Page 81 of The Price of Scandal

“I need to talk to you about a job.” The man’s resilient hope, his ability to ignore reality in favor of the pretty picture he painted himself, reminded me of a golden retriever who expected his food dish to be magically refilled every hour on the hour.

“You’re getting a job?” I asked, feigning enthusiasm.

“I want to work with you,” he said, shooting me that Instagram-worthy smile. “I’m ready to settle down and join the family business.”

I set my glass down with a hard clink on the marble sideboard under a painting of a bare-breasted woman being wooed by a man with a harp.

“The family business,” I repeated, hoping I’d misheard him.

“Yeah. Flawless. I wasn’t ready before. But I am now. I want to work with you and Dad.”

My throat burned with the need to let loose a battle cry. But I tamped it down. Like I always did.

“Trey, Flawless is mine. It’s not a family business.”

“Yeah, but Dad—”

“Is on the board of directors. Yes. But I own the company. Flawless is mine, and no family connections will guarantee anyone a job there.” I still needed to scream.

Trey smirked. “Bet Lita wouldn’t like to hear you say that.”

The thing about brothers is they always knew exactly which buttons to push.

“This isn’t about Lita. This is about you.”

“It’s about us, Ems,” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulder. He pointed off down the hallway at some far-off vision only he could see. “Come on, the two Stanton brats working together. Making the world more beautiful one wrinkled-ass face at a time.”

Trey was buying what he was selling.

“And that right there is exactly why I’m not giving you a job,” I said, shrugging out from under his arm. “You have no idea what I do. What my company does. Go work for Dad if you’re so ready and willing to be gainfully employed.”

“Oh, come on, Ems,” he groaned. He kicked at the leg of the side table, nicking the wood with his velour loafer. “I can’t work for Dad.”

“Why not?” I had an idea exactly why not.

“Because I asked him already, and he said no. Then he got all high and mighty about earning my way and blah blah blah. What good is having a family fortune and a billionaire sister and not being able to get in on the action?”

I wanted to grab him by his too-long hair and bounce his forehead off the wall. Wouldn’t the cameras and the glittery people inside love that? Instead, I defaulted to my trademark frost.

“Oh, don’t go all ‘Lady Stanton’ on me.” He smirked.

I was going to need to squeeze in another kickboxing class this weekend or find some other way to blow off steam.

I thought of Derek, naked and hard. My sheets tangled around his legs.Whoops.

“Look, Trey,” I said, shifting gears. The man was my brother, after all. We were destined to spend Thanksgivings together forever. That didn’t entitle him to a job, but it did avail him of my vast business knowledge. “I’m not giving you a job. But if you’re serious, I’ll help you find something that suits you.If you’re serious,” I repeated.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe.” He gave a jerky shrug. A gesture I knew meant he was already over the conversation. He wasn’t serious. He never was. And I’d just given him the one thing he couldn’t stand: the word “no.”

“Are you out of money?” I asked.

“Not everything’s about money,” he said scornfully. “Anyway, whatever. I’m going to go talk to Mom.”

He left me standing there next to an artful arrangement of pink roses dripping with crystals and mossy greenery. I still felt like screaming.

Back in the ballroom, I avoided the family table and made a beeline for Derek. Somehow, in a ballroom of a few hundred of the glitziest people Miami had to offer, he still managed to stand out.

“How was your conversation?” Derek asked, handing me a martini.