Page 192 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

JULIAN

M y sister Hannah calls me out of the blue. “I have some news,” she says. “I’m getting married.”

I haven’t heard from her in more than eight months.

The last time we talked was in December, right after the reading of my father’s will.

She hadn’t been chatty then. Considering the circumstances, I can’t say I blame her.

My father left the entirety of his estate to me: the crumbling mansion that was our childhood home, his dwindling investment portfolio, the moth-eaten furniture, and the gloomy portraits.

Hannah got nothing. In a final, cruel twist, he’d insisted she attend the reading of the will in person so she could learn, in real-time, that he had cut her out of his will.

Fuck that. My parents treated her like garbage all through our childhood.

I never understood why, but I wasn’t about to perpetuate it.

I got Kincaid Castle appraised. The appraiser gave me two figures.

One was for the amount the house was worth in its current dilapidated condition, and the other was for the amount it would be worth if I fixed it up.

I had a lifetime of injustice to make up for, so I sold my condo in New York and wrote her a check for the larger amount.

I moved back to my childhood home in Highfield in January with the intention of fixing it up, selling it, and getting the hell out of here.

It’s now September. The house is still a disaster.

“Congratulations,” I say now. “Who's the lucky guy?”

“His name is Samir, and I'm the lucky one. You want to meet him?”

“I'd love to.”

“How about this weekend? We’ll drive down.”

We meet at a bar close to my home. It’s good to see Hannah. Really good. “Thanks for the money,” she says, giving me a hug. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course, I did.” I shake hands with Samir. “Good to meet you.”

I buy the first round, and the three of us get chatting. “I like him,” I tell Hannah when Samir gets up to buy the second. “Not that my opinion should matter, given everything.” I search my sister’s face. “He makes you happy?”

Her eyes light up. “He does, yes. Every single day.”

“And everything else? How are things with you?”

She lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “I'm getting there,” she says. “Samir encouraged me to see a therapist.”

I should do that too. “Is it helping?”

“Yeah, I think so. Dr. Welch has been great.” She looks at me. “She wants me to talk about my feelings.”

Samir is still talking to the bartender.

He's obviously giving us space. To do what? Have an emotionally intense conversation about our parents? Ugh. I pull a pencil out of my pocket and start doodling on the napkin. It’s a bad habit I have.

When things get messy and complicated, I retreat into my comics.

I bury myself in work and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist. “That’s good. ”

“She thinks I bottle my emotions. She said that I needed to get better at advocating for myself. It would help me resolve some of my issues.” She smiles wryly at my sketch. “You draw when things get difficult. I avoid my problems by running away.”

“Avoiding your problems is a bad thing?” I quip. “That's my default answer to everything.”

“Yeah, Julian, I know.” She holds my gaze. “I’ve been angry with you for a very long time. You were the golden child. You could do no wrong. I found it hard not to resent you.”

When Hannah turned seventeen, my parents told her that there was no money for her college education.

My sister looked at them, then looked at the brand-new car they'd gifted me when I turned twenty-one and decided she was done. There was a huge blowout. Hannah told them she wouldn’t let herself be treated like garbage any longer, and she moved out. She never saw them again.

I take a deep breath. My first instinct is to run.

My second is to be defensive. I want to blurt out that I didn't create the damn situation. I was a kid too. I didn’t know how to handle things any better than Hannah did.

But that’s not right. As hard as my parents’ favoritism was for me, it was so much worse for her.

And I'm her big brother. I should have watched out for her better. “I’m sorry. I really am. It was so hard for you, and I wish I’d done more to protect you from it.

If there's anything I can do to make amends. . .”

“There is one thing.”

I tilt my head to the side. “I’m being set up, aren’t I?”

There's a glimmer of mischief in her eyes that takes me back in time. When we were kids, we stayed with my grandparents for one summer. One beautiful, perfect summer where we were siblings, not forced adversaries.

“A little bit,” she admits. “One thing that my therapist has been helping me with is making peace with my childhood. Samir and I talked about it. I want to get married at the house.”

I don’t think I heard her correctly. “At Kincaid Castle? Seriously?”

“I want to replace bad memories with good ones. Can I?”

I think about the house and the state that it’s in. After my mother died, my father let the property fall apart. He didn’t have the money, but I also think he lost the ability to care.

The place needs a lot of work. I put my leg through the floorboards today and nearly broke my neck.

There are pails all over the attic where the roof is leaking.

There’s no furniture to speak of, the carpets have holes, and the wallpaper is faded and torn.

Spider webs festoon the corners. There might be a mold issue that I’m trying very hard not to think about.

Ever since I moved in, I've been in deadline mode. I've had no time to fix the place up. Even the thought of it is overwhelming.

I guess I can’t avoid it any longer. “Of course.” I ruthlessly squelch the thought of how much work is involved in getting the house wedding-ready. Hannah hasn’t asked me for help in years. I haven’t been there for her. This time, I won’t let her down. “When are you getting married?”

“Christmas.”

“This year?” I manage to keep the panic out of my voice. That’s four months away. Fuck.

She notices my reaction. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Yes . It’s going to be impossible . “No. Christmas is great.” If Hannah is trying to replace bad memories with good ones, then the timing makes perfect sense.

Our parents treated us differently, and the inequity was never starker than at Christmas.

I’d be surrounded by toys, and Hannah would get shockingly little in comparison. “Christmas is perfect.”

One way or the other, I will make this happen.

“Will you give me away?”

Her softly-spoken question drags me from the problems of the house. “Really?” I stare at her in shock. “You want me to do that? After everything?”

She nods wordlessly.

I force the words out past the lump in my throat. “I would be honored, Hannah.” No matter how much money it’s going to cost, Kincaid Castle will be ready. My baby sister’s wedding will be perfect.

Back home, my heart sinks as I walk from one dust-filled room to the other. This place is a wreck. I have four months to fix it, and I don’t know where to start.

I pick up my phone and call Damien. “Hey,” I say without preamble. “What's the name of your contractor? The one who worked on your cottage?”

“Isaac Foster,” my best friend replies. “Are you finally doing something about that dump? Why now?”

“I'll tell you tonight.” A community health center opened up in Highfield last year, and Xavier Leforte is hosting a fundraiser for it. He’d explained why, but I was working when I got his email, and I don’t remember any of the details.

I hang up on Damien and dial Isaac Foster. I get his voicemail. Biting back my frustration, I leave my name and number and beg him to call me back.

Shockingly, he does. “The mansion on Hill Street? The one with the green shutters? I thought it was condemned. I had no idea someone was living there.”

“Yeah. Me. I need a contractor to fix it up by Christmas. Can you do it?”

“No can do,” he replies instantly. “I’m sorry. I wish I could, but I'm booked solid. Everyone wants to renovate this year, and I have more work than I know what to do with.”

Fuck. “Do you know anyone who might do the job?”

“Hmm. Try Greg Liu.”

Greg Liu doesn’t have any availability either. “Next year, yes,” he says. “This year, impossible. Sorry.”

I spend three hours on the phone and Internet trying to find someone, anyone, who will do the work. I leave dozens of messages all over, but I get nowhere.

I am totally screwed.

My phone beeps, reminding me it's time to get ready. I head into the bathroom I’ve been using and turn on the shower.

About fifty percent of the time, I get hot water.

Today's not one of those days. I hastily shower in icy cold water and get dressed, muttering curses at my father, and then I head out.

Damien is already at Summit when I arrive. He takes one look at my face and hands me a drink. “Tell me about it,” he says, sounding half-amused and half-sympathetic.

I fill him in, and he whistles between his teeth. “Yikes,” he says. “That’s quite a challenge.”

“That’s the understatement of the year.” I gulp down the whiskey he’s handed me, and it burns a path of pure fire down my throat. “What the fuck am I going to do?”

“You could start by treating the Oban with more respect,” he replies with a pained expression on his face. “It’s a twenty-one-year Scotch, for fuck’s sake. You don’t gulp it down. You sip.”

“Damien. Focus.”

“Fine. If it were up to me, I'd blow the whole place up and start over. What does Hannah think?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she has to know what kind of condition the house is in, right?” He takes in my expression and gives me an exasperated look. “You didn’t tell her. Why not?”

“I didn’t want her to feel guilty about the money.

” The situation is not optimal, but my need to do right by my sister outweighs the inconvenience of living in Kincaid Castle.

At least the hot water tank has stopped working now, when it’s still warm outside.

I’ll feel very differently about my cold shower in January.

“It’s not her problem to deal with. It’s mine. ”

I must look mutinous because he sighs. “Okay, fine. Can she have the wedding outside?”

“In December?”

“Right, the weather. What about the greenhouse? It’s large enough, isn’t it? Unless Hannah will have more than two hundred people at her wedding.”

“She said a hundred and fifty.”

Damien quirks an eyebrow. “Hannah knows a hundred and fifty people?”

“Samir has a large family.” A waiter passes by with a tray of champagne, and I grab one.

Maybe I can gulp this down without getting grief about treating the bloody Scotch with respect.

Although, given Xavier’s taste in champagne, I’m sure I’m drinking a ludicrously expensive brand.

“The greenhouse isn’t in great shape, but it might be fixable in four months.

” I think about the current plumbing situation and the state of the downstairs bathrooms. “Maybe. I can probably do some of the work myself.”

“You can?”

“I used to work for a contractor, remember?”

“That was over ten years ago,” he points out. “And don’t you have to work on the Medusa storyboard?”

“Shockingly, I’m ahead of schedule there. I can make it work if I have to. And I have to, Damien. I owe Hannah this. Anyway, enough about me. What’s been going on with you?” I survey my friend. “You look terrible.”

“Fuck you,” he replies without heat. He takes a sip of his Scotch with an appreciative expression on his face. “I’m jetlagged. I was in Shanghai two days ago. Tokyo before that. Siberia last week. I don’t know if I’m awake or asleep.”

“Stop whining. They’re all in the same general area of the world.”

Damien flips me off. “Thank you, Julian,” he says. “I wasn't looking for a geography lesson as much as I was looking for sympathy.”

The Cardenas Group is a conglomerate headquartered in Peru. Mining mostly, but they’ve got their fingers in a lot of other industries. Damien is the Chief Operating Officer. It seems exhausting and thankless. “You have competent managers. You don’t have to do everything yourself.”

His face tightens fractionally. “It’s not that simple, and you know it.” He takes another sip of his Scotch, which restores his mood. “Come on, we better go in. Xavier gets huffy if we blow off his fundraisers.”

We enter the ballroom. I look around, and my gaze lands on a blonde woman talking to Xavier Leforte. She's wearing a glittery black dress, and when she looks up and sees me, her face goes pale.

Sophia.

The memories crash into me. Ten years ago. Same castle. The opening night of Club M, the private club in the basement. Sophia wanted a threesome with Damien and me. Or was it Damien’s idea? Mine? I don’t remember. Time has blurred some details, but it hasn’t erased one thing.

It had been the hottest night of my life.

She says something to Xavier and hurries away.

Xavier walks over with a frown. “I didn’t know you knew Sophia.”

Damien is looking as dazed as I feel. “We’ve met, yes,” he manages.

“Really?” Xavier’s eyes narrow. “That’s not what Sophia said. She said the three of you slept together, and then, the morning after, Damien got her fired.”

What?