by Ember Flint
I chuckle at that. “A shrew? Well, that’s a way to call her, I suppose. I’d go for something more heavy.”
My friend looks at me with a little grin. “Of course you would, Ster.”
I flick him the V. “I really don’t understand this relationship-thing Chuck’s stuck on. Isn’t it much more fun to just get what you want from a woman and move on?”
“I guess it depends on what you want from them, Fitz.”
I shrug. “Stony, I just don’t see why I would want to get into so much trouble when I can have stress-free, no-string-attached encounters.”
“Just like Charles can’t see my no-dating policy as a good thing and just like I can’t see myself going out with a different woman every night like you seem to prefer, Ster.”
He is right, of course: we are never going to see eye to eye on this.
We are simply too different, I guess.
Aston likes his peace and quiet and only breaks it if a woman really turns his head —not that they can hold his attention long— Charles likes chasing dreams of true-love and babies and whatever else is there, me, I’m all-in for the fun and the sex, settling down is nowhere on my radar and considering I’m the oldest of the three and feel this way at 35, I doubt I’m ever going to change.
Still I’m definitely much tamer than my brother, so my aunts at least can have that happiness.
I close my eyes again, starting to feel nauseous as the altitude the jet is keeping begins to lower.
“Fuck, here we go again,” I mumble.
“Hmm, I was starting to wonder… now grumpy, intractable and pissed off I can recognize you finally.”
“Bugger off,” I grit out. We both know this description goes much better with his personality rather than my own; that is, when I’m not trapped on a bloody plane at least.
Because the more Teterboro gets closer, the less I feel like my happy, laid-back self.
My stomach is in hell and my head feels like is now constantly punctured by a drill.
I grunt, punching the armrest, my mood darkening by the second.
I feel something cold being pressed into my hand again.
“Here, try to drink some more water, Sterling. It’s almost over.”
I mutter an oath or two at that. My friend should know that the landing is the absolute worst part for me.
“Look on the bright side: we get to see Charlie in a while and help him with this Lulu-nonsense.”
“There’s that… if we manage to close the deal and we can persuade Chuck to drop that lunatic gold-digger at least the weekend of migraine and vomit that is waiting for me shan’t be in vain.”
Aston squeezes my shoulder. “Indeed, my friend, and at least we are not flying commercial. If you must catch a red-eye, this is the best way to go about it.”
I open one eye to glare at him. “The best way to go about it, is not to go about it at all.”
Chapter 2
CORA
“Now wait a second: you’re telling me that you’d rather rot at home buried under a pile of books, instead of going clubbing with us?”
I huff to myself at my friend’s disgusted tone. “Angie, I have to study.”
“You have to study? God, when did you become so boring? You’re such a nerd, Cora,” she mocks me incredulously.
I bite my lip to refrain from telling her to shove it, but I can’t help but feel a little pang of hurt at her words.
“So what if I am? I care about my future, there’s nothing wrong with that, Angelina.”
“There is if it’s Friday, girl,” she goes on. “Plus it’s not like we have to really worry about it. We’re loaded. My trust fund kicks-in in two months and you just got yours, right?”
I roll my eyes. My friend thinks that just because our parents happen to be wealthy and we are trust fund babies we should do nothing with our life except partying and leaving the worries of our families’ businesses to our fathers, brothers and cousins as if we were in the nineteenth century or something.
“Okay, Angie, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. You go clubbing and have fun, alright?! I have too many exams to just forget about it.”
“Whatever, your loss, Cora.”
I sigh. “Well, I’d better go. I have so much to do still. I’ll see you around.”
Angelina scoffs. “Yeah, right. See you around, girl.”
I drop my cell on the bed and sink down on it myself, eyes on the ceiling.
Angelina and the rest of my blue-blooded friends want to live the life of the typical modern heiress, something I could never be happy with. They are content to squander their trust funds in clothes and impromptu trips to Cabo, Paris and Ibiza, while I dream of taking an active role in my family’s affairs.
I don’t want to leave all the weight that comes from my family’s wealth and position on my brother Charles’s shoulders and I really see myself doing something good with my fortune.
What I want more than anything, is to carve a space for myself in our family’s charity, the Harlinghton-Spade Foundation, but this dream is costing me all of my friends.
I’m drifting away from their gilded kind of life and now even my closest friend, Angelina, with whom I’ve been inseparable for the last ten years no longer likes me.
She hates that I try so hard to act like an adult and care so much about being responsible.
She already told me I was no fun to hang out with anymore because I’m still a virgin and I have no time for guys and now she called me boring and a nerd to my face.
I sigh, eyes staring up at the ceiling.
Am I such a bad friend and such a bore just because I don’t want to surf through life doing nothing but clubbing, dancing and shopping?
I don’t want to be an idiot with a limitless credit card and no conscience, I want to make a difference in this world, is it so bad?
And yes: maybe I am working too hard lately, but it’s not like I do it to show off or something.
I really have a lot to do, being halfway through my MBA and my degree in environmental sciences at the same time.
Right now, I’m studying —and stressing out— for my finals.
I can’t fail, it’s too important, but Angelina and the rest of my friends don’t seem to care what’s important for me.
I actually had to leave the quarters I share with her at the dorm, because they were making it impossible for me to manage even an hour of studying in peace, constantly throwing parties, blasting loud music and having their drunk frat boyfriends over.
After spending an entire night at the library only to come back home to find complete strangers going at it in my freaking bed, I gave up, packed my stuff and decided to crash at Charles’s for a couple of weeks.
At first I simply thought of going back home to my parents, but if I did, I knew I would have ended up being lectured about studying too much —my parents are awesome and they mean well, but they worry too much about me— plus this way I’m closer to the campus.
I smile thinking about my parents.
I have a great relationship with them both, but they are two worrywarts and the last thing they need, is me adding to their substantial cargo of preoccupations.
My father, Benjamin, is the CEO and president of Spade Corp and the Harlinghton-Spade Charity, the foundation he created with my mother, Lucille, merging the existing families’ charitable trusts. My mom sits on its Board and is the Vice-President of it, but she is thinking of retiring soon, or at least start to hand over some of her responsibilities and that’s why I’m studying so hard: I want to be the person she turns to when the time to step down comes. I want to help guide and foster the foundation into the future, alongside my brother; we have always been very close and I can’t wait to work with him and start to contribute directly to the working of the HSC.
I stand up and walk to the kitchen in search of a snack as I force my mind not to stray from thoughts of studying, working and my dreams of directing the HSC, but I can’t help but get
distracted by something I’ve been trying to suppress since I heard of it a couple of days ago.
And fine, maybe a part of me was studying a little too hard, just not to end up spending every waking moment thinking about it.
Fat lot of good it did me.
I sigh.
There’s no avoiding thinking about it now, not while I stay at my brother’s place.
I will be happy to see Aston again, it has been a couple of months since we were last in the same city.
He is one of Charles’s best friends in the whole world and I’ve known him for my entire life.
He’s practically another brother to me and if he was traveling from the United Kingdom alone, I will have no reason to feel nervous about this little reunion, but he is not.
Sterling, my brother’s other best friend, is with him.
I only met him a couple of times over five years ago and I have managed to avoid him ever since; it wasn’t so difficult in the end: he tries to come here in New York as little as possible ‘cause he hates it and every time he was around I made sure I wasn’t and I’ve avoided London ever since our first meeting there, but something is telling me that this time my luck has run out, or maybe I let it run out, I don’t know.
Maybe I’m just tired of running away from my feelings.
I look at the screen of my cell and feel a little frisson of anticipation running through me and I hate myself a little for it.
Right now they are probably landing already, Aston slightly grumpy and jet-lagged, Sterling —according to Charlie’s description— something akin to a pissed-off, migrainy zombie with a very short fuse.
Five years since I saw him for the first time just about when he and the other guys became friends and tomorrow I will see him again.
Part of me wants to look for excuses and run away —maybe literally— from that possibility and part of me wants to take a look at him in person again and see if he makes me feel the same way.
Charles told me that Sterling and Aston will come here for a late breakfast or brunch in the morning.
As I fix myself a little tomato and lettuce sandwich, my mind goes back to that day five years ago and I smile a little.
Seeing it was summer, I had accompanied my dad and Charles in their travels to Europe.
We were to visit the British Museum and meet my father there that day and because in the meantime Charles only had to finalize a deal involving Aston and Fitzroy Inc. —Sterling’s company— my brother decided to take me with him.
I was very tiny back then —not that I have grown that much during the years since then— and I remember standing there in that steel and glass boardroom surrounded by my brother and his friends, all of them way over six feet tall. I was unfazed by Charles’ height and Aston’s hulking frame being more than used to them, but I recall taking a step back and looking up and up and up until my eyes met Sterling’s piercing green ones.
I remember feeling something akin to a punch and vaguely thinking that no one had ever told me that butterflies in the stomach could feel that painful and at the same time that right.
Sterling studied me for a moment and then looked through as if I wasn’t even there.
I tried to make myself loathe him, to deny my hopeless crush and called him a stuck-up Brit snob in my head from that day forward and spent the rest of my stay in England being a total brat to him.
I was about sixteen then and he is fourteen years older than me so I don’t blame him for not sparing me a second glance —well, at least I don’t blame him now that I’m old enough to understand—, but it still hurt to be nowhere on the map for him, to feel so completely ignored, so I sniped at him all the time.
Still he wouldn’t give me the time of the day and it only made me be more insufferable to him.
When we left London that summer I was heartbroken and put all of my energies into convincing myself even more of the fact that while I did find him gorgeous —there would be no denying that, at least not without a lobotomy—, he was rude and too cavalier in his attitude and so I had to hate his guts, not like him.
For a while it even worked, but I could not lie to myself for long and so I simply started avoiding any possible chance of meeting him again.
Hearing his name spoken by Charles or Aston over the years has been more than enough to send all kind of sparks through my heart and actually listening to his voice over the phone when he calls Charlie’s cell and I happen to answer, is enough to make me weak in the knees, so I can’t begin to imagine what I will feel when I see him again, but I have to face this, him, once and for all.
Sure, he is the only man I have ever been attracted to and he probably still thinks of me as the dorky, annoying little sister of his best friend, or even worse he doesn’t think of me at all, but I have to forget about him and that’s perhaps why I didn’t come up with an avoidance plan this time.
Tomorrow is going to be my first step in moving on with my life and leaving my silly infatuation for this much older man behind.
I finish my sandwich and decide to change into yoga pants and a T-shirt and then go for a run.
If nothing else, it will clear my mind and help me find ways to be face to face with all six-foot-five of his burly, towering self tomorrow without babbling, mouthing him off, fainting, blushing to the top of my ears or a combination of all of the above.
Chapter 3
STERLING
Why the bloody, blasted fuck won’t my mobile stop ringing?
I’m sprawled face down in the middle of a giant, king-sized bed with a mind-numbing migraine and I should be in an Aspirin-induced coma by now, but no: someone has to bloody fucking call me.
Everybody knows not to call me after I step down from a fucking plane unless there’s a bloody zombie apocalypse going on out there.
I open one eye to look at the caller ID and I sigh in relief.
I really don’t feel like having a conversation with another human being right now, but if I have to at least I can be happy it’s not The Terrible Duo on the other side of the line.
“What in the bloody hell do you want, Chuck?” I bark.
“And hello to you too, Ster. Merely checking up on you to make sure you were breathing.”
I groan into my pillow, punching it and turning on my side. “Breathing is not the problem, you moron. A blasted migraine and nausea are, alongside with you calling me that is.”
“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine tonight, pal.”
I sigh, rolling my eyes. I really could do without my friend’s permanently happy attitude right about now.
“What is it that you want from me, Charles? Did Aston put you up to this? I told him to consider me dead until tomorrow,” I mumble, sitting up.
“And he did, we both did. That’s why I’m calling: I want to know where to send flowers.”
“Tosser…” I grit between my teeth, but then I smile, starting to feel a little bit like myself. Only a little bit though. “You should have a bunch overnighted to my stepmother… then I can call her Monday and hopefully between the joy of tonight and the disappointment of then she’ll have a heart attack and leave us be.”
I hear Charles’s laughter. “Well, still not pretty, but if you’re sarcastic, you’re getting there… do you want to come over for dinner? Cora will be there; you haven’t seen her in a long while.”
I scoff. Like having to spend an entire evening fending off the sniping of that little spitfire is what I need right now.
I shake my head. “Dash it all! If she is there, then I must make haste… not. How is the presence of your bratty baby sister an inducement to leave my bed and drag myself to your penthouse?”
“She is not bratty; you haven’t seen her in years.”
Humph, not bratty my arse!
She’s nothing but another trust fund baby living off her family, just like my brother, but at least she is studying —if what Aston and Charles tell me is true— and she’s just spoiled and has a mouth on her, so she is a step up f
rom the bothersome, troublemaker type The Pest unfortunately fits so well. It has to account for something I guess.
“Yeah, right… I’ll see you tomorrow morning then,” I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut against the dull thud in my head.
“At eight?” Charles asks and I can practically hear the teasing smile in his voice.
Eight in the morning is basically the middle of the night for me after a flight.
I snort a little fake laugh. “Charlie, you are so funny, you should sell all your shares to Ast and consider stand-up comedy as a career. I’ll see you guys at brunch at best,” I growl.
Charles laughs a little at that.
“You’ll see me for sure, my friend, as for Ast, I cannot promise you anything,” Charles says.
I frown. “What in the bloody fuck do you mean?” I ask, my tone more brusque than I intended it to be.
Being polite is so not in my grasp right now.
I hear Charles sighing on the other side of the line. “It’s a long story, Ster, and honestly one that I don’t really know. I’ll try to fill you in tomorrow.”
Okay, I’m definitely missing something here, but I’m too bloody jet-lagged to even attempt to understand so fuck it.
I end the call with a pained grunt and throw myself back on my bed, whatever the hell is going on I’ll have to figure out tomorrow.
I don’t even manage to close my eyes before the fucking phone starts to ring again.
I know without having to look that it’s not Charles this time and it can’t be Aston —he wouldn’t be that cruel.
Why can’t people just let me get some bloody sleep?!
I answer the call and put it on speaker, pressing my face in the pillow again. “This better be an emergency,” I grumble.
“Why of course it is!” screeches my aunt Lenora.
“My dear boy, there’s not a moment to lose!” adds my aunt Penelope dramatically.
Fuck.
When either one of them starts to call me ‘dear boy’ it usually means that —as Chuck would put it— the shit really is about to hit the fan.