbing groupie slut? Sure, Red Hall is taking a temporary hit from the foray of Ferry Lights into the neighborhood — but that’s just the way the market works. A few more weeks and the pressure will equalize and my place will be back on top where it started.

After all, every celebrity — A, B, C, or even D-list — that shows up at my place comes because they want to be here. Not because I pay them.

I’m not good at staying angry. I try to hold grudges, but they never last very long. As this one wanes and I recover myself, my traitorous imagination takes the opportunity to defect. Whispering images of Jake’s flushed lips, and that glint in his eyes that made me briefly imagine what was going on in his head to make him look at me like that. Worst of all was that it had worked; that swell of heat between my legs wasn’t a fever.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I turn, pasting the smile back on my face. It can set like plaster for all I care. Tonight I have guests. Tonight I have work to do. No way am I going to let Jake Ferry screw up my head.

For me, the best way to clear my head and get focused is to throw myself hard into work. So that’s what I do, schmoozing and mingling until Jake Ferry is a distant, irritating memory.

Chapter 30

Jake

The wall outside Red Hall meets my fist in a brief conflict that it easily wins, but the pain serves to clear my head. My hand starts to throb almost immediately, and I’m reminded that I need to stop doing shit without thinking of the consequences first.

I’m an asshole. That’s not really a surprise to me — my apple didn’t fall more than a few feet from my father’s tree — but every time I have the opportunity to tell him no, I just fall in line instead. What kind of man does that?

And what kind of man tells a woman like Janie Hall that he wants to date her for the PR benefits?

Nobody in this town opens a business of any kind without having Reginald Ferry’s hard eye on them. That means my eyes are on them as well. I know what Janie’s been through. It wasn’t easy for her to get Red Hall started. She begged, borrowed, and stole to get that place off the ground, and when she finally opened the doors it was epic.

It’s stayed that way for over a year and opening Ferry Lights literally across the street only barely made a dent in their regular business. Fact is, Red Hall has something that Ferry Lights doesn’t: a modern day heroine for an owner.

My father had given me the background on my… target. Janie Hall comes from practically nothing. She’s self-made, not just the hobbyist housewife of one of the local boys’ club. And she’s a good girl. Precisely the kind of girl I avoid when I have an itch that needs scratching.

It doesn’t help that Janie is unbearably hot. That just isn’t a fair game. Plenty of girls are beautiful; they have to be to get through the glass ceiling that guys like my father and me are standing on. All the women, in fact, are so drop-dead gorgeous that they all look the same. Might as well be wallpaper.

Janie, though… I’ve been with so many beautiful women that one may as well be another. Not her. She has spirit, and poise, and a lot to prove. Hell, she’s already proven herself.

And she’ll keep doing it, too, won’t she? The way she looked at me when I suggested we make good for the tabloids, like she didn’t want or need my help... why did that turn me on so much?

I grit my teeth as my hand reminds me it’s still there, and still possibly fractured. To top that off with big red cherry, I can feel the drip of blood off the tip of my middle finger. Great.

Ferry Lights is across the street, of course. They’ve got napkins, bandages, a whole first aid kit I’m sure. But the thought of being in there at the moment feels a little too much like being under my father’s shadow.

So I head down the street instead.

I’m fucking tired of being Reginald’s lackey. I’m tired of feeling like an asshole.

Chapter 31

Janie

Just days after Mama’s panic attack, she calls me and begs me to come over for dinner. My brothers will be there, she says, and she’ll never hear the end of it from George if I don’t come and see them. I can tell by the sound of her voice that turning the invitation down is going to trigger a meltdown, and only because of that I cave.

So there I find m

yself, seated at the table with my brothers — the twins, Chris and Derek — listening to them preen and compare dick sizes under the approving gaze of our stepfather while my mother smiles weakly. It doesn’t get to her eyes.

“Yeah, we did about fifty grand last quarter,” Derek says, as he and Chris get to the part of dinner where it’s time to impress George. “Gross. Took a little bit of a hit when the new shop opened up down the street, of course, because I had to drop the price of cuts for a couple of weeks. You should have seen their place — crickets in there. Who thinks they can just open up a business next door? I’ve been in that spot for three years.”

Chris rolls his eyes with a knowing nod. “Upstarts,” he snorts. “Stupid. We had something like that happen a couple of years ago. One of my first therapists up and leaves, right? And she opens her own spa just two miles from my front door. Of course, she can’t just steal clients — but she can put her face and name up all over town and make it easy to find her.”

“What did you do?” Derek asks.

Chris grins like a shark. “I didn’t do anything. But word somehow got around that she was, you know…” He makes the universal gesture for a hand job, and this sets George and Derek both off on a chuckling fit.

“What about you?” Derek asks me. “Didn’t uh… Ronald Ferry or someone open up that Ferry Lights place right across the street from you?”