Rush: A Second Chance Romance

by Ellen Lane

  That drew a small smile from Vlad - it was as difficult to imagine as it was gratifying. “He’d like that, wouldn’t he?”

  “He’d fucking love it,” Shiro deadpanned, the pipe beginning to spin jovially through his fingers again.

  This family, Vladimir thought - not for the first time since he’d been adopted - was something else. He wasn’t the oldest or even the most experienced, but they had absolutely no issue respecting him as Jackson Kensley’s heir. There had been several occasions when his brothers had even told him they could imagine no one else but Vlad taking over the family business.

  As much as their comments heartened him, they also put him under no small amount of pressure. The Kensleys had made him who he was today. Disappointing them wasn’t an option.

  Vladimir and Toshiro spent about an hour in comfortable silence together, watching the sun rise, before the rest of the family began to stir. Though they were all relatively early risers, Vlad could have predicted who got up first.

  His mother knocked quietly on his door around seven and asked what they wanted for breakfast. Toshiro tried, as he always did, to tell the older woman that they were grown men and could make their own breakfast, and, as always, Olivia Kensley looked at him as if he had offended her very existence. Then their father woke to begin his daily walk around the grounds. As the years passed, it got harder and harder for him to make the one mile circuit - but he was determined to get his exercise, nonetheless.

  Besides their parents and Toshiro, the only other occupant of the manor was Isabella, the housekeeper. The moment she was sure Vladimir was awake, she swept into the room to wish him good morning and begin making his bed - the end of any attempts he might have made to go back to sleep.

  Vladimir took the opportunity to indulge in a long shower as Toshiro’s words echoed through his mind once more. You’ll be ready to take his place. Blow him out of the water, even. Somehow, Vlad doubted he could do so well. He believed he was a decent hand in running the company, but how could he improve upon something that was already perfect? He had following his father’s model for almost a decade now, and he didn’t see the need to fix something that wasn’t broken.

  There was, of course, a part of him that worried he wasn’t innovative enough to maintain the momentum his father had built for the firm. If forced to Vladimir would admit that the prospect sometimes kept him up at night - but he had never been the kind of man to divulge his insecurities. His problems were his own, and the only people who knew about them were far too sensitive to his moods to mention them aloud.

  Sometimes, Vladimir wondered what people saw when they looked at him. When he gazed into the mirror, he never saw anything extraordinary. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t take pride in what he did, or in his position as a Kensley, but he was far from believing that he had the world at his beck and call. According to his father, by this point in his life, he should have been beating woman off with a stick, but Vlad almost never found the wherewithal to even address most women. He knew what they wanted, and refused to let a bad experience taint the possibility of finding actual affection.

  Not that a mate was very high on his list of priorities.

  For Vlad, the most important thing was making sure that his father’s legacy remained ironclad. Jackson’s was a heavy reputation to try and live up to.

  “You haven’t even had breakfast yet and you already look worried about something.” His mother was and always had been abnormally perceptive. As she set a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him at the breakfast table, her greeting made him frown.

  “Good morning to you too, Mom.”

  Across the table from him, Toshiro smirked over his coffee. It was something along the lines of what he would have said, but Olivia Kensley never pulled her punches.

  Even at sixty-five - and before most people were up for the day -she was an elegant woman, with light blonde hair that had gone almost completely gray and kind green eyes. When Vlad was younger, those eyes had never been judgmental or angry, even when he did things he knew must have displeased her. Now, even though he was certain she meant for him to talk about his concerns, her gaze wasn’t intimidating. Rather, she simply gazed at him expectantly as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

  Vlad blew out a breath, looking from her to his brother and then back again. He didn’t know which of them was worse when it came to prying. He thought he might prefer his other brothers’ light teasing to this kind of mental undressing.

  “I’m not worried.” His first line of defense was always a good offence - not that it usually worked.

  “You’ve always been a bad liar, darling.” Olivia answered breezily, coming to sit next to him. Once she put her coffee down, Vlad automatically added a bit of cream and two sugars - he knew how she liked it, and he wasn’t about to disrespect her, even if she was interrogating him. “You’re supposed to be on vacation, aren’t you?”

  “No such thing for Vlad.” Shiro commented off-handedly. As their mother had taken over the questioning, he was now only casually vested in the conversation, reading over a Japanese newspaper carefully. Vladimir scowled at him. He supposed he should be happy they weren’t ganging up on him, but this was almost as bad.

  “I’m always on call,” he returned, as diplomatically as he could, “I can’t be out of touch. There might be an emergency.”

  “You’re good at what you do, Vladimir.” Olivia returned warmly, taking an indulgent sip of her coffee as she smiled at him. “I can hardly imagine the people under you can’t deal with a minor issue or two in your absence.”

  That, Vlad wanted to insist, wasn’t the point. There were few people he trusted besides himself to be able to clean up if things got really messy; and the last thing he wanted was his father to get wind of anything that went amiss. “You should really try to relax, darling. You’re always so tense.” His mother patted his shoulder gently and, despite his best intentions, Vlad found some of the stress seeping from him. Being around his mother had that effect on him.

  No matter how wound up he was, her gentle suggestion was enough for him to start cycling down - it was ingrained in him. Vladimir took a deep breath before expelling it slowly, and Olivia beamed. “That’s it. Should I add some whiskey to your coffee? Would that help?”

  Vlad snorted. “It’s nine in the morning. I think I can do without.”

  “I’d like some.” Shiro held out his cup with a grin. “It’s never too early for a pick-me-up.”

  Olivia laughed, rising from her seat to putter through the kitchen, on the prowl for the bottle of whiskey her husband always kept close at hand. Jackson Kensley was incredibly fond of Scottish whiskey and there had never been a time - at least, not in Vlad’s memory - that there wasn’t a bottle or two present in their household.

  When he was seventeen and Alistair was nineteen, they’d stolen one from their father’s study and gotten ridiculously drunk. Their mother, ever practical, had announced that their half a day of retching was more than adequate punishment and left it at that. Since then, Vlad had learned to be more cautious with alcohol. Even these days, he didn’t consume much unless it was a special occasion, and even then, never to excess.

  His brother Ethan would argue that it was part of Vlad’s methodological personality pattern - getting drunk would, of course, interfere with his lucidity. He wouldn’t be able to worry, and worrying, as they all knew, was what Vladimir Kensley lived for.

  While Olivia was pouring a generous dollop of whiskey into Shiro’s coffee, the steady thud of their father’s walking stick announced that he had finally finished his morning walk. Vlad looked up to find the older man - still surprisingly spry for his age - making his way in through the back door, waving off the help of the gardener with a scowl. It was inevitable that one of the staff always tried to help him finish his circuit of the grounds when he appeared to slow down, but Jackson Kensley would have none of it.

  As far as he was concerned, the only time he would need someone to help
him with his daily exercise was when he was dead - and Vlad had no issue visualizing a number of pallbearers carrying his father’s casket in a circuit around the Manor as he urged them on from the afterlife.

  That was the kind of man Jackson Kensley was - fiercely independent - a slave to his routine. In that aspect, he was a lot like his son - but Jackson had always been far more adventurous. “What’s all this tension at the kitchen table?” Jackson thundered, setting aside his walking stick to ease down in the seat next to Toshiro. “It’s too early for such nonsense.”

  “I agree entirely.” Vlad piped up, nodding in relief. Toshiro merely smiled knowingly, taking a bite of his toast.

  “Morning Otou.”

  “Morning to you too.” With a bright smile, Olivia rose to peck her husband on the cheek before bustling to get his breakfast. By this time, the housekeeper had learned to get out of her way when it came to such things. While Olivia wasn’t opposed to having a couple of meals a week cooked for her, she vastly preferred to run her own house - with Isabella scurrying around in the background to do as much as she possibly could. It wasn’t that their mother and Isabella didn’t get along - quite the contrary in fact. Olivia was always trying to get the woman to take paid vacations, which Isabella refused as if someone had insulted her validity as a person. She had probably learned that from Olivia herself.

  It was quite the interesting dynamic, to be sure. “Are they already hassling you this early in the morning, Vladimir?” It was if Jackson had a sixth sense. He always seemed to know what was going on before he entered a room.

  While he had been glad of the interventions when he was younger, Vladimir now found them slightly embarrassing. He was more than old enough to be able to fend for himself.

  “Everything’s fine.” He took a sip of his own coffee, casting both Shiro and his mother warning looks. If he was supposed to be here on vacation, then hopefully they could be kind enough to keep any conflict from arising.

  “Bullshit.” Vlad nearly spit out his coffee at his father’s profession. “You’re supposed to be here on vacation and they’re hassling you. Lay off this boy, you hear?”

  Vladimir could have groaned. Instead, he busied himself staring at the table, hoping that his face wasn’t as red as it felt. “He’s hardly a boy, Jackson. He’s thirty-five years old.” Olivia replied, her smile amused.

  Exactly. Which meant that this entire conversation was unwarranted.

  “All I’m saying, Olivia, is that you should give him some time to himself. God knows he worries enough without you lot worrying him about his worrying!”

  Jesus Christ. Spending time with his family always tended to be equal parts relaxing and exasperating- of course, this particular breakfast was rapidly turning into the latter.

  “I think I’m going to finish my coffee on the terrace.” With that proclamation, Vlad rose from the table, leaning down briefly to peck his mother on the cheek. “I’ll see you all in a bit.” It was, he figured, the safest way to keep his dignity intact without worrying that he might say something he’d later regret.

  It was times like these, Vlad mused, as he left the kitchen, when he wondered why he couldn’t relax with more ease. He lived to stress about one thing or the other, and without something on his docket, he felt ill-at-ease.

  It had been that way for as long as Vlad could remember. Back in Russia, he always had to worry about feeding his family. His father had often been so deeply under the influence of alcohol that he could barely find food for himself, let alone his son or infant daughter. Even after Vita had been taken away from them by the government, his wife spent more time screaming at him to sober up than she did going food shopping - mostly because they usually didn’t have any money to do so.

  Was it really such a surprise that he resorted to stealing? Vlad had always had a razor-sharp intellect, and he was ridiculously street-smart to boot - which meant that he never got caught.

  Or, at least, almost never.

  If he hadn’t had his run-in with the police at thirteen, however, he would never have met Jackson Kensley - and he wouldn’t be where he was now.

  Of course, Vlad wasn’t always certain that he was cut out to be a Kensley. Even after over two decades, he was still uncertain of his place with them. Not as an adopted son, to be sure. He knew that his mother, father and brothers all loved him unconditionally. It was his father choosing him as head of the company that he questioned.

  There had to be someone more qualified - someone who wouldn’t worry about every little miniscule detail…

  “You know, just because I tell them not to pester you doesn’t mean I don’t question what you’re thinking.”

  He looked over his shoulder, unsurprised to find that his father had followed him out onto the terrace and stood in the doorway, assessing his son with knowing eyes. At his piercing stare, Vladimir merely chuckled. “You can assume it’s something to do with the business. You know I can’t ever really take a break from it.”

  “One of the reasons I’m sure you’re best to replace me.”

  The words made Vlad blanch slightly as his father shut the door to venture out into the cool morning air with him. “Because I’ll worry myself into an early grave?”

  “No.” With a small smile, Jackson curled a strong hand into his shoulder. “Because a man who worries is always looking to improve himself.”

  Well, when you put it that way, it sounded almost noble. Vlad had to hand it to his father, he had a way of making everything more poetic. Hamlet would have had a field day with him. “You know, you’ve done an incredible job with the firm. It’s doing better than ever under your management.”

  Vlad glanced at his father, his lips quirking slightly. “All I’m doing is following your business models.”

  “Which is perfectly fine. You’ll find your own stride soon, Vlad. I wish you wouldn’t put such pressure on yourself. You’re too smart for your own good.” The statement made his son chuckle lowly, a bubble of humor chasing away the heaviness in his chest.

  “Never smart enough.”

  “More than smart enough.” Jackson ruffled his hair in a gesture that might have been more suited for a teenager than for a thirty-five year old man, but Vladimir found he didn’t mind. It was always reassuring when the architect of a multi-billionaire empire reassured you that you weren’t fucking up completely - and it didn’t hurt when said architect was your father. “You know what might take the edge off for you?”

  Vlad swallowed a groan at the subject change. He knew what was coming. It was a conversation he might have expected to have with his mother, but Jackson Kensley seemed determined that all his sons should find the right women to be with; he had a tendency to play matchmaker that Vlad had done his best to avoid over the years.

  “Please don’t say a woman, Dad.” He returned, as carefully as he could. “I’ve got far too much on my plate right now to be concerned with something as trivial as dating.”

  “Trivial?” Shit. Now he’d done it. “Do you know, son, that if it weren’t for your mother, there would be no Kensley enterprises? She believed in me when no one else would - gave me the courage to keep from losing my mind when I felt like everything was coming down around my ears. The right woman can make you see everything differently.”

  Yes, and the right woman could also distract him - leading to a disastrous mistake where one could be avoided.

  It wasn’t as if Vlad didn’t like losing himself in a woman on occasion. Lord knew there were more than enough willing, gorgeous women throwing themselves at him in his position - he just didn’t think that any of them really wanted to burden themselves with everything that came with his job title. Sure, there was money and prestige - but Vlad had come to realize that neither of those things meant very much if he didn’t deserve them.

  So he always worked to make sure he was deserving.

  “Dad, you know I would never demean the relationship between you and Mom. She’s an amazing woman.” Vlad finally retu
rned, eying his father seriously. “But I have to be honest: Getting married is pretty low on my to-do list right now. Especially knowing…” he trailed off, leaving the words unsaid. He didn’t like to consider what he knew was coming - especially considering how hard he was on himself as things were.

  But Jackson was never one to shy away from the truth. He didn’t hesitate to finish his son’s sentence. “That I’m retiring?” He arched a brow, his expression surprised. “Vladimir, you’re going to be a better CEO than I ever was - and I’m sure that you’ll realize it over the next year.”

  There was a healthy retort on the dark-haired man’s lips when he realized what his father had just said. The color drained from his face as he turned to look over the older man with a mixture of trepidation and disbelief. “A year? One year?”

  Jackson, however, looked far from worried. “I wanted to tell you at the breakfast table, but you looked like you already had a lot on your mind.”

  That was an understatement. “Vladimir, you’re ready for this. You’ve been ready for years.”

  He knew better than to argue, but Vlad still had a lot to learn. While he was good with the mechanics of business, he was no genius when it came to innovation. That was his father’s forte - how was he supposed to implement that kind of development? “You shouldn’t forget,” His father’s voice brought him back to the present, where the older man was smiling at him warmly, “You’re far from alone. There’s a reason you’re where you are and your brothers are where they are - the four of you work as a cohesive unit that keeps the company running smoothly. And your excellent leadership ensures that it will stay that way, Vlad.”

  Slowly, he nodded before gazing back over the grounds. When he was a child, he had run away more times than he could count to climb some tree or another and lose himself in the foliage. Even then, he hadn’t been sure that he could be the Kensley everyone expected him to - and that had been far before he had known his father planned to put him at the head of the company.