The girl, fourteen, ducked her head. Her long hair spilled forward, a black wave shining in hot May sun, playing hide-and-seek with pale cheeks flushed from the heat. I couldn’t yet see her eyes, but her lips were large and full and pouty. She wore a slip-style floral sundress. The shoulder-strap had fallen, and I couldn’t stop staring at the creamy transition from her collarbone to her shoulder. She was tall for her age, but somehow not gangly. My attention-starved sixteen-year-old cock roared at a peek of side-boob.
“Dickey, you have such a charming way with words.” The girl’s mother, my soon-to-be-stepmother, Delilah, smiled beneath her giant pink Derby Day hat. My mother hadn’t been the hat sort—proven when she’d died in a motorcycle accident while not wearing a helmet. The fact that her death had come while she’d been on hiatus from being a wife or mom was never discussed. My sister, Jennie, older than me by two years, struggled with Mom’s passing to the point that she’d been in and out of in-house depression therapy that my father called her spa visits. That’s where she was today, and I shamefully didn’t miss her. Her black moods brought me down, and in this moment, with this girl, I only wanted to fly. “Savannah, where are your manners? Give your new brother a hug.”
The girl looked up and the shock of her green eyes made me bite my tongue. Blood, coppery and deep, flavored her first fleeting brush against me. She’d smelled clean. Of soap and sweat and the champagne allowed by the occasion.
My attraction had been visceral.
I’d popped my cherry at thirteen with my Dutch nanny, and continued munching cuntcake at the New Orleans boarding school where Dad tucked me away. No shit, I wanted Savannah, but this was different from my standard operating procedure. She was different. The fact that she was soon to be my sister? Was this a fucking joke?
—
Another scotch returned me to the present.
Jerry and his girls sang Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” and instead of being repulsed, Savannah went with it, laughing and twirling and shaking her tight ass. As siblings, we’d shared countless celebrations. Holidays and weddings. Graduations and birthdays and Dad’s work promotions. She’d partied through them all while I typically sulked and wondered if I was a bad person for not missing my birth mother as much as Jennie. What can I say? I’m not a fun guy. As a general rule, people don’t like me, and I could give two shits.
When Jennie’d met and married Luke in college, and he and I had subsequently gone on to be friends and business partners, I thought it marked a fresh start for all of us—especially once they’d had three kids, but her depression had clung to her like emotional black tar and six months earlier, she’d taken her own life. Luke understandably took it hard. He’d packed up their children, resigned from the company and moved closer to his parents in Maine. We hadn’t seen them since. My father and I never spoke of Jennie’s passing or the three grandchildren—my nieces and nephew—who were for all practical purposes strangers.
Savannah and her mother had been especially kind to my sister, which only made me love them both all the more. Most of all, I craved their normalcy and light.
Sure, the booze and being back home and thinking of Jennie had turned me extra morose, but for real, nothing in life brought me pleasure but causing others legal pain. I had more money than I could spend in two lifetimes. I had great cars and houses and an endless supply of eager woman. Literally, the only thing I didn’t have—could never have, but had always wanted—was Savannah. And that fact killed me. It had fueled every horrible act I’ve ever committed and as she strode toward me in a red cocktail number, long legs bared to her American thighs, frustration and pain clenched inside. I wanted to pitch my glass against the nearest wall. Punch something. Kick a barstool into the club’s glowing aqua pool.
Instead, I pulled my shit together, bracing myself against her spell.
“Hey, smiley…” She leaned in for a hug-and-cheek-kiss combo, wreathing me in her custom perfume’s lush blend of vanilla, jasmine and the ocean. I knew, because I had a fresh batch made for her on my every trip to Paris. She wore her long hair up, and I fought the urge to tug it down. “Just for me, couldn’t you at least crack a hint of a smile?”
I tried and failed, but she hugged me again and I couldn’t help it, being with her was so amazing that a half-assed grin emerged like shy sun peeking out from behind clouds.
“There it is. God, it’s good to see you. It’s been too long.”
“Yeah.” An eternity, yet still not long enough.
“How have you been? Mom said your friends Liam and Ella finally had their baby?”
I nodded.
“Is she as adorable in person as she is in tabloids?” The media adored Ella, and she loved them back—for a price. She used all photo proceeds of the little princess to fund her battered women charity.
Shrugging, I said, “I guess she’s okay. If you go for that sort of thing.”
“Garrett, stop. You cloak yourself in this tough-guy persona, but it’s me. I see beyond your mean lawyer act.”