Page 19 of Gold Digger
“Yeah, well, now she’s decided she’s been ‘smothered’ for too long in the family business. She’s joined my best friend’s finance company to prove herself or some such bullshit. It’s ridiculous.”
“Is that why you’re angry?”
“Sorry about that,” he winced and looked away from me. “You don’t need me storming around like a bear with a sore head.”
“Er… it is your house, you realise?” I asked with a small smile. “You can storm as much as you want.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to be a?—”
“D-word?”
He smiled. “That’s right.”
“Well, I don’t think you are, if that’s any consolation.”
“High praise.”
“The highest. So what else has happened to make you all door-slammy?”
The duke started rearranging all the chess pieces back into their relevant places. God, his hands were sexy. Tanned, withlarge, manly veins and everything. His chunky, expensive watch peeking out of his shirt sleeve added to the effect. Not to mention the subtle aftershave I could just about make out. His hair looked like he’d run his hands through it a few times already, and his stubble was already edging towards five o’clock shadow territory. Seriously, it was almost indecent to be wandering around looking this good at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday. He cleared his throat, and when I looked up into his blue eyes, I realised he was smiling.
“You okay there?” he asked. “You zoned out for a minute.”
“S-sorry,” I said, giving myself a mental shake to snap out of this.
“Your move,” he said in a soft voice, and I blinked. Was he saying I should…
“I… er, I?—”
“Chessmove, Lottie,” he said, gestured to the chessboard and raised an eyebrow.
I cleared my throat as heat flooded my face and hurried to grab the pawn, making a move with no thought at all.
“My brother-in-lawisa bit of a dick. That’s what made me door-slammy.”
I pressed my lips together. No way was I giving my honest opinion on Blake. “Claire doesn’t seem like she’d marry a d-word.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders under his expensive suit. “He used to be okay, but lately…” he trailed off and looked to the side. “He was one of those dickheads in the club that didn’t move the glasses out of the way for you.”
“Oooh.” I made an eek face, feigning surprise. “I see.”
“Exactly, mega dickhead alert. But that’s really only when he drinks. The deal he’s just fucked up on the land that we need to develop the new bars has nothing to do with the booze.”
I bit my lip and looked to the side. In my experience, booze could come into play in a lot more scenarios than people were aware of.
“Should never have let him take the lead on it, but hesaidit was under control. Even now, he thinks he can still salvage it.”
“Maybe give him a chance,” I said softly, and his eyebrows went up.
“Why are you defending him? He was a total prick that night at the club.”
I shrugged. “He’s your family. Family is important. You’ve got all these threads between you in families, weaving in and out, strengthening you all as a whole, giving everyone a safety net, a sense of belonging. Don’t risk cutting any of the threads. Not when your sister could be the one to fall through the hole it creates.”
He sat up and blinked at me. “I never thought of it like that,” he said slowly. My heart clutched in my chest, and my throat felt thick for a moment. If you’ve never had family and stability ripped from under you, you can’t truly understand how important it is, how rudderless you are without it. I tried to shove the jealousy I was feeling down as I watched him consider my words.
“Is that how you are with your family?” he surprised me by asking. In my experience, men like to talk about themselvesexclusively.
I shrugged. “I’d do anything for my family.” That was true enough, even if my family extended to just Hayley. The threads that bound us were unbreakable.
