by Rye Hart
We went downstairs to have breakfast, and had sex.
We took a shower together, and had sex.
We went out to play in the snow, and… well, you get the idea.
Tyler said I was making up for lost time and I said I didn’t care what he called it.
I called it having the time of my life.
I didn’t have any regrets losing my virginity to Tyler.
By Wednesday morning the sun was out and the snowplows were busy clearing the roads. I stood at the kitchen island sipping coffee, watching Tyler scarf down four eggs and a pound of sausage.
I was only wearing one of his large t-shirts and he was only wearing a little egg on his chin.
He grinned at me as he chewed.
I gazed out the frosty window and sighed.
“I guess I’d better go home today to see how much damage the boys have done to the house while I was gone.”
“Have you talked to them?” Tyler asked, picking up his coffee cup.
“I’ve talked to them several times. They’re okay. Jackie was there with them so the chaos was at least controlled.”
“Are you sure they can’t do without you one more day?” he asked, reaching across the counter to take my hand. “I’m not sure I can manage without you here.”
“You’re a big boy, Mr. Jenner,” I said. “I’ll be back later to prepare dinner.”
“Actually, that won’t be necessary,” he said as a thought came to mind. He picked up the cloth napkin on the counter and wiped his mouth with it. “Charlie will be here in an hour. We have meetings in town most of the day, so there’s no need to come back.”
I blinked at him for a moment. There must have been a look of hurt in my eyes because he smiled at me.
He said, “There’s no need to come back to cook. But if you’d like to come back for other reasons, that would be great.”
I rolled my eyes at my schoolgirl silliness.
“Sorry. All of this is kind of new to me.”
“All of this is kind of new to me, too,” he said, pulling me around the island and into his arms.
He lifted me up and my legs went around him. I could feel his cock growing hard beneath me.
He clutched my ass in his hands and started for the stairs.
“Come on,” he said with a wicked smile. “Let’s have one for the road.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: MAGGIE
“So, tell me, how was it?” Jackie barely gave me time to get in the door and get my coat off before she started pelting me with questions.
“How was what?” Jimmy asked. My fifteen-year-old brother was sitting on the couch with his feet on the coffee table and a game controller in his hand.
Robbie, seventeen, was slouched next to him with the other controller between his hands, his thumbs furiously working the levers.
“The sex, you moron,” Robbie said without taking his eyes off the game. “Mags has spent the last two days boning a rich mountain man.”
“Oh, that,” Jimmy said. He shrugged and went back to the game.
“Seriously, Jacks?” I growled at her. “How could you tell them?’
“I didn’t tell them you were boning a rich mountain man,” she said. “I just said you were snowed in with your hot new boss, who happened to be a rich mountain man. They’re teenage boys. They figured the rest out on their own.”
“Whatever!” I walked down the hall to my bedroom with Jackie close at my heels. She closed the bedroom door and watched as I got out of the clothes I’d been wearing for two days.
“Well, you don’t look any different,” she said, eyeing my naked body as I searched the drawer for a fresh pair of panties. “How do you feel?”
I pulled on the underwear, picked a t-shirt from the drawer and pulled it over my head. I tried not to sound like a giddy schoolgirl. I failed miserably. My lips spread into a broad grin that I didn’t think would ever go away.
“It was amazing!”
I did a little happy dance as she squealed and clapped for the loss of my virginity. I held out my hands and she grabbed them.
“Honestly, Jacks, I had no idea what I’d been missing. I mean, oh my God, we did it in every room, in every position, in every!”
“Hole?’, Jackie ask. I gave her a smile.
“Oh you little whore! I love it!”
I squealed again.
“I’m glad you had so much fun,” she said, laughing at how animated I was. “I’m truly happy for you, Mags. So, you’re still going to cook for him?”
“Of course,” I said, picking up a pair of jeans from the floor and giving them a sniff to see if they were clean enough to wear one more time. They didn’t totally reek, so I tugged them on and went into the bathroom to wash my face.
Jackie tagged along. She sat on the toilet and watched me cover my face in cold cream. She was quiet for a moment, so I glanced over at her. She was biting her thumbnail. Jackie only bit her thumb nail when something was wrong.
“Jacks? What is it?”
She looked at me and sighed. “I hate to ruin your party, but I have some bad news for you.”
“Hang on a sec.” I wet the wash cloth and scrubbed the cream from my skin, then rinsed off the rest with warm water. I picked up a towel to dry my face and sat on the edge of the tub to face her. “Now, what are you talking about?”
“You know Ted. The City Councilman I date sometimes?”
I huffed at her. “Ted Reed. The blowjob king of Mountain View. Yah what about him?”
“Shut up.” She grinned, but it quickly faded. “Remember the other day when I told you that Ted told me that some big developer was looking to buy property downtown to put up a hotel and resort?”
“I do remember,” I said. “You said the council was going to vote on enforcing imminent domain to force the people to sell and I said it would never happen.”
Her head bobbed. “Well, it’s happening. The developer is in town today to sign some letter with the city. Between you and me, I think they are paying Ted and the mayor under the table to help them seal the deal.”
“The people aren’t going to stand for that,” I said. I felt a little chill creeping up my spine. I put a hand on her arm so she’d look up at me. “Jacks, what property downtown are they after?”
“The whole city block where Roberts’ Steakhouse and six other businesses sit,” she said. “They want to knock everything down and put up the new place before next tourist season.”
“I asked Carl about it the other day, but he said they were just rumors,” I said. “He said they’d never sell. They’ve owned the place for thirty years.”
“They may not have a choice,” Jackie said, her head turning slowly from side to side. “According to Ted, by this afternoon, it’s a done deal.”
“By this afternoon?”
“Ted and the mayor meet with the developer today.” She glanced at her watch. “They’re probably at City Hall right now.”
Holy crap, why didn’t I see it before? This was the business meeting Tyler was alluding to.
Why else would a billionaire like Tyler Jenner build a luxury cabin overlooking a dinky little town like Mountain View?
Why else would he take an interest in the antique shops and restaurants on Main Street?
The out-of-town developer that was going to destroy my little hometown and put up a tourist-trap hotel was the man I thought I was falling for.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TYLER
“What a fucking asshole that guy is,” I said as Charlie and I left the meeting with the mayor and the head of the city council, Ted Something-or-Other. “Demanding we give him a bigger payoff under the table when we meet to sign the letter of intent with the city. Really? Who the fuck does that?”
“Crooked little politicians in shitty little towns,” Charlie said with a sigh, like it was no big deal that I was having to shell out another twenty grand in payoffs to these cocksuckers. He put his hand on my chest and gave me a sly smile. “Don’t worry about him. It’s mon
ey well-spent. Once the hotel is built we’ll push the lot of them out and take over just like we did in Bedford Falls and Overlook Canyon.”
I was still pissed. I gritted my teeth and pointed at the door to the mayor’s office we’d just come out of. “Look, I’ve told you over and over, I don’t care what you have to do to make deals work. I don’t want to know the details because I don’t want to have to lie in court. So long as we make money on the other end, that’s all I care about. But if that guy in there fucks us, Charlie, I’m going to come back here and fucking — “
“Don’t worry,” Charlie said, putting a hand on my shoulder and giving it a shake. “I got this. I’ve always got this. Let me handle this kind of shit and you handle building the business. Now come on, I’m hungry. Let’s see if we can find a place to get a decent steak.
* * *
“Tyler!”
As we came out of the courthouse, I heard a familiar voice call my name. I turned to see Maggie coming down the sidewalk toward us. She had her shoulders hunched and her hands balled into fists at her side.
I gave her a smile. “Hey, Mags, what are you…”
Before I could finish my sentence, she caught me with a right hook that nearly turned out my lights. Her fist connected with my jaw and sent me stumbling sideways into Charlie.
“What the fuck!” Charlie got between me and Maggie and held up his hands. “Are you fucking nuts?”
“I know what you did,” she said, glaring at me with tears in her eyes. She shook her fist in the air and spat out the words. “You’re going to destroy this town and put people I love out of business.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, hiding behind Charlie. I was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than her, but I’d rather face down a grizzly bear than a pissed off woman any day of the week.
“I know that you just paid off the mayor and the city council president,” she said. “I know that you’re going to tear down Carl and Doris’ restaurant and the other shops. You’re killing their dreams! They’ve worked their entire lives for those businesses and now you’re shutting them down.”
“They’ll be paid very well for the land and the business,” Charlie said. “Everyone will walk away with more money than they could have hoped to get otherwise. Most of those businesses are old and dying.”
She glared at me. I swallowed hard and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Go on, Charlie, get in the car. I’ll be done here in a minute.”
Charlie hesitated for a moment, then shook his finger at her. “You’re nuts. And you’re fucking fired!”
“Fuck you! I quit!” she screamed at him.
I held up my hands. “Maggie, calm down and let’s talk. This really is the best thing for everyone. Like Charlie said, downtown Mountain View is dying. You know it was well as I do. The other day when we were walking around, we didn’t see but a handful of other people. You told me yourself, the restaurant is struggling. The Roberts are old, Maggie. They want to retire. They have agreed to the deal.”
“You’re a fucking liar,” she said, gritting her teeth at me. “Ted told Jackie everything. You bribed him and the mayor to help you convince people to sell! You’re a fucking criminal!”
“What? No, that’s bullshit.” I put on a hurt face. It wasn’t hard given the fact that my jaw was killing me. “I’d never do that, Maggie. You have to trust me.”
“Trust you? After you’ve lied to me? I’ll never trust you again.”
“Maggie, if you don’t believe me, go ask them yourself. They were made fair offers and they agreed to sell. Period. End of story.”
She blinked at me through the tears for a moment. Tears were streaming down her face. “You’re a goddamn liar,” she said. “A goddamn liar.”
“We made them an offer and they agreed to sell. We’re not stealing the property from anyone. They were all paid what it was worth. We were just meeting with the mayor to sign the letter of intent.”
She was dead right, of course. Charlie had paid the mayor and that cocksucker Ted a boatload of money under the table to help convince the people to sell. Everyone has a price, Charlie says, and they simply helped us find out what that price was. There was nothing criminal about it. At least as far as I was concerned.
She stared at me for a moment, then slowly shook her head.
“You lied to me,” she said quietly. “You’re not the man I thought you were.”
“Maggie, please, listen to me,” I said, holding out my hands. “It’s all just business. This is how things work. This is how things get done.”
“I don’t ever want to see you again,” she said. “I can’t trust you.” She shook her head at me. “Your father would be ashamed of you, Tyler Jenner. I know that I am.”
With that, she left me standing with my mouth hanging open, and an unfamiliar ache in my chest.
As I watched her go, I realized that she was right.
My father would have been ashamed of me.
But I’m not my father.
I’m Tyler fucking Jenner, the billionaire mountain man.
Who the fuck does she think she is, talking to me like that.
She’s right, a little voice inside my head whispered.
You’re not your father.
And you never will be.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: MAGGIE
Carl and Doris both looked at me like I was nuts. Then they looked at each other and smiled.
“Maggie, we appreciate that you’re so fired up about this, but we really did give it a lot of thought,” Carl said. He rubbed a hand over the white stubble on his chin and sighed. “The truth is, we’re both old and tired. The last few years have been a real struggle, what with my old knees and Doris’ bad hip. And business hasn’t been good. We’re not as young as we used to be and this place doesn’t make the money it used to make.”
“I know Carl, but they can’t force you to sell. You can get an attorney. We can fight it,” I insisted.
“Honey, we don’t want to fight anymore,” Doris said, reaching over to take my hand. “Granted, when the mayor first brought this up a few months ago, we were resistant, but once we sat down with that Mr. Prescott and that nice Mr. Jenner, well, it just became clear that it was the best thing to do.”
I stared at her. “You sat down with Mr. Jenner? Tyler Jenner?”
“Yes, dear, the man with the beard that you came in with the other day.”
“You already knew him.” I let my eyes bounce between them.
“Well, yes,” Carl said. “But he asked us not to say anything about the deal until everything was signed, so when you came in with him, well, we just pretended not to know him.”
“That son of a bitch,” I said, my teeth gnashing. Doris patted my hand.
“Now, don’t be too upset with him, sweetie. He likes you a lot. I can tell.”
“He used me,” I said, shaking my head. “He knew all along that he was going to tear down all the shops I took him in. He said I was his tour guide. Bullshit, I was just like the guy who marks which trees get cut down in the forest.”
“Maggie, you’re overreacting,” Carl said.
“No, Carl, I don’t think I am.” I blew out a long breath and wiped my eyes. I mustered the best smile that I could for them. “So, when will you close?”
“We’re having a big closing party next Friday night,” Doris said. “We’re going to invite the whole town to come out and help us say goodbye.”
“Then what?”
They looked at each other and smiled.
Carl said, “Then, it’s Florida here we come!”
Doris grabbed his arm and tugged him close. “If I never see another snowflake that’ll be just fine with me!”
“I’m happy for you both,” I said.
It seemed that everything was working out fine for everyone -except me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: MAGGIE
The news broke the next day.
Jenner Investment Group, with headquarters in
Denver, Colorado, and offices around the world, announced that it had signed a deal with the city of Mountain View, Colorado, to build a hotel, resort, and spa in the downtown district. The hotel would have 200 rooms and feature a five-star restaurant, and a luxurious spa. Across the street would be the latest location of Jenner Outdoors, the company’s retail outlet.
City Council President (and fucking douchebag) Ted Reed, commented that the original plan included just the property where the hotel would be located, but willing merchants on the facing block were more than happy to sell their land at top dollar so Jenner could build the store.
“This whole thing stinks,” I said, tossing the paper on the kitchen table.
“You’re the only one who seems upset,” Jackie said. “Why are you so pissed?”
“Because Tyler lied to me!” I snapped. “He had his shady business partner pay off Ted and the mayor to bully those people into selling. Then there is the fact that he didn’t once tell me about the business deal himself. I had no idea he was behind the company buying up downtown. I wouldn’t have known anything if Ted hadn’t told you! If he could do that, what else is he hiding?”
Jackie got up from the table to give me a hug. She said, “I’m sorry, Mags. I know you’re really hurt about his crap, but you know that everyone deserves a second chance. You gave me a second chance at life when you took me in and I will never forget it. Tyler did some shady shit but that doesn’t mean he can’t change. He’s obviously head over heels for you. Maybe he just needs someone like you in his life to see how screwed up he is.”
“Jackie, this is the real world. Screwed up guys like Tyler don’t change. Besides I’m sure he’s over me or whatever it was we had. And I’m better off without him. I’ve got to move on.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Do you think I could get a job waiting tables at the club?”
“Oh, Mags, you don’t want to work there.”
“I have to work somewhere, Jackie,” I said. “All I know is cooking. And like you told me once before, if I can’t cook, I should use my boobs to get by.”