Lost : The Little Sisters Book One

by H. M. Irwing

  “It was just this once,” she added reasonably. “What are the odds of my coming across such a perfect specimen of the male of our species, again?” The last was said a little woefully.

  “Then what happened?” Lucy demanded, knowing it was just nerves that had Cat putting on such bravado. Both Emily and Lucy strained forward, stunned but waiting for more. But Cat had fallen silent and appeared lost in thought.

  “Where the hell did you go fuck?” asked Emily, looking on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  “In Lisa’s brother’s Mark’s room. I guess he must know Mark,” Cat said mildly.

  “If he’s Mark’s age then that’s illegal, what he did. He had sex with a minor. Mark’s what? twenty?” Emily pounced, wanting to dig her nails into the asshole.

  “I don’t want him to go to jail. I think I’m in love with him,” announced Cat, again stunning them all.

  Lucy felt her head start to spin. This was a lot to take in right after her tearful farewell to Jace that morning and knowing that Celine would be there any moment to take her shopping. She would have to cancel. She was not even dressed for that yet, still clad in her shorts and tee as she was. With Celine, Lucy would have to try to look good next to the glamorous goddess. She really hated shopping… and Celine.

  “You didn’t even get his name?” asked Emily, still fuming mad. Then Lucy felt bad for thinking about anything other then what just happened to Cat. She was a horrible older sister.

  “Nope,” cried Cat regretfully. It appeared that was all she regretted over losing her V-card. Not getting the fucker’s bloody name.

  “He was just so mouth-wateringly delicious and lost looking. I loved that he looked so lost and lonely,” Cat sighed stupidly.

  “He was a fucking gate crasher, of course he looked lost!”

  Emily let out a ‘tsk-tsk’ automatically at Lucy’s swearing and earned herself a glare in return. Then the blare of the horn jolted her into action. Celine was there, and Lucy still looked like shit. Deciding she really couldn’t care less, and that she would not be going anyway, Lucy rose from the bed.

  “Not another word until I get back,” she warned. “I don’t want to miss out on anything.”

  Her senses were all hyped-up, still shaken from the shock of what happened to her little sister only the night before. The night she had not been there to protect them. The night she had been captured in pleasures of her own in Jace’s arms. Guilt ate at her as she dashed off downstairs to get the front door.

  “Richard?” Lucy gasped unexpectedly. Was this to be the day for shocks then? “No… I mean… uh… Celine?”

  “Celine couldn’t make it. I volunteered in her stead.”

  “I bet you did,” Lucy muttered under her breath.

  “Pardon?”

  “No need… at least not yet,” she muttered back a little disjointedly.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Richard then, peering down at her interestedly. “You’re looking a little panicked.”

  Lucy was feeling rather flustered. “No… er, nope.”

  “Look, if this is about what happened over at my place the other day….”

  “No!… er… nope!” Lucy so didn’t want to go there just yet.

  “Then it’s not as if you’re afraid to go out with me, is it?” Richard lifted a mocking brow challengingly.

  The nerve! Lucy was torn between needing to slap his arrogant face and needing to prove him wrong. She never did handle challenges properly. She always seemed to dive right into them face first and yet, she never learned. But not this time. This time there were far more pressing matters at hand then going shopping with this… this man.

  “I will not be going shopping with you, Richard.” Lucy managed with a cold politeness that surprised no one more than it surprised her.

  “You will be doing exactly that, Lucy,” Richard refuted softly, but there was nothing soft in his steely undertone. “You and I need to talk, Lucy, and without your precious Jace underfoot.”

  Lucy clenched her fist against the rising urge and instead she took a deep, calming breath; glancing back upstairs, she contemplated the bombshell Cat just dropped on her. There was not much she could do about that and she knew Emily would have her well in hand.

  “We will have to be quick. I hate shopping.” Lucy muttered warningly. Her gold eyes clashing with his dark voids. His answering grin was fleeting.

  “I am ready whenever you are,” Richard murmured, stepping back to allow her to pass through.

  “I… er… I just need to get my bag. I’ll see you in the car,” Lucy replied shortly, before rudely shutting the door in his face.

  She rushed back upstairs to grab hold of her bag before hurrying back to face Cat. She interrupted the blasting Emily was dishing out to her, saying, “I have to rush, Cat. But I’ll be right back.” Lucy reached out to draw Cat into a tight embrace. Tears rolled unbidden down her cheeks. Her little sister and she… she… Lucy couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave not knowing all of it. The frantic thudding of her heart would not allow for it. Lifting the back of her hand to her face she dashed it across her wet cheek.

  “No, wait,” Lucy did a swift turnabout. “This discussion is not over.” She drew back to add sternly. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened, and be quick about it. I have to hear the whole of it before I go.”

  Cat put up her best pouty look before finally giving in to Lucy’s unflinching glare. This was not the time to try acting cute. A rarity on Cat which, at any other time, would have ascertained she got her way. But not this time.

  “He took my hand and sparks flew. Before I knew it, I was in the room with him and then he dropped his lips down to mine and I crashed out. I simply have no recollection of actual thoughts; I only felt, and those feelings… those feelings were mind-blowing. I was lost in it, Lucy. Completely and utterly in his thrall. And later I was too shocked to know we’d done it. It was as if my natural common sense returned to shock me into action. He appeared unconscious having passed out… after… you know. I panicked and took off. I found Emily and we hauled ass home.”

  “Wait! You said he passed out. Was he drunk or high on drugs?” Lucy asked.

  “Nope, he was as sober as me. At least I think he was. I couldn’t smell anything on his breath. Neither of us had any alcohol. As you know I don’t drink, and I smelt nothing on him. I tell you it was all so strange and unusual, but if he were before me again and if the same feelings arose I would unhesitatingly jump his bones again,” Cat stated matter-of-factly.

  Lucy didn’t know her. She realised that after all these years of watching her little sister grow, she didn’t really know her sister at all. This Cat who stood before sounded nothing like the Cat she thought she knew. This was a stranger. She obviously felt no remorse for her actions.

  Was this her way of seeking the attention that was always directed at Emily? Had she finally flipped out and gone crazy? Had puberty finally set in? Was she now officially boy crazy? These were all the questions whose answer Lucy didn’t know, and she didn’t have the time now to figure it all out.

  “I have to go now. Don’t do anything until I get back,” Lucy yelled out while making a dash for the front door. Not too far out from there she found a fuming Richard steaming behind the wheel of a Beemer.

  “Sorry, I had a crisis to attend to,” Lucy muttered as she got into the car.

  “A crisis, really? Since when were you the one running a multi-million-dollar business?” Richard snapped.

  “Hey, I am not the one who wanted to go out shopping. It’s fine if you’re too busy. In fact, it’s perfect!”

  There was a tightening around the corners of his lips, but Richard chose not to respond otherwise.

  “Where is Celine?” Lucy finally asked into his stony silence.

  “I sent her off to accompany Jace on his business trip,” he said shortly.

  The scoundrel manipulating them to his own ends. The tension in the car shifted. Now it was Lucy who s
at in stony silence. She could tell that he snuck several sideways glances at her along the way before finally giving in to say, “So what gives? Tell me what the fuck is wrong.”

  Lucy jumped, startled by his angry tone, but she was already provoked beyond reason herself. She’d had it with everyone trying to manipulate her actions to their own ends. First Knyte Starr, who wanted her to go over to San Francisco to see him, then there was Jace who was equally determined that they be a real couple, and now Richard is about with his own agenda.

  Lucy felt torn in so many directions, but it was really Cat and what happened to her only last night that had Lucy churning with an unreasonable amount of unfocused hate. It made absolute sense to Lucy that Richard should be her outlet of choice for that build-up of venom.

  So, she said, “Where do I start? How about how you’re a manipulative asshole trying to ruin the lives of everyone around you? My feelings for Jace are none of your concern and neither are his feelings for me. You have no right to dictate anything to anybody. Who the fuck do you think you are?” But Lucy breathed with a raging anger that refused to be denied. “You, fucking arrogant piece of… piece of…,” she had to stutter at that for loss of words but then continued mindlessly on, “and then with what happened to poor Cat! How can things like that happen? How can things like you happen? I still can’t believe that my poor little sister just…”

  Lucy caught herself in time. She was not about to confide her family problems in him. He was the enemy.

  “Tell me,” he ordered shortly, and something in her just snapped. Her hand flashed out of its own accord aiming unerringly for his chiselled cheek. The man took stony to new highs. But even on impact, his hand was there, clasped firmly about her wrist in an unbreakable hold and successfully limiting the impact of her assault so that it was almost a caress instead.

  Lucy instantly drew back and clenched her fist to strain urgently against his hold. But Richard was a well of strengths that went beyond a brilliant mind and a body made of pure muscles, stern self-discipline was what moulded him into the man he was today. And better men have caved in to the power of his will.

  “Tell me, Lucy,” he gritted out through clenched teeth and an inexplicable trembling pervaded her limbs. The craving to confess all to someone stronger, to someone who could not only take it all in and not wilt but stir her in the right direction. The urge to tell Richard all was overwhelming. Lucy realised at that point she needed direction. She needed help. She needed more than a friend who would support her no matter what she did. What Lucy needed was someone to simply objectively tell her what to do? Richard offered that escape.

  He would just bark out a command and with all his natural arrogance, he would have her do exactly that. Lucy’s heart lightened in hope. The yearning to be free from all that plagued her thoughts, guiding her actions. Just like that Lucy opened her mouth and spilled the beans, and later, sobbed in regret of having confessed it all. Lucy was a mess.

  Richard drove on quietly, his grip still secure about her wrist almost as if he had forgotten it was even there. It was sometime later before he finally spoke. While there was no visible difference in his choice of words, Lucy could still hear an unexpected softening to his tone.

  “Clean up. You’re a mess,” he said mildly, tossing his handkerchief at her. Who in the hell used those anymore? But Lucy gratefully accepted and blew her nose into it before turning back to scowl balefully at him. She felt manipulated somehow. She had been at a low point. Weak.

  There was no other reasonable explanation why she’d told all her family secrets to a virtual stranger. A detestable one at that. The freaking enemy. Lucy buried her face into the palms of her hands, appalled at her actions.

  There was no going back from this. She’d doomed them all. Having given Richard Reeves all the ammunition he would need and then some to plunge them all to their immediate doom. Lucy’s vivid imagination got the better of her and it was all she could do to hold back the whimper of distress.

  “So, you don’t know who this guy is? No idea at all?” Richard, with all the sharp focus of a trained business mind managed to cleave through all of it to cut to the heart of the matter that was an immediate concern—Cat and the man she’d slept with the night before.

  Lucy mutely shook her head, refusing to say another word for fear of incriminating herself and her family further. There was no knowing with Richard which way the wind was going to blow. He had been the backbone for the Neils’ family business, keeping them solvent for so long, but what had been his true purpose behind all that?

  To secure Jace for his brother-in-law? Lucy didn’t know, this was just something else in the pile of sludge she’d off-shouldered onto Richard’s lap. Hopefully he could address that at some point and help clear things up a bit.

  But for now, Lucy shook her head, staring at his tense profile and marvelled at how he managed to ignore all her ramblings in between the torrent of information she poured out at him and zoom in on the key issue.

  “Hmmm…,” was all he said in reply.

  Hmm?

  “Hmm… what?” She asked rudely. He just brought out the worst in her, no questions about it.

  “Your stop has arrived,” he said instead, cutting off the engine and getting out before Lucy could catch her breath to question him further. She stared after him, stumped. Had he just done that? Listened to her life story and brushed it off as insignificant? Lucy flushed beet red with a unique mixture of anger, embarrassment, and plain humiliation. But she was done feeling sorry for herself. Done being emotionally trampled over. Gritting her own teeth, Lucy turned then to look out the window and gaped at what she saw.

  Her mouth fell open in aghast.

  “We’re going in there?” She asked, her breathlessness raised high to a fever pitch. “We can’t go in there!” Lucy exclaimed adamantly. Richard only lifted a sardonic brow while holding her door insistently open. Then she was being marched on, straight for the revolving doors in front of her. Lucy put her foot down, but Richard merely slipped his hand about the small of her waist to urge her on forwards. She was thrown into a panic.

  “No, you don’t understand,” hissed Lucy insistently. “I really can’t go in there.” And she really couldn’t. Her meagre savings wouldn’t stretch it. Behind those doors, the smallest article of clothing cost nothing less than a thousand dollars. Thousands she did not have, let alone spare to spend.

  But Richard appeared oblivious to her pleas. She grabbed at his arm and tugged, but Richard’s expensively shod foot was already within the revolving doors of Chanel. The momentum tugged her off balance and Lucy found herself brought up against him. She couldn’t believe he’d done this to her.

  Was this his way of embarrassing her into leaving Jace alone? While she herself would not have concocted so diabolical a plan, she could see how it could work. Lucy shifted hesitantly on her feet, feeling at an immediate disadvantage. If his aims were making her feel incredibly poor, he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Lucy felt penniless standing there.

  She was finally and seriously starting to give college the consideration it deserved. There was nothing like feeling poor to put one’s priorities into perspective. Her dad should have had the foresight of marching her into this store a lot earlier.

  Collins Street, Melbourne, was home to the wealthiest stores in Victoria, catering to the filthy rich. It was also the headquarters to all the banks and the financial hub for investors. Wealth screamed along both sides of the street, and yet, Lucy had never noticed that fact until now. She had always remained stoic, marching along the footpath moving on to whatever intended destination. She might have spared a sceptical grin on peering in these lavishly displayed windows but never actually had the temerity to cross its threshold. Standing there now as a customer had her shaking with trepidation.

  “Are you alright?” Richard peered down at her pale face quizzically. Lucy breathed in hard to stop herself from hyperventilating and flushed red for her efforts. Lucy
nodded her head absently, counting the seconds before she could pull away and leap for safety. Her gaze rushed back longingly towards the revolving doors. But his hold hadn’t slackened. Instead his grip tightened, holding Lucy firmly in place.

  Lucy looked up, watching with fascinated horror as his lips seemed to inch down closer to her. But then they were moving. Saying something.

  “Snap out of it Lucy. Its only money,” said the man with the money.

  At any other time, Lucy would have marvelled at his perception but as it was she could only freak out even more. That was easy for him to say. Money! He had it. She didn’t.

  “Can I help you, Mr Reeves?” Asked the snottiest snob of all time as she deliberately ignored Lucy to give all her attention to the only one of the pair that stank of money—Richard. Lucy could see the dollar signs and then something more gleam in her eyes.

  She recalled then that Richard was a celebrity of sorts. He was certainly well photographed in the papers often enough. The people who worked here no doubt made it their business to know the who’s who that had the deep pockets they liked.

  But Richard ignored the woman completely and merely drew to a halt, eyeing the display in the shop sceptically. It almost made Lucy grin to see he was less than impressed. She honestly doubted there was anything that could impress him. But it looked like he knew exactly what he wanted, which begged the question, had he done this before? With Celine? Or someone else? Strangely, Lucy felt her stomach squirm at that possibility.

  Having had enough, Lucy drew in a ragged breath. “You know I won’t be able to afford anything here, don’t you?” She blurted out, finally unable to contain herself. Lucy ignored the rosy flush to her cheeks and met his gaze determinedly. Pride be damned before the price brought her down to her knees.

  “Don’t worry, I never let my dates pay,” he said, smirking down at her. That shook her. Had he just said what she thought he said?

  “I am not your date.” Lucy was swift to protest.