Wilde About Dylon: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Four

by Faircloth, Cate

  “Are you reading a book?” I ask. The words fly from my lips before I fully think them through. It’s probably the four drinks I had that did it. That’s my tolerance before I commit to having a drunk night and hungover morning.

  Dylan looks up slowly and dramatically turns to me with his brow raised and lips compressed. I take in the hardness of his face swallowing back reflux as I look into his eyes.

  “Yes. Is that why you hate me? Because of my love for literature?”

  I almost laugh but lick my lips instead.

  “I doubt it’s literature.” I dodge the poking question. If only it were just his quirks I didn’t like or some loose idea I had about him, a judgment. But it’s not, it’s hard fact.

  “You’re a judgmental piece of work, Forbes,” he barks under his breath, husky and almost a whisper. Only I can hear him. He’s so close I feel his heat.

  I frown at him and sidestep his comment. “I’m not judging you.”

  “No, you’re doing even worse. Going off some decision you made about me long before you even knew me, and you’re sticking to it.”

  “It wasn’t a decision. I had no other choice. Not after what you did. And you can’t act like you don’t do the same thing.”

  He smacks his teeth and curls his lips. “With you? Hmm.” He leans in closer, his breath hot on my lips. “I met you a week ago, and before that, I thought you were pretty, still true. Then I held a conversation with you and decided you fit the beautiful woman but total bitch quota. I haven’t changed my mind,” he snaps, his hard nose flaring, and his eyes blazing at me.

  I swallow wanting to allow my eyes to threaten tears at being called a bitch. I’ve given him the coldest of shoulders, but because it’s him—I don’t do that to anyone else. But I won’t fold and beg his reconsideration either.

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  His brows tighten, the bridge digging deeper and hooding over his eyes. I’m getting distracted by his stormy eyes and perfect, solid features. By my reaction to him, I’m debating between the morals I gave myself about him and the part of me that is still very human and thinks maybe I’m missing part of the picture here. Dylan stares at me for a long moment as his breath evens out. He locks his phone and puts it face down.

  “The Hours. I’m reading The Hours.” He exhales. I inhale sharply, his scent stinging.

  “I… I read that in college…” I stammer, “… for intro to literature. It was a required course.” I clear my throat.

  He nods once. “I skipped the readings back then, waited until I’m pushing thirty to read more.”

  A half laugh escapes me.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Here we go again. Why can’t we have a moment where you don’t come at me, cloak and dagger?” His lips turn up, threatening a smile. I haven’t seen him fully smile. I realize the situation hasn’t come along for it, but Evan smiles every other minute.

  I think Dylan just doesn’t smile much.

  “I don’t,” I lie knowing very well that I do.

  “Don’t lie, it’s not becoming. You can be honest, though, about what I did.”

  I roll my eyes, and he adjusts on the seat to face me more.

  “I mean it, did you ever think that maybe I would apologize? If I knew, I’d know what to say other than a generic ‘I’m sorry.’”

  His words surprise me, and I’m taken aback. We’re then interrupted by the disruption of the table being cleared off, and the others deciding to move to the billiard lounge. It would be weird to sit alone and stay here. Dylan has the same idea when he stands and extends his hand to me. I stare at it like a foreign object before I take it, and he tugs at me as I rise.

  My body lands close to his, his hard chest hitting my exposed breasts. His suit fits him like a glove—better than a glove—a second skin. Dashing and impeccable. He towers over me, but I find his eyes easily, drawn to them, held in place.

  “Is that what you’re saying? You’re sorry?” I ask, finally. My voice is weighed down by something obvious.

  Dylan smirks and doesn’t answer right away. He makes me follow him to the dartboard at the other end of the wall, an expensive one fitting the ambiance. And I hate that he did—make me follow him—because he knows I want that answer.

  Bad enough I watch him throw three darts equally to the second line around the center. I sit on the high stool by the plain black table for setting drinks down.

  “Dylan.” I clear my throat.

  He chuckles without moving his mouth and throws another dart. It’s almost perfect. When he finishes dodging me, he turns to me, his eyes following me as I avert him as long as I can before I meet him.

  He glides closer, three steps until he reaches me, and takes off his jacket. His white dress shirt stretches across his body. I hadn’t known he was so broad and built. His arms fill out the sleeves and then some, his chest lifting his tie and tightening the neck tab around him.

  As he is so close, it’s easier for his scent to envelop me. He folds his jacket in half as he stares me down.

  “Hold this?” He tries to hand the jacket to me.

  “What? No.” I push his hand away, my fingers connecting with his warm hand. He has amazing hands for no reason at all. They’re capable looking, or even more than that, veins dance across the back of his hands from his knuckles to disappear under the sleeve of his shirt. His nails are short and groomed. Every part of him is clean on the surface, but in his eyes, I see cracks. Maybe that’s why I can’t look away and give him a bit of a chance.

  “The table is filthy. Hold it, you’ll get your answer.”

  I groan, and he lays it across my lap anyway, his fingers purposely catching the bare skin of my thigh. My body sings, and I tell it to quiet down.

  “Diva,” I murmur.

  He chuckles and leans in close, his body lands by my right side, his torso hides the others behind him. I know if Emily sees this, I will never hear the end of it because she might have been right the other day.

  “Very. So, my apology?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  He clears his throat and tilts his head into me.

  His eyes trance with mine, and I try, I really try, not to lose any resolve. But he digs in with his swoony gaze, his soft lips, his scent… I might fall off this chair.

  “Well, you don’t get one.”

  “What?” I snap.

  He comes closer, and I find myself leaning in too and not regretting it yet. I cross my legs for obvious reasons. I feel like I’m gushing… my chest rises and falls faster, and my breaths fall harder.

  “I don’t know what I’m apologizing for. You tell me that, then I can work on making things right. I’d rather fight with our clothes off and pay homage to this sexual tension.” He nods between us, and my fingers itch to slap the smug look off his face.

  Instead, I grab at the edge of his jacket in my lap. I could rip it to shreds, I really could. Because he’s right, because I don’t want him to be, and because I can imagine it, and now I can’t get the image out of my head. This isn’t fair. Is the line that thin? Lust and hate? Definitely not love, maybe love to hate.

  “You’re insufferable. You must get off on this,” I snap.

  “Yeah, every night since I saw you in that red dress. You are welcome to join my hand and me if you want.” His voice doesn’t waver, he doesn’t even smirk. He is so stone-faced, so serious.

  “I… you’re a barbarian,” I huff. He chuckles, it’s more like a loose rumble.

  “Is that a no? A conditional yes?”

  I shake my head.

  I can’t tell him.

  His ploy for an apology could be just that, a ploy. And I can’t give him the power. Once he knows everything, I don’t know what he will do. I don’t know what he might make me do and react to.

  I need to keep my power.

  “No, it’s not. You don’t get to know. It’s my business. I only talk to you because of Emily. I won’t be the friend she has who can’t soc
ialize. I need to be civil. You… are an unfortunate proponent of that. So, no, I won’t tell you.” I purse my lips and stare at him.

  He humphs and leans his hand over the pillar next to me so he can lean his face in closer. His crotch grazes my knee. I feel the base of him on my skin, and I freeze, my breath coming out in short halts as his presses to my ear.

  “Do what you want, Forbes. You’ll keep seeing me around, and it will only get worse,” he whispers in my ear. I feel each goosebump rise and feel my skin crawl with excitement and disdain all at the same time.

  “Dylan—”

  “Shh.” His lips press to the lobe of my ear, and I gasp. “You want me as much as you hate me. Forbes, I don’t hate you. Guess what’s left.” He pauses a beat before he leans back to watch with satisfaction at my no doubt flushed cheeks and erratic breath.

  I swallow hard, my lips compressing and legs cramping from all the clenching.

  “I’d… rather not,” I whisper.

  He licks his lips and chuckles once, grabbing his jacket and setting it on the table instead. Figures, he was having me hold it just to be an ass.

  “I expected that answer. I’m getting good at this.” He steps back and plucks the darts from the board before standing behind the line and aiming to throw.

  “This?” I ask before he takes the throw. He glances at me and then throws a perfect spotting.

  I wait impatiently. The others are clinking glasses and playing pool, completely unaware. And I go back to Dylan wishing I had a glass to clink on something, possibly his head. He turns to me and straightens his belt intending to catch my gaze there which he does, and I still feel him burning into my knee. He does this, bodes and broods until I drive myself crazy. Wondering if I even want the answer, how much I want, how much—ugh. I desperately hate him and wish I could do it right.

  “Yes, this. Us.”

  I almost laugh, the alcohol waring off lets me.

  “And what is that? What is us to you, Dylan?” I humor him, humor myself too.

  His lips turn up into what is almost a smile for the first time.

  “We’re a ticking time bomb.”

  9

  Dylan

  “Something isn’t right, check it again for me.” I use my nice tone which means I didn’t snap at anyone and used my syllables.

  “Of course, boss.” Kent in financial, he’s very regular—rounded off, thin headed, and older than me like sixty percent of our employees. I work directly with the financial department for obvious reasons. Usually, I do it from behind my desk, in my office. Today is the first time in a while I haven’t hidden in my office or Holden’s.

  I spent the morning in my office routinely checking emails, sending emails, ignoring Holden’s emails, and the like. Until I ran a status report on the records with Arnold expecting to continue communication with their CFO before the glaring issue of over a two-hundred-dollar price per share stock dropping. I need to figure out why, and I don’t have to do it on my own.

  “Send me what you find and have the others check it with you.” I knock his desk, having never learned the names he’s figured out. I’m talking about the two junior financial advisors. We don’t bother the executives or associates unless it’s big, and I didn’t see the need to run this down the line of command. Kent is the second associate, his desk is fifteen steps from my office, and he irritates me the least.

  “Of course,” he says again, pinching his black-rimmed glasses up his nose. Glancing at the picture on his desk of his wife and two daughters, I nod and walk back to my office.

  It will take him less than an hour. He is efficient that way. We pay him enough to be efficient, anyway. Anyone who works for us and isn’t entry level makes more than six figures. The least we pay is around fifty-five thousand, and I’m pretty sure that’s for the support staff.

  Dad didn’t believe in employing people to live in poverty, and neither do we. We’d rather take a drop in the stock, go into backwater funds, or buy cheaper coffee for the lounges than lay people off or pay less than what they’re worth. I hadn’t adhered to that a few years ago, but it was for the right reasons.

  Fifty pages later in the book I’m reading, my email dings with Kent. After I send a quick thanks, I delve into the report. They’re running at about ten percent than of what they usually do. Arnold—something in their last acquisition catches my eye—the fast food chain they bought has blank runs on the accounts sheet. I ponder for only a few moments before I figure it out.

  Nothing worse than dishonest people.

  I figure I should wait until I can formulate a sentence without more uses of the ‘F’ word than anything else before I tell Carson about it. If I’m following the line of command, like Holden gets pissed if we don’t, then he’s who I would tell first. He’s before me as COO, I’m before Evan, and it’s got nothing to do with him so that he can remain in his office with ten computer screens and a green tea stench. The dude is weird.

  Once I send them a calendar invite for thirty minutes, I plan to be at least twenty minutes late because Evan will be ten. In that time, I do the unthinkable.

  Facebook, looking up Forbes. I don’t expect to find much because she doesn’t seem the type to update friends and family or brag about vacations. But that’s what I get—her profile picture is unseemly, she didn’t crop someone out of it, and her backdrop becomes incredibly ordinary because of her gorgeous face. If the notion beautiful people are evil were a thing, she’d be proof of it. Something has to have made her the way she is toward me. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know her. Not as well as I know every feature of her face—foreign, harder features in her eyes and lips that take up more of her face than her rosy cheeks do, her hair is a golden beacon worthy of any fairy tale. Staring for a long time, I become a cinderblock. She’s my filling.

  Her feed is food videos, pictures with her and Emily, pictures of her alone, milestones. The only post that wasn’t from her is two years down the line—I went that far—an obituary. Adrian Walters. The man in the photo is regal, silver-haired, close to Dad’s age with a kindness in his eyes that resembles Forbes. I decide it’s what she looks like when she isn’t glaring at me. And then I discover it is her father. That’s not what sends the hot chill down my spine, it’s the familiarity of the name and the time I associate it with.

  It’s—

  “Asshole, don’t call a meeting and then not show up.” Evan, he nearly breaks my door down, the cinder glass shakes.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I clear my throat, stand up and grab my night-blue suit jacket, toss it on, and follow Evan out. He doesn’t look as ridiculous as usual, his suit is more silver than gray, his hair combed nicely instead of spiky like the 90s.

  We walk into Holden’s office. Evan stops suddenly in front of me on purpose. I shove at the small of his back, and he laughs the rest of the way in.

  “Found him jerking off to gym porn.” Evan swipes my shoulder as he sits on the French leather armchair. I flip him off as I sit in front of him in the second chair.

  Holden shakes his head standing from behind his desk. Carson is on the couch corner to his desk, laughing at Evan’s sordid joke.

  “What’s going on?” Holden undoes his classic-cut jacket. His tie is already loose, so he must have been in here all day.

  “I was running reports on Arnold to check the last statement when I noticed something a little weird, so I had Kent look at it. Turns out they shut down seventeen locations of the fast- food chain they bought last year. They’re trying to cut losses,” I explain.

  Evan is blank-faced, he probably spaced out counting how many letters I just used. It’s a thing he does since he’s socially awkward. Carson blinks, turns up his nose, his awful thinking face on. Holden is the only one who looks the slightest bit fazed, his usually even brow upturned, rounded jaw squared off. I’ve worked off all my anger in my office sidetracked by Forbes and her yoga pictures and keto recipes. It still plays on in my head, the obituary too. That name is famili
ar, but I can’t place why.

  “He didn’t tell me anything about that. He would know. I would know. We can’t assume he left that out on purpose,” Holden says, always having faith in people. That stopped existing for me when I lost it in myself.

  “Would you do that?” Carson asks.

  “I would never be selling.”

  “Okay, hypothetically, would you do that?”

  “No.” Holden takes a beat. “I could ask.”

  “No, don’t ask. I want to see what else they’re doing. He wants to run with more than he’ll get. Do you even know why he’s selling? Could be a ruse,” I say.

  “For what, tax evasion?” Carson asks.

  “It would be smart. For a company as big as his, he was almost bankrupt. That’s the only reason why he took the offer to be bought out, so why start shutting businesses down? Recovered losses, all that money can go wherever he wants, completely skipping over our acquisitions,” I explain. Holden is usually the only one who knows the ins and outs of the finances, on top of his own stuff to deal with. That’s the job as king and commander, but Carson and Evan usually stick to their own thing. It only works out because we all do our job. I don’t worry about internet security, Evan doesn’t worry about finances, Holden doesn’t worry about everything else, and Carson deals with nothing other than everything outside of that.

  So, I assume they are all out in their own head until the silence kills.

  “He never seemed like much of a stand-up guy,” Evan says.

  Carson nods. “Yeah, the last time we looked at their operations, my head spun. It was worse than the hypotheticals they gave us in college.” He snorts. We were all looking over them two nights ago before the bar, before I spent all night teetering around and toward Forbes, and went home with my thoughts doing the same thing.