by Nikki Ash
Heath
Copyright © 2018 K Webster
Copyright © 2018 Nikki Ash
Cover Design: All By Design
Photo: Adobe Stock
Editor: Lawrence Editing
Formatting: Champagne Book Design
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Epilogue
Nikki Ash’s Playlist
K Webster’s Playlist
Nikki Ash Books
K Webster Books
Nikki Ash Acknowledgements
K Webster Acknowledgments
About Author Nikki Ash
About Author K Webster
To Emily Brontë, for rebelling against your time and giving us a romance like no other.
“I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”
Wuthering Heights —Emily Brontë
Helen
The Present…
I STEP THROUGH THE FRONT door and tense, immediately alarmed, when a loud sob rings out through a closed door down the hallway. Miss Emily hardly ever cries. In fact, the only time I’ve seen her shed tears is when her horse Buckingham threw her off when she was thirteen. And that instance was more because her feelings were hurt that her horse would eject her, rather than her bruised tailbone.
Bruised hearts are far more painful.
When I reach her door, I twist the knob and enter.
Ah, sweet Emily. The apple of my eye, just like her mother.
I’ve never seen her look so sad in all my life. The crocodile tears spilling down her bright red cheeks could rival her grandmother’s any day.
“Oh, honey, what’s wrong?” I coo as I approach her bed.
She tosses her cell phone on the pink comforter and swipes away her tears with her palms. “Everything,” she says dramatically.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take her hands into mine. It’s something I used to do when she was upset as a toddler. “Tell me everything.”
A hiccup escapes and then another sob rings from her. “It’s a boy, Nanny.”
I smile at the pet name she gave to me when she was just three. “Boys are rotten,” I tell her, rubbing my thumbs along the backs of her hands.
She giggles through her tears and in this moment, I know everything will be okay. Emily is a product of two good people. That makes her better than good.
“It’s Porter,” she grumbles.
“The boy from your school?” I ask, a frown tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I thought Finn down the road was your boyfriend. He’s nice.”
Her lip curls up. “Finn and I are not boyfriend and girlfriend. We’ve always been just friends. He just thinks he has a say in my life.” The haughty tone reminds me so much of her grandmother that I want to shake the teenage girl—shake the awful woman right out of her.
“And you have so much more in common with Porter?”
She starts crying again and for a moment, I’m at a loss.
“I just really like him and want more than to make out with him at the movies or in his backseat. All the girls at school want him and I know I’m not the only one he spends his time with. I want him to choose only me.”
“You’re eighteen, Miss Emily.”
“So?”
“Porter is a teenage boy. He’s a nice-looking young man playing the field. You both are too young to settle on one person.”
She blinks at me, waiting for the punchline. Dear Lord, she is growing up way too fast and here all this time I thought she had her daddy in her. It looks like her grandmother’s blood runs strong. “I’m eighteen. We’re not too young.”
“You just turned eighteen. He’s pushing you away because he’s not ready to be serious and settle down with one girl,” I say with a sigh. “Because you are too young. You’re supposed to go off to college in the city and—”
“I want to stay with him!” she cries out, throwing her arms in the air. “I want to marry him and have lots of babies. What’s so wrong with that?”
So many reasons.
It’s like history on repeat, destined to play over and over again.
And I am its victim—the victim history loves to haunt.
“He’s not right for you,” I say finally as if that explains everything.
“Why? Because he doesn’t come from money? I don’t care about money, you know this. I think I’m in love with him.”
So stubborn, this girl.
“It’s not enough. It never is. One day you’ll wish for something more.”
“I’m not that shallow, Nanny.”
I can’t say I believe her. Money talks louder than love sometimes.
“I’m not,” she argues when I don’t say anything. “You know I hate Finn’s obnoxiously expensive car and I make fun of him for it. You’ve heard me. Finn and I are not a good match. I would never date some rich boy. Porter and I belong together. We have a lot more in common. I just have to make him understand.”
“Let me tell you a story, darling. Scoot over,” I tell her.
I kick off my shoes that make my feet ache too much these days and slide into the bed with her. We pull the comforter up to our breasts and I let out a heavy sigh.
“Love is complicated, Emily.”
“No kidding.”
“Love is messy.”
Her phone buzzes and she has a missed text from Porter. Nosily, I read it along with her.
Porter: We can still go to the movies and hang out, but I don’t have time
for a relationship.
She huffs and tosses the phone back down. “What’s so wrong with me?”
“It’s not you,” I assure her. “He’s just not the one.”
“I’m not giving up,” she tells me, that haughty tone back in her voice.
“I was afraid you’d say that. Let’s get on with this story. You may change your mind and leave the boy alone.”
She curls against my side like she did when she was a youngster. “I’m pretty stubborn, Nanny. I still want to hear your story, though.”
Our fingers link—her youthful ones threaded with my arthritis-ridden ones.
“This isn’t my story,” I tell her, letting my mind drift to the past. “No, this story is theirs. Heath and Catrina. Like the poor boy and the stubborn princess from your story.”
“Oooh,” she says breathily. “I can’t wait.”
“It’s not pretty,” I admit.
“I bet it ends happily.”
Silly girl…happy endings are for fairy tales, not reality.
I kiss the top of her head. “I’ll let you be the judge…”
Heath—Twenty-Two Years Old
The Past…
“DIVERSIFICATION OF ASSETS WILL KILL us.”
I lift a brow, amused. “Seems dramatic.”
Mr. Crenshaw chuckles and his brown eyes flash with mischief. Just like hers. My empty heart that only ever beats for one quivers at the thought.
“I’m an old man. We’re allowed to elaborate,” he retorts before sucking in on his pipe. He blows out a plume of smoke that fills my lungs with toxins and familiarity. For his pipe was the very first memory I have of him. Tugging it from his grip. Banging it on the hardwood floors. Spitting out the tobacco after having a taste. Hell, my first word was probably pipe. My first everything is because of Rufus Crenshaw.
I owe him more than I could ever give him in return.
So for now, I give him my attention. I take notes. Mentally document every single word he says. The man is incredibly smart and rules C-Trades beautifully. He’s a multimillionaire, one whom I spend every waking minute aspiring to be like.
“We’re calling it ‘elaborating.’ Got it. Go on, Crenshaw. Tell me more about murderous economics.”
“We’re day traders, runt,” he explains, his lips tugging up on one side. “Market savvy gamblers, if you will. Diversification is all about safety. Eliminating risk. Our fortune is dependent on our ability to manipulate risk. We take the leaps our clients are afraid to take. Economic cliff jumpers. You just have to know where to jump.”
I chuckle and follow his gaze over to the mantle. The family portrait sits proudly, the spotlights affixed to the ceiling pointing at the picture. Crenshaw sits on a stool, a fierce expression on his normally smiling face. His eldest son, Hunter, who is my age exactly, stands behind him with his hand on his father’s shoulder glaring. Typical. I’m standing beside Hunter, my dark brown hair slicked back and my deep chestnut eyes narrowed. Calculating. But it’s who stands at the right of Crenshaw who makes the picture.
She fucking glows.
Catrina.
My everything.
In the portrait, she smiles as she’s supposed to. Prim and proper. It’s her eyes, though, that are wild. A wild I’ve spent my entire life chasing. Each time I think I have that wildness in my grasp, she wriggles away, taunts me some more, and the chase is back on.
I’ll chase her right into eternity.
“You hear me, runt?”
Unwillingly, I drag my eyes away from her long, silky chocolate-colored tresses. Away from her pouty lips just begging for a kiss. Away, away, away. But never for long. My eyes always find their way back.
“Runt?” I chuckle. “I passed you up years ago. Around the time I turned sixteen if I recall correctly.” I sit back on the leather sofa and adjust the knot on my tie. Reaching over at the side table, I pick up my tumbler of whiskey and take a swig. “Who’s the runt now?”
Crenshaw cackles. The old man is always so easy to please. He loves games and I’m the only one who entertains him with them. Crenshaw plucked me from the streets of the inner city where I was homeless, without a mother, and half starved. He pulled me from a life that would have been nothing but hunger and violence and despair.
He brought me home.
He made me his.
And he gave me her.
Stray, stray, stray…my eyes always stray. Her green eyes snare mine so easily, and from a picture no less. The powers she has over me, at just nineteen years old, are unexplainable. Otherworldly. An intensity that doesn’t die out with this lifetime, but will drag me into the next because we’re linked in a way that transcends everything.
Fucking everything.
“I have a meeting next week with a fellow from Switzerland. C-Trades is about to explode. Thanks to you, son.” Crenshaw regards me with fondness. Like a father. As though I am his son.
But his own son is lacking.
A smile tugs at my lips.
Hunter Crenshaw.
Knowing his own father sent him away to military school because he beat my ass one too many times, has satisfaction flooding through me. Crenshaw chose me over his blood. I fucking won. I always do.
“C-Trades was always meant to be a global conglomerate. This isn’t the dark ages. We have technology at our fingertips, so it would behoove us to utilize it,” I tell him, swirling the liquid around in my glass. I drain the alcohol, steal a glance at her, and then meet Crenshaw’s gaze. “Branching out in other countries is wise.”
He smiles at me fondly. “I knew the moment I looked into your big, soulful eyes hiding behind that shock of dirty, chocolate-colored hair that you were a smart kid. An intelligent little runt who was born at the wrong time to the wrong woman in the wrong town. God screws with the design sometimes.”
I bristle at his mention of God. Often, in his old age, Crenshaw goes off on tangents like his long-time friend and church pastor, Jacob Milton. God may have created me, but he made a joke of me.
I let my gaze roam around the ornate sitting room in the massive twenty-seven-thousand-square-foot Windy Hills Estate.
Looks like the joke is on God.
I make my own way.
“Men like us have to be hard when life calls for it,” Crenshaw continues, urging my attention his way. It’s comical how similar he and Catrina are. Always craving the spotlight. “And we have to be soft when life whispers for it. Do you know how to be soft, runt?”
Middle of the night skinny dipping in the lake.
Affections murmured on creamy white skin under a pink, silk sheet.
Small kisses on a perfect thigh. Freckled. Quivering. Mine.
“Perhaps,” I say.
He chuckles. “Don’t go too soft.”
“Never.”
I fiddle with the handkerchief inside my pocket on my expensive suit jacket. Nothing but the best for Crenshaw’s crew. I belong to that crew. The greatest tutors growing up. Fancy trips to Europe. Finest cars. Custom-made suits. Crenshaw demands the best for those around him.
Except his eldest son.
I wonder how good ol’ Hunter is doing these days anyway. The fucker hasn’t written or called. He’s just a ghost. Cold and forgotten.
My mind drifts to the note I’d found sitting on my bed earlier before Crenshaw called for me to chat.
Come find me…
Images of Catrina taunting me with a curved finger and a wicked grin have me feeling anything but soft. It’s amusing that she loves games more so than her father. Amusing and adorable. I play with her. I always have.
I love a good game of cat and mouse. It’s one we play often.
“I’m the cat, naturally,” she always says. “And you’re the field mouse. Dirty and wild.”
And then I always reply back with, “You’re the kitten and I’m the monster under your bed.”
Her emerald eyes always flash with a challenge.
“The monster can’t find me if I’m not in my be
d…” she then says.
And my response never changes. “I will always find you.”
“Sir,” I say as I stand, realizing the time. “I’m going to retire for the evening. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.”
“Ah, yes. Final exams.” He regards me proudly. “Soon you’ll be a college graduate and when you turn twenty-three in the fall, you’ll earn yourself a seat working for me. Not as my apprentice, but as a leader of my company.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I tell him, straightening my spine. It’s the truth. I’ve looked up to Crenshaw for as long as I can remember. Studying Finance, upon his guidance and on his dime. I would’ve graduated sooner, but I intern with him full-time. I can’t keep up a full load of classes while learning from him, so I do what I can. It’s taking longer than I’ve wished, but it’s for the best because I’m getting hands-on experience. I’ve taken each necessary step to one day be just as successful as him. A regular rags-to-riches tale. And in this story, the big bad wolf gets the princess in the end.
“Carry on then, runt.”
I give him a nod and then prowl through the dark hallways of the Windy Hills mansion. When Catrina and I were kids, we’d play hide and seek often. Hunter hated when we’d run through the house shouting and laughing. Bitter cunt. I’m stalking toward my room and nearly knock over the person coming out.
“My goodness, Heath! Watch where you’re going!” The housemaid, Helen, huffs and picks up the soiled rag she dropped.
I smirk at her. “I wasn’t the one running out of my room like my tail was on fire. Were you looking at my porn collection again?”
Her cheeks burn bright and she gapes at me. Helen, not much older than Hunter and me—and taken under Crenshaw’s wing as I was—is so easily scandalized by a few choice words. Always a favorite game for Catrina and me. How far can we push Helen until she either cries, whips us with whatever she has in her hands at the moment, or utters out how we’ve been possessed by the devil?
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she hisses and swats at me with her rag. “Those porn magazines are for derelicts and whores.” She shudders and I boom with laughter.
I flash her a wicked look. “You sure do know a lot about porn mags, naughty woman.”