The Successor

by Alina Jacobs

  “What business is it of yours?” Kate shot back. “I’m sure you were plowing through every brothel you came across while you were in the Marines.”

  “No,” Grant said, “I wasn’t.” He had both hands gripping the wheel of the car.

  “Pull over!” Kate shouted.

  Grant wrenched the wheel of the car onto the shoulder of the road. Kate threw the door open, crying.

  “You are a horrible person. I have the worst taste in men.”

  “You are such a bully,” Kate’s grandmother said, hitting him over the head with her pocket book.

  Grant ignored her, got out of the car, and went over to Kate.

  “Just leave me here,” she said, crying.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Kate… it’s just… I…”

  She sagged forward, and he reached for her, thinking she was going to faint. But she threw up all over the ground instead. As she hunched over, crying, he stroked her hair.

  “Come on. Let’s go home.”

  She kept crying, and Grant picked her up in his arms then carried her to the car. He placed her in the back seat and closed the door. He drove the rest of the way in silence with Kate leaning against her grandmother, her mascara smeared messily around her eyes.

  They arrived back to New Cardiff, and Grant dropped Kate and her grandmother off at their house. He helped the maid walk the elderly woman into the house and up the stairs. He didn’t say goodbye to Kate, just slunk out the door and returned to his father’s house. Walter was there, eating dinner, when he got back.

  “How was it?” he asked jovially.

  “It was fine. I was a main attraction. Jack’s wife, Nancy, said we had to come to her dinner party.”

  “I’ll probably be on a business trip, so you’ll have to represent.”

  “She wants me to make you come too.”

  Walter grimaced.

  “Is that all you do?” Grant demanded. “Work?”

  “That’s how you were so successful in the military,” Walter countered. “You understand what it takes to succeed.”

  “Yes,” Grant said, “and I regret it. An institution doesn’t love you back. It doesn’t care about your sacrifice. It will take everything you can give and more, then it will cast you by the wayside.”

  “I just can’t,” his father said. “It’s who I am. It’s how I built this business.”

  “Fine,” Grant said.

  He got up and left the table, ignoring his father’s words to come sit back down. He didn’t want to hear any more. These people were all the same—too much money, no values. He thought about Kate. He knew he shouldn’t judge her. He wanted her to be perfect. She was perfect. She was everything he didn’t know he wanted. He looked through the trees through his window, imagining he could see to her grandmother’s house.

  He changed into dark clothes he could move around in and put on his boots and a jacket. Leaving his corgi asleep on his bed, he crept downstairs and headed off. As he reached the edge of the light thrown from the porch, he felt for his gun. Check. Knife, check. He didn’t want anyone surprising him. He still didn’t know what to think of the letter. It was strange to send someone in the middle of the night just to deliver a note. But then his father was single-minded and overbearing. Maybe his birth mother felt she had no choice.

  He made his way silently through the woods. He paused every so often to see if anyone was out there, but he appeared to be alone. He got to a tall metal fence on the property. He took a running leap and caught his palms on the top then pulled himself up and over to land in a crouch on the other side. Grant didn’t think he’d tripped an alarm, so he kept going through the trees. They thinned out, then he was past the pool house and finally at the back of Kate’s house.

  None of the rooms were lit up. He saw one that had a balcony on it. Maybe that was her room. He used the planters and the decorative ledges to scale up the wall, and he hoisted himself over the balcony and landed silently on the balls of his feet. Carefully, hoping he didn’t set off an alarm, he slowly used his knife to jimmy the French door open and slipped into the room. Jackpot.

  He saw Kate sprawled asleep on the bed. She had pulled off her shirt and bra then was probably too tired from the sun and the alcohol to finish getting ready for bed and had lain down to rest her eyes then fallen asleep. Her hair was spread out around her. The sliver of moonlight was just enough for Grant to make out the curves of her breasts, the nipples perky in the slight chill of the room. He felt himself grow hard.

  He took off his shirt and pants and pulled down his boxers and kicked them away. Then he slowly eased her panties off, breathing in her scent. It was driving him wild. He couldn’t contain himself, and he straddled her.

  Chapter 27

  Kate

  Kate had been dreaming about him. She dreamed Grant was slowly caressing her, telling her how much he wanted to fuck her.

  “Do it. Do it,” she would say. “I need you. Take me. Please, I need this.”

  Then suddenly he was. She gasped awake. Her eyes opened, and she stared into his dark eyes. “Do you want me?” he asked her. “I can leave if you’d like.”

  “Don’t go,” she whispered, reaching a hand up to cup his face, to make sure he was real. He slid a hand under her, lifted her hips, and slowly but surely thrust into her. He didn’t break eye contact. He rested his forehead against hers, and she felt his breath on her face. Her mouth was open as she panted, trying to kiss him as she felt the length of him slide in and out of her. God, he felt good. She bit his chin to muffle her cry as she came, and he buried his face in her neck as she felt him shudder and come in her. Then he did kiss her, long and slowly and deeply.

  “I can’t live without you,” he told her. “I need you in my bed.”

  She stroked his face. The room was chilly, but his body radiated heat. She traced the muscles on his back with her nails and felt him shiver. He pulled her up with him farther up the bed and snuggled them both under the covers. Then he wrapped his arms around her and fell asleep.

  Kate wanted to fall asleep. She wanted to feel the bliss of being in the arms of the most perfect man she had ever met, but she couldn’t help but remember how disgusted he had seemed when he asked her how many men she had been with.

  It wasn’t that many, she tried to tell herself. She wasn’t randomly hooking up. She had been in relationships with these men. It just hadn’t worked out. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Did Grant actually care about her? Or was he only using her as an easy lay? Maybe she should have played harder to get. She should not have fallen for him quite so quickly.

  She lay awake until the sky started to lighten. She didn’t know how to explain what Grant was doing at her grandmother’s house, but she didn’t want to wake him, either. She shifted in the bed and sighed. Grant woke up at the motion and yawned, smiling at her.

  “I think you need to go home.”

  He looked at her incredulously.

  “Are you seriously kicking me out?”

  “You can’t stay here,” she whispered. “My grandmother will have a heart attack.”

  “I thought she was starting to like me.” He grinned.

  “Not like that. She still thinks I’m a great person, and I don’t want to ruin her high opinion of me. Plus, she’ll tell your father, and I’ll lose my job.”

  “You won’t lose your job,” he scoffed.

  “This is not up for discussion.”

  “Why are you suddenly being so cold with me? You were so willing last night.”

  He gave her a sexy look that made her shiver. She tamped it down.

  “It’s complicated” was all she could say. He kissed her, and she tried hard not to kiss him back. She felt him smile against her mouth.

  “Can I have a goodbye fuck?” he asked, grinning at her in the low light.

  “No,” she said coldly, pushing him away. “I need to shower; I’m a mess. I’ll see yo
u at your house.”

  She wrapped the sheet around her and watched him dress and leave. She felt sad. She wished they could have a normal relationship, but they couldn’t. She needed to end this somehow. Maybe she could slowly wean herself off Grant.

  No, this is it, she swore to herself. She was going cold turkey off Grant Holbrook. Jones, she corrected herself as she struggled to comb a tangle out of her hair. She checked the birth control implant in her arm just to be safe. The last thing she needed was a baby. She shuddered. That would make this whole situation a hundred times worse. She looked in the mirror at her reflection. Her eyes had dark circles.

  “Grant is not good for you,” she told her reflection. “He is a bad decision. Stay away from him.” He probably wouldn’t even want her once he realized that he could have his pick of women from upper-class New England families. Ones who didn’t have the baggage Kate did.

  “He was only with you because of convenience,” she told herself. “He had pent-up sexual frustration, and you were a too-willing outlet. Once he calms down, he was going to dump you, anyways. It’s better this way.”

  Kate was determined to keep her word. She had breakfast at her grandmother’s house then went over to the Holbrook estate. She went over the itinerary with Grant for that day, steadfastly ignoring the come-hither looks he was giving her.

  After a day of fundraising lunches, coffee socials, and networking cocktails, she had the driver take them back to the estate. Grant tried to kiss her, but she slapped his hand away in the car, and he sulked the entire way back.

  She dropped Grant off at his house and stayed for a bit to chat with Stefan, then she left promptly at seven to go back to her grandmother’s house. They watched British comedies that Kate had seen a thousand times. She drank tea with no sugar and then went to bed early. She lay there wondering if Grant would come to her. He didn’t.

  Chapter 28

  Grant

  He didn’t know why Kate was so upset. She was giving him the cold shoulder all day. He kept thinking about how it felt to slip inside the warm velvety softness between her legs. He looked out through the trees, imagining he could see the light in her window. He wanted to go back over there and fuck her just so he could stop obsessing over her body and the scent of her hair.

  “Absolutely not,” he told himself. She was clearly angry at him for some reason. He didn’t think it was because of the sexy surprise, but then maybe it had freaked her out that he was able to sneak into her house. She had seemed to enjoy it, though. He was hard just thinking about it.

  He forced himself to take a cold shower. He didn’t know what she was so upset about. She clearly wasn’t going to lose her job. Grant was sure that if he told his father he wanted to date Kate and have her continue working for him, he would be… well, maybe not fine, but he would probably let Grant do it anyway just to keep him happy.

  Just to win against your birth mother.

  Grant tried to ignore the thought. He didn’t really know much about Walter. He was always busy, jetting off to Europe or Asia. Maybe Luigi, his birth mother’s friend from the woods, was right and Walter would fire Kate just to be spiteful. He wished it could simply go back to the way things were between him and Kate. The time they spent together these days was tense and uncomfortable.

  The next morning, he put on a weight vest and forced himself to take a brutal run through the property. Then he lifted weights for half an hour and went to eat breakfast.

  Kate was in the butler’s pantry as he came in through a side door. He was sweaty and bare chested, his blood was still hot in his veins, and he watched her like a predator as she huddled in the corner of the room.

  “What do you want, Grant?”

  He stalked toward her. “You know what I want.”

  “No,” she told him. “That’s it. I mean it. We’re done. If you sneak into my room again, I’m calling the cops.”

  “You say that.” He smirked. “But you don’t mean it.”

  “Yes, I do.” She didn’t return his smile. “I can’t—” She looked frustrated and not in a sexual way, just fed up. She continued, “I keep making these terrible decisions.”

  “I’m a terrible decision?” he asked her, feeling suddenly angry.

  “Yes,” she said. “I never should have slept with you. It was unprofessional, and it will never happen again.”

  “So this is the ‘We should just be friends’ talk?” he demanded.

  “No, this is the ‘I don’t sleep with my boss’ talk.”

  He glared at her. “You can’t keep leading me on.”

  “I didn’t,” she hissed. “You started this. You started all of this.”

  He pressed against her. “You were a willing participant. Very. Willing.”

  She pushed away from him. He watched her go then went to soak in an ice bath. He tried to calm down. His father wanted to have lunch that day.

  “He’ll probably cancel,” Grant told himself. “He’s always busy.”

  But his father had actually cleared his schedule that day. After making the long drive into the city, the driver deposited Grant at an upscale restaurant. He went to the second floor of the skyscraper where the restaurant was located.

  “Grant,” his father said as the hostess led him to a private room. “Thank you for making the trip down to the city.”

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Grant said stiffly.

  “How are you settling in?”

  “Well enough, I suppose.”

  “Has Kate been taking you around? You need to meet some people your own age. Maybe you’ll find a nice girl. Fall in love.”

  Grant tried to relax the death grip he had on his cutlery. “I think I’m fine.”

  “Nonsense. All you’ve been doing is meeting the people that even I find old. They’re my father’s friends and my grandparents’ friends.”

  “I met her friend Brandy.”

  His father scoffed.

  “I’ve also met her old boyfriends.”

  Walter turned up his nose.

  “I don’t know what she saw in them. Did you meet Jean Claude? Terrible. She has the worst taste in men. Such a shame. She’s well-bred but has a history.”

  “This is the twenty-first century,” Grant said, coming to Kate’s defense. “She’s allowed to be her own person.”

  He’s a bully. The words of his mother’s friend surfaced in his thoughts. Grant tried to ignore them.

  “She was in relationships with them,” he said. “It’s not like she was sleeping around.”

  “No, you’re right. She’s a wonderful person, aside from her personal life. I only want her to find a good man. Not that I should talk.” He gave a sad laugh. “I of all people probably have the worst taste.”

  “What was Danielle like? Why did you marry her?” Grant asked.

  “Let’s not talk about her. I don’t want to ruin a nice meal. When I’m good and drunk, I’ll tell you the whole sordid tale.”

  Grant frowned but didn’t say anything else. He did not appreciate people keeping secrets from him. He thought back to the letter and wondered if it would have any answers.

  Chapter 29

  Kate

  The days passed. Kate kept Grant at a distance. She didn’t eat breakfast at the Holbrook estate anymore, instead choosing to arrive at the residence after Grant and his father finished eating. She would accompany Grant to various lunches and outings and, usually, would bring her grandmother as a buffer.

  Her grandmother had started to warm to Grant. She would recommend food for him to eat and fill his wine glass. Grant let her fuss over him. He would periodically give Kate a bemused look. She tried to ignore her feelings for him and stay professional.

  Kate kept Grant busy, mainly so that he wouldn’t have a chance to plot out a way to corner her. She didn’t think she could resist him again. In addition to the wine tastings, charity dinners, and lunches with various people who were friends of his father, Kate also took him to some of her own persona
l social gatherings.

  One evening was an engagement party for Brandy’s sister, Ginny, that Kate’s grandmother was hosting.

  “You met her at the grooming shop,” she told Grant.

  “I didn’t know she was engaged.”

  “She takes off that rock on her finger when she’s dog grooming. I’m surprised you missed it. She’s marrying one of the Davenport boys. You met his parents at the polo match. Adam Davenport is also a big watch collector.”

  “Did I?” Since Kate’s grandmother was hosting the party, she had to stay home and help organize. She brought Grant along to help put the finishing touches on the setup. Then they cleaned up and changed and were at the door to greet the first guests as they arrived.

  “Did you bring him as your date?” Brandy asked when she and her parents arrived at the party.

  “No, I only brought him along so he wouldn’t be cooped up in the house.”

  “Make the rounds. Maybe you can find someone that strikes your fancy, Grant,” Brandy said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re adorable,” Brandy said, kissing his cheek.

  Kate looked around wistfully at the tasteful decor with hundreds of fresh flowers in elaborate arrangements. The servers milled around with trays of delectable hors d’oeuvres. She wondered if she would ever be thrown a big engagement party and a fancy wedding with her Prince Charming.

  Glasses were clinked as the elder Davenport climbed onto the first few steps of the staircase to address the guests.

  “Thank you all for being here. We’d also like to thank Margaret, Kate, and Grant for hosting this wonderful party. As we bring our two families together, it is wonderful that our children can start their journey together amongst such loving friends.”

  There was light applause, more toasts, and then the party continued.

  “This is probably the most impressive engagement party I’ve ever been to,” Grant said. “Actually,” he amended, “it’s only the second one I’ve been to. The first was one we hosted in the barracks for the stripper one of my buddies had decided he was going to marry for BAH.”