The Penthouse Secrets: A NYC Billionaire Romance Trilogy Boxed Set

by Amanda Horton

  “Wait, baby,” said Rory. “That’s a low blow.”

  “I’m not your baby, Rory. No more than anyone else in this room is.”

  “Now I can see you are peckish, darling,” said Cole. “Get me out of this wrist jewelry, and I’ll show you a good time.”

  I sighed. “Let’s go, Tobias.”

  “Stop,” said Cole. “I’ll agree. On one condition. That lawyer man keeps his mitts off you, too.”

  “Now wait a minute,” grumbled Tobias.

  “No. He’s right,” I said. “This is supposed to be a business relationship. And we should keep it that way.”

  Tobias looked distinctly unhappy, but I could see that if Tobias made a play for me, all our plans would disintegrate. I leveled my gaze at the reprobates. “If we have an agreement, Attorney Marshall has papers for you to sign.”

  “What papers,” said Rory narrowing his eyes.

  “Bail-bond papers.”

  “Wait?” said Jersey. “You got us bonded out before all this nonsense?”

  “It’s a misdemeanor, boys. Attorney Marshall worked his magic. But we won’t get you out until you sign the papers. And if you don’t co-operate, Tobias might lose them.”

  “Sneaky,” said Cole.

  “Manipulative,” said Jersey.

  “Fucking brilliant,” said Rory.

  “I like sneaky in a woman,” said Cole. “It keeps me on my toes.”

  “Enough,” I said with exasperation. “There are also contracts for the concert, with provisions that should any of you violate the terms of your release or the provisions in the contract, you’ll, a.) forfeit your share of the profits, and b.) hold Alexander and Wells harmless from any action arising from your behavior. Is that clear?”

  “Damn,” said Cole. “Do you have any whips, or do I need to buy some for you?”

  “Shut-up!” said Jersey and Rory in chorus.

  “Do I have your agreement, gentlemen? All of you?” I glanced pointedly at Tobias, whose jaw set but he nodded.

  “Yes,” said Jersey. “We agree.”

  “Good,” I said. “See you all later.”

  “Wait?” said Cole. “Where are you going?”

  “To visit my father in the hospital.” I waved my hand and in sheer meanness wiggled my ass. Every one of them deserved it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jersey

  A bottle of Jack Daniels is cold fucking comfort when the woman you want won’t heat your bed. I tipped my bottle to my guest’s glass to refill it and then to mine.

  “Why are we drinking this?” my guest said wincing as he took a sip of the whiskey. “It’s like fire.”

  I rechecked the bottle. I had grabbed the cinnamon version, the fire whiskey. It wasn’t exactly for sipping.

  “Sorry.” I pulled a can of coke from the cooler at my chair and chucked it at him. “Mix that in.”

  He caught the can with a smooth flick of his wrist but set it on the table next to him.

  “The depth of your sophistication astounds me.”

  I grunt. He’s as unhappy as I am, but it does no good to whine.

  It’s been two weeks since we got out of jail but we might as well have stayed behind bars because the paperwork Jacine had us sign was the better prison. What she didn’t tell us was that in those contracts we agreed to go nowhere but rehearsals, talk shows, and promo events until the actual concert. So if I wasn’t working, I was sitting here at the pool of my house, staring at the damned Hollywood Hills.

  My phone rang, and with surprise, I see it was Kane.

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m sick of this shit.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We should have stayed in jail.”

  “What’s your real problem, Kane? It’s not your abiding love of incarceration.”

  “She won’t fucking see me.”

  “That was the deal.”

  “But I didn’t think she meant it.”

  “She meant it.”

  “I bet she’s seeing lawyer man.”

  “She’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s sitting right here drinking with me.”

  “Hello, Kane,” called out Marshall. He tipped his glass toward me as if Kane could see it.

  “How the hell? I thought that we were supposed to stay apart.”

  “You, me and Holmes aren’t to see each other. He doesn’t have that restriction.”

  “What the hell?”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you, drinking.”

  “That stupid cinnamon crap you like, no doubt.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish I had some.”

  “Go bother someone else, Kane.”

  “Dude. I’ve been a royal ass.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I sent her flowers. She sent them back.” His voice is bitterness and despair, an even worse combination than Fire Jack and coke. But what the hell can I do? I have the same problem.

  I raked the top of my head with my hands. I don’t need this. It’s hard enough for me sitting here, knowing she’s in the same city and I can’t do a goddamn thing about it. The day in the hospital on that conference room table uncorked the genie. I tasted her and couldn’t get that sweet taste out of my mouth.

  There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to do that.

  “Jeezus, you must be desperate to use me as your priest.”

  “I am. I love her. I can’t think of anything but her.”

  I’d listen to enough of Kane’s on-the-road confessions of how he loved this one or that, but he’d never fixated on a single woman this long.

  This was serious shit.

  My phone rang again, and it was Holmes.

  “Hang on, its Holmes.”

  I put Kane on hold, and let him cool his jets while I talked to Rory. At least he wasn’t going to do the pining away nonsense.

  “My chi is in serious trouble.”

  I groaned.

  “Not you, too.”

  “What?”

  “I got Kane on hold whining about how he misses Jacine. Marshall is here drinking my whiskey singing the same song.”

  “Am not.”

  “Dude, I can hear your thoughts.”

  Marshall scoffed and tossed down the whiskey from his glass in one shot. He reached for the bottle of Jack, and I passed it to him.

  “Misery likes company,” said Rory.

  “That’s rather unoriginal for a man who writes lyrics that makes women’s panties melt.”

  “Merge the calls. I want to talk to all of you anyway.”

  I do and put the call on speaker. I set the phone in the fancy docking port that doubles as a speaker unit.

  “So talk,” I said.

  “Kane, you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I’ve been thinking.”

  “That’s a danger sign,” quipped Kane. It was a good thing his house was a good three miles from mine because I could do something against the contract if I spied his wisecracking grin.

  “Shut up, Kane,” said Holmes. “Look, the one thing we can all agree on is that we want the same woman.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sucks for us.”

  “I’ve been reading that in Tibet there is like this shortage of women—”

  “So, sucks for them.”

  “Shut up and listen, because I don’t like this any better than you do, but it might be the only solution to our problem.”

  “Okay, I'm listening. You listening Kane, Marshall?”

  Marshall's eyes glittered in the lights that lit my veranda. He nodded.

  “Yeah,” said Kane.

  “So what they do is that brothers share a wife.”

  “Share?”

  “Yeah, like polygamy.”

  “It’s called polyandry,” said Marshall, “when there are several men and one woman.
”

  “Yeah,” said Holmes. “Polyandry.”

  “Wait,” said Kane. “You want to sister-wife this situation?” His voice was incredulous, and I didn’t blame him. For one thing, I had no clue what he was talking about.

  “Sister-wife?” I said.

  “It’s a reality show on television. There is one man who has four wives.”

  “They can’t all be his legal wives.”

  “No,” said Marshall. “Only one is. But they had wedding ceremonies and call the relationships spiritual unions.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this, Marshall.”

  “I’ve had some time on my hands.”

  That was the problem we all had, which led to Jack Daniels and impossible conversations.

  “And what?” I said. “He has sex with all of them?”

  “He must,” said Kane. “They have eighteen kids between all of them.”

  “He,” said Marshall. “Divides his time equally between them. They have four different houses on the same street, and he goes to a different house each night.”

  “That’s just fucking educational. But I don’t see how that helps us.”

  “Don’t you?” said Holmes. “Think about it. All of us are on the road half the year, and Mr. Attorney hasn’t poked his head out of his office in so long that he barely knows what a woman is.”

  “Hey,” protested Marshall.

  “You have to admit,” I said, “you’ve let things slide on that front. A rich, good-looking guy like you should have been married and divorced three different times by now.”

  “Granted.”

  “So back to the conversation," I said. "You think that we should take turns with Jacine?”

  “Yeah. It makes sense. We are all busy people, and none of us has had the time to commit to a single relationship. Maybe part-time would work? Think of it as serial monogamy but without messy divorces. We just set our schedules to rotate who is in town when.”

  “Except, I’m always in town,” said Marshall.

  “Not to be indelicate, old man,” said Kane. “But you do work like a demon. I’ve called you what—three times in the last week at eleven at night and you are in your office. What kind of life is that for Jacine?”

  “Maybe it’d change if I had someone to come home to.”

  “That sound like a river in Egypt to me,” said Holmes.

  “What?”

  “Denial,” I said. “Geezus, haven’t you ever been in rehab?”

  “No.” He stared at me with disapproval. Clearly, he thought that I, Kane and Holmes and our rock star ways weren’t good enough for Jacine.

  But Holmes pressed on. “We all get what we want, and Jacine isn’t left home alone prey for whoever else would make moves on her.”

  “I doubt,” said Marshall, “that Jacine thinks of herself as prey.”

  “You forget something,” I said. “There is a good reason that Jacine doesn’t allow us to see each other. We don’t get along well. How could we share a woman?”

  “Didn’t we work that out in the jail?”

  “Yeah, before I realized that Kane wanted to make moves on my woman.”

  “Well, if you have that attitude," said Rory, "then we’ll never get anywhere, except the next jail when one of us takes a shot at the other.”

  “Holmes has a point,” said Marshall. “You’ll end up killing each other if you try to compete for her. And I tell you, she won’t like it one bit.”

  “What makes you the expert?” I said.

  “I’ve watched her grow up. She’s always been independent. No one is going to pin her down. Plus, she saw enough shit when her parents broke up it soured her ideas on marriage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m talking out of school here. If she wants to share that with you, she will. All I’m saying is, she’ll shut us all out if we push her too hard.”

  “Like she did the past couple of weeks,” said Kane thoughtfully.

  “Yes, exactly,” said Marshall. He settled his glass down with a clink on the glass table by his chair and stood. “But really, Holmes. I don’t see how this idea of yours will work. I don’t intend to share Jacine with anyone. Like I said, I’m always in town.”

  With that, Tobias Marshall sauntered out toward the driveway as if he held all the cards.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jacine

  “Dad,” I said as I strolled out of my room. He sat on the sofa reading a book. His knee jiggled not from nervousness but inactivity. My father did not like his enforced recovery after surgery. The past couple weeks have been challenging for him and me because he tested his limits and my patience every day.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  He tossed the book aside and sighed, but then glanced at me and smiled.

  “Don’t you look beautiful.”

  Tonight, finally, my torture will be over because the big concert happens in just a few hours. And with the help of my stylist, I pulled off a look that was LA casual appropriate for a rock concert that I wouldn’t sweat to death in. She found these incredible black satin skinny jeans in a vintage shop and added ebony thigh-high, spike-heeled boots, and a black leather biker’s jacket. Under the leather, I sported a “Work Release” promo tee with which she took liberties. She ripped out the collar and cut a line straight down that resulted in the flaps forming a “v” that parted and strategically displayed the top of my black lace bra.

  And thus armored, I was ready to face Cole Kane, Jersey Dys, and Rory Holmes.

  The butterflies in my stomach betrayed my nervous anticipation. Despite all hopes to the contrary, my desire for each of the men had not waned during our forced separation. A running film show of illicit encounters with each of them visited my dreams each night like Marley’s fucking ghost with sexual intent. I woke each time sweating and panting. Often I had to finish the subject of my nightly visions on my own, but that’s always a B list response to what should be an A-list party.

  So if my outfit this night was a teensy bit suggestive, it had nothing on wickedly inappropriate commentary on the sex appeal of each rocker running through my brain right now. I picked up my father’s unfinished whiskey and soda and bolted it down in the quest to wet my suddenly dry throat.

  “What?” he protested, “that’s mine.”

  “With your medications, you aren’t supposed to drink.”

  “You are not my mother.”

  “No,” I said. I leaned over the couch to give him a peck on the cheek. “Just an overly concerned daughter who doesn’t want to see her father croak by not following the doctor’s orders.”

  “One drink isn’t going to kill me. It helps to loosen the arteries.”

  “You’ve been reading the internet again. What did I tell you about that?”

  “I should have never sent you to Harvard.”

  “Too late. You are stuck with the result. Now, no drinking.”

  “Don’t worry. I fully intend to dance at your wedding.”

  “Then you better follow all the doctor’s orders, because that is a long time coming.”

  “Hmmm,” he mumbled in a displeased tone.

  The doorbell rang, and I scrunched my face in thought trying to place who it could be at this hour.

  “Who can that be?”

  “I believe it’s Tobias,” said my father with an evil grin.

  “He better not lead you to drink,” I said as I went to and yanked open the door. But instead of the usual business suited Tobias, he stood framed in the doorway wearing a tuxedo.

  I stared and swallowed hard, because what man doesn’t look good in a tuxedo. But Tobias didn’t just look good, he looked smoking, and I can envision a new tuxedoed version of Tobias haunting my dreams tonight. Forget me remaining cool, calm and collected in my concert garb. Heat traveled from my thighs and up my spine.

  I was in humongous trouble.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Taking you to the concert.” />
  “Oh no. We agreed—”

  “Not to see each other until the concert.”

  Leave to a lawyer to nail down the intent of an agreement to the letter. I had been sloppy with my words. My bad. And how am I rewarded for my carelessness?

  Getting to hang on the arm of the gorgeous silver-fox.

  “Tobias, is that you?” called my father.

  “Yes, Franklin. Just picking up Jacine like you asked.”

  “Thanks.”

  My eyes narrowed. “My father put you up to this? Because Anson can—”

  “I gave Anson the night off,” my father called.

  Tobias might be a silver-fox, but my father had ears like one.

  I stepped from the hall to the living room with my heels clicking on the marble floor.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I know you want to avoid those disasters in rocker clothing, and Tobias will protect you from them.”

  “What?” I could not believe this. “Who said I needed protection?”

  “I do. Daughter, I hate to tell you this, but someone sold me a particularly salacious recording of you and a certain musician in a hospital conference room.”

  My face must have turned several shades of red.

  “What!”

  “Calm down. I contained the situation.”

  Contained. Like I was a client.

  “Contained!”

  My father snapped open the day’s copy of Variety that had laid unopened all day on the glass coffee table. “It’s nothing to get excited about,” he said calmly. “You are an adult. And I asked Dys to keep you busy. I just didn’t expect that he’d get that busy, that soon.”

  “What!” I sputtered.

  “In any case, I couldn’t let something like that hit the media, so I took care of it. But I understood then why you didn’t want to have contact with any of them.”

  I spun, inchoate as words caught in my throat and I spotted the amusement in Tobias’s eyes.

  “You knew about this!” I choked out.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why you suggested I stay away from them.”

  He shrugged.

  “Oooh!” I wailed. I don’t know what was worse, that he played on my relationship fears or that he looked out for my welfare without my knowledge. But I was furious that he interfered.