With that, he rose up out of the water.
And, damnit, I looked.
I more than looked.
I watched the way his muscles flexed in his stomach as he unfolded his long body, as the water trickled down between each ab, followed the steam as it rose up off his skin.
I looked for long enough that my mind got wiped of anything even halfway intelligent to say, anything snarky to snap back.
Then without another word, he briskly made his way back into the house, stealing my towel as he went.
As for me, I went ahead and drank away the undeniable pressure in my lower belly that I knew well enough to call the oppressive sensation of unfulfilled desire.
Not toward him, of course.
Just in general.
I couldn't even recall the last time I'd been with a man. It had to have been over a year at that point. And my body was simply responding to the sight of a body of the opposite sex, forgetting it belonged to the most impossible person I'd ever met.
I attempted to drink away, as well, the knowledge that he'd had several points, no matter how fervently I was attempting to deny it.
I had left the family business without notice, without even saying much of anything about it. I had run away from responsibilities instead of facing them up.
I have also cradled resentment over the whole situation to my chest in the years following, despite having played a hand in creating the problem.
And, yes, I have even been carrying with me a deep well of insecurity about not being a legitimate heir, about being a sort of consolation prize. A child, yes, but not a biological one, not the one I knew he had wanted.
Yet I have never heard my father say anything of the kind.
He'd always cared for me like his own, showered me with anything I wanted, encouraged me when it was needed, punished me when necessary.
My feelings of being an interloper, of being illegitimate, those were my own issues, things I had buried down instead of facing, instead of working through.
It was time to work on that, to have that tough conversation, to lay it all out there—raw and bleeding—and seek healing instead of new ways to hide the pain.
Not over this weekend.
I didn't want to ruin the holiday any more than it already was.
With an empty bottle in my hand, and the promise of an epic hangover waiting for me in just a few short hour's time, I climbed out of the hot tub, trying to shake off some of the water so I didn't drip all through the house, then quickly making my way inside, shivering, once again cursing Trip as I stripped out of my bathing suit, wrapped myself in my blankets, and fell into a dead sleep, wondering what way he might get under my skin the next day.
CHAPTER FOUR
Trip
It was no secret how much I respected Mitch Kensley.
All the way back to that first day at work, just a low man on the totem pole, helping to put these amazing cars together.
I had, as many young boys did, been obsessed with cars as far back as I can remember, always begging my mother to let me get those ninety-nine cent toy cars at the grocery store whenever there was a little money to spare.
The older I got, the more into them I got. Especially after my grandfather who I'd never been close with because—as my mother put it—he 'liked the bottle more than us,' died, leaving me a piece of junk old pick-up truck— more rust than metal with an engine full of leaves and rotting hoses—which I knew to be the only possible way I would ever get a car of my own.
My mother had agreed to let me keep it if I found the money to replace the parts myself.
A passion was born on that long summer when I got myself a job helping out at a local shop, making money to fix up my truck while keeping an ear open, keeping my eyes peeled, soaking up any information the mechanics were willing to give me.
From there, I rebuilt that truck, sold it, got another, rebuilt it, sold it.
Eventually, I graduated from being a shop errand boy and tire-plugger to an actual mechanic, eventually taking some classes to make it more official, to give me a leg-up on a more secure future.
Job security was most easily found at the dealerships.
And there was no better dealership than that of Kensley Automobiles.
Honestly, I had applied to the position on a lark, never thinking I had a snowball's chance in hell at even getting a call back, figuring they only wanted truly seasoned hands, people who knew every in and out of luxury cars. I'd spent my limited career on trucks and old muscle cars. My hands had never touched a Mercedes, let alone a Kensley.
The answer is always no if you don't ask, Bubba.
That was my mother encouraging me to apply.
I knew they would love you. How could they not?
That was her when I came home in a state of shock to tell her that they'd offered me the job.
Me, some nobody twenty-something.
They wanted me to work on their fancy cars that were only available to the mega-rich and ultra visible.
And they wanted to pay me a really high salary and benefits package for the honor.
From day one, Mitch Kensley came off to me as this larger-than-life person, someone who sat on millions of dollars, but still chose to come into work every day, someone who took pride in his business, in his relationships with the men and women who made it possible.
I'll admit that he became a sort of father figure to me from the moment he introduced himself to me, guided me, brought me under his wing, showed me all the things there were to love about Kensley cars.
My father had been a run off, someone allergic to responsibilities, never to be seen or heard from again.
While my mother and I had always had a close relationship, there was no denying that I had longed for a steady, strong male role model growing up.
In Mitch, I found that.
In me, I guess maybe he did find that sort of father-son connection.
I didn't agree with Jett that her dad resented her or didn't think of her as his own. If that was the case, it would have been known that she was not actually his. Instead, only the close family seemed to be aware of that fact.
Mitch loved Jett.
But she'd never—at least when I had known her—been in love with cars, in the luxury lifestyle these particular cars represented.
The first time I had seen her around the building, she'd charged into Mitch's office in those ridiculous high heels of hers, wearing striped pants and a white tee that tied in the middle, smiling huge as she told her father that the local gas station had installed an electric car charging station.
She'd been, well, beaming.
Bright, happy, lively.
Beautiful.
"I told you electric was making strides!" she'd gushed, kissing his cheek.
"What do you think about electric, Trip?" he'd asked, making her gaze slide to me for the first time. Curious, maybe a little intrigued.
"Electric is never going to be a thing," I told him. Partly because I believed it to be true. Electric was too expensive for the average consumer. And most wealthy people didn't care too much about their footprints as they flew in their private jets to the palatial estates that they only stepped foot in for one week every year. The other part, though, was because I knew Mitch didn't think there was a future in it, and wanting him to like me.
It was right there, in that moment, when I'd unwittingly made an enemy.
She'd hated me immediately, avoided me, excused herself from conversations when I'd joined in.
It wasn't long before it started to get under my skin. Which, in turn, made me want to get under hers as well.
I wasn't, in general, a petty person.
There was simply something about Juliette, the Princess of Kensley Automobiles, that got to me.
In retrospect, I absolutely chose to see her through a very narrow scope. And through the eyes of someone who was looking for reasons to find fault in her.
Because, in my mind, I didn't think she understood the enorm
ity of the legacy she was being handed on a silver platter. I didn't see her fawning over the plans for new models. I didn't feel she appreciated how mind-boggling a Kensley was to someone who knew anything at all about cars.
She was looking toward innovation without respecting that there was such a thing as perfection, things that required no significant changes.
A Kensley was pure perfection.
She couldn't—or didn't want to—see that.
And, to me, she seemed proud of that.
Which made me want to educate her.
When that failed—because she proved to be every bit as stubborn as I was—I seemed to set about to take her down a peg or two, knock her off that pedestal, make her see that she wasn't always right.
Things had been relatively tame then.
We didn't get along, but it wasn't pure animosity either.
Then she disappeared, ripping the rug out from under her father's feet, leaving him scrambling and unsure of himself.
After that, well, we couldn't seem to cross paths without it nearly turning into shouting matches.
Why, I wasn't sure.
I didn't have the best opinion of her after watching her father grieve her refusal to take the reins of his legacy. But she seemed to have undiluted derision toward me, the roots of which I didn't know.
We managed to fight over everything from carbon footprints to how good—or bad—the food was that was being served at whatever event we were attending at the same time.
It hadn't exactly escaped me, though, that it was just me.
Over the years, I'd never seen her arguing with anyone else.
It was something she saved for me.
When I'd even let it slip once how argumentative she was at a party, everyone around me furrowed their brows and said they often called her Sunshine because she was always so happy and easy-going.
Everyone you meet will have a different definition of you in their mind.
That was something Mitch had told me after a work meeting when someone had called him a selfish, money-grubbing, bull-headed asshole. Which was contrary to everything I knew the man to be.
In everyone else's mind, Jett was completely opposite to how she was in mine.
It did make me have to wonder if maybe it wasn't her. It was what I brought out of her.
I knew myself well enough to know I could be stubborn and a bit of an instigator. Especially when it was about something that meant a lot to me.
So anytime Jett criticized Mitch who absolutely was—as Jett had thought—a father figure to me—as well as mentor and good friend—I automatically got defensive, felt the need to protect him, never stopping to think that maybe it wasn't my place, perhaps they had their own issues.
And, apparently, they did.
I'd noticed, of course, that she didn't exactly look like her parents, but I had never looked like my mother either. Everyone was different. It never occurred to me that she wasn't biologically related to Mitch. In my mind, he treated her just as any father would treat their daughter. I was sure, too, that he absolutely saw her as his own.
The fact that she maybe didn't always feel that way—that she felt like an imposter in his world—definitely spoke of issues they needed to get on the table and resolve.
I needed to butt out, respect the fact that it wasn't my place to get involved.
"Trip," Mitch called as I walked through the house, freezing from my trek from the hot tub and up to the second floor.
"Everything alright, Mitch?"
"I will talk to Jett tomorrow. She needs to offer you a real apology."
"She did, Mitch," I told him. Because it was the truth. I might have been pissed at the time, busy trying to work through my grief, the pain that felt like someone was clawing something out of my chest, but there was no denying that she was shattered to have said something that may have hurt me, may have rubbed salt in open wounds. Her apology was genuine. And the subsequent punishment handed to her from both me and her father was over the top. "It's all good. Don't worry about it."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. She didn't mean anything by it. She just misspoke. It's not a big thing. We've talked."
And argued. Once again. But that didn't need to be public knowledge.
"If you're sure."
"I am. Actually, Mitch," I called, turning back.
"Yeah?"
"She's a good kid," I told him, watching his eyes go soft, the tension slip from his jaw. "Don't be hard on her about one mistake," I added, going into my room, making my way to my luggage to grab something dry.
She was, by all accounts of those who knew her, a good kid. A good woman. And if I got my head out of my ass for a minute, I would stop judging her through my life experiences.
Sure, I couldn't fathom turning your back on your family's business. Family empire. But I had never walked in her shoes, had the discussions with Mitch that she'd had, gotten my hopes up only to have them dashed because I didn't share the same mindset as him.
It couldn't have been easy to have a vision only to get it squashed.
It even made sense that, eventually, she had enough. Enough of the disappointment, enough of the expectations she felt she would never meet.
Of course she wanted to work at a job where she felt heard and valued, where her efforts were rewarded.
That was what she had done.
There was no reason to be down on her about it.
I might never understand why the hell she drove around in a piece of crap car living in a city her father said she didn't like, never touching her trust fund or taking money from her stocks, why she chose to live like she was an average middle-class person when she was anything but that, but I had to imagine that she had her reasons.
We all did.
Like maybe the hidden little one I didn't even want to admit to myself, not even when I knew it was the damn truth.
The other reason I liked poking at her, picking unnecessary fights with her.
Because she was sexy as hell when she was riled.
She was beautiful all the time.
She lit up when she was smiling.
She glowed when she was laughing.
But she was the sexiest thing I had ever seen when she was pissed off.
Her eyes burned, her face flushed, her mannerisms got more exaggerated, her voice got stronger, more confident.
It was hot.
I liked it.
I hated myself for liking it.
She was the boss's only child.
She was the very definition of off-limits.
But, yeah, I liked it.
I couldn't help myself whenever I ran into her.
Especially because she never gave me those laughs or that smile that she did with everyone else.
The fights were all she gave me.
I took them, gladly, all the while knowing I wasn't supposed to be as into them as I was, that I wasn't meant to walk away from them feeling light, satisfied, and turned on.
Yet there was no denying that was exactly what happened most of the time.
Even now, drained from a long day, a long couple of weeks, even, I could feel the pressure in my stomach, the precursor to the hard-on I so often got after an interaction with Jett.
It was going to be a long, long holiday weekend trying to convince everyone else—not the least of whom myself—that I was indifferent, or a bit annoyed, by Jett.
Instead of the actual truth.
I'd had a small thing for her since the first time I met her.
And it had only been growing since then.
I could try to hide it, disguise it, label it as something else by picking fights, by covering it all with a thick layer of annoyance, throw everyone off with the constant nitpicking and constant disagreements.
But the truth was always right there underneath it all.
I had a thing for the boss's daughter.
And nothing could ever, ever come of it.
CHAPTER FIVE
<
br /> Juliette
There might have been an icepick stabbing me in each temple, and the kind of dryness inside that made my organs feel dehydrated. Still, nothing—not a thing— could dull the bubbling sensation in my chest I called excitement as I dragged myself out of bed, taking my tired body into the bathroom to drink cold water right out of the tap, showering the bromine from the hot tub off my skin and body, then making quick work of throwing myself together, knowing that I would eventually be heading back upstairs to get dressed for dinner anyway.
Then I made my way down the stairs, already smelling the coffee when my feet met the top stair. By the time I was at the bottom, the music hit my ears, bringing a slow smile to my face, big enough to wipe away any lingering tiredness and pain.
"Cat Stevens?"
Not even Trip's voice could sour my mood on my favorite day of the year.
No.
In fact, I went ahead and shared that smile with him too.
What can I say, I was a firm believer in setting aside differences for special days. Thanksgiving, for me, was a special day.
"It's my mom's baking music," I told him, finding him a little bleary-eyed, slow blinking at me as he put his arms through the holes of a big red sweatshirt, his hair still charmingly mussed from sleep. "Ever since I could remember, if I heard Wild World or If You Want to Sing Out playing, I knew she was making something sweet for us."
"You get started baking this early?" he asked, brows lowering, not seeming able to grasp the concept.
"Yeah. We have a lot to get done. You're in for a treat," I added, almost a little envious of being able to experience our Thanksgiving spread for the first time. It was special to me—someone who had known it since she was a baby—so I couldn't imagine how great it would be for someone who had never celebrated a traditional home-cooked Thanksgiving meal.
"I think you're right," he agreed, nodding.
"Why are you up so early?"
To that, he gave me what I could only call a sheepish smile. "I figure I need to work up an appetite for this," he told me.
"You're going for a run? It's freezing out."
"Worried I'm gonna catch frostbite?" he asked, eyes bright.
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