Page 33 of The Billionaire’s Fake Fiancée
Past him, at the far end of the room, Eric looks at me, his features frozen in near comical surprise.
16
Jace
* * *
Jace had entered the pool house looking for Sienna, knowing he'd been away for too long. The meeting with his father had, as usual, left him feeling inadequate and angry.
People mellowed with age, but not his dad.
The man was hell-bent on cheating the aging process. His father worked out every day. Took anti-oxidants and supplements to keep his energy levels up.
Each of his wives was younger than the last, as if he was trying to absorb the vigor of the younger women who still flocked to him.
His current wife—number five to be precise—was only five years older than Jace. Thirty-five to his father's sixty.
And when Jace had originally asked for his inheritance, Darren had been very clear. He was willing to bail him out one last time, provided … he came back and joined the family business. And while at it, he had to get married and produce an heir, to carry on the Walker name.
And seeing Asher in the pool with Sienna had pushed him over the edge.
Rage had whipped through Jace, surprising him in its intensity. Reaching the edge of the pool, his foot had brushed the dress that was half in water.
Now, as he stands there, he knows she is baiting him. Forcing him to look her in the eye and tell her off, tell her to leave, to remove herself from his life.
He isn’t having any of it.
She isn’t getting away that easily.
Sienna hauls herself out of the pool, sliding into the shirt Asher drapes around her almost immediately.
But not before he and every other man in the room gets an eyeful of her bare ass. Her curved, smooth, round ass. Barely covered by a flimsy thong, it flared up to meet the hollow of her back.
A noise from the side and he turns to see his father right behind him, his eyes riveted to the scene. Darren's chest rises and falls erratically. He is turned on. Jace hopes to God he has a heart attack.
A giggle draws his attention back to where Asher is leading Sienna to the opposite exit. Jace hasn’t been able to take his eyes off her. The sway of her butt under the shirt. And her hair, now wet, hints of copper glinting among the thick strands.
Now Sienna turns and throws one last look at him over her shoulder.
A dare.
She's daring him to follow her.
To find her.
His fist entangled in the wet, green dress, he turns to come up against his father.
Darren's eyes snap at him with anger, and below that, the never far away boredom. The one that Jace has faced all his life.
"After that stunt your girlfriend pulled, I am tempted to disinherit you right now, but I won't. Not yet."
"To what do I owe that honor?" Jace snaps, not in any mood to tangle with Darren just then.
"I know you think I'm being unfair in the conditions I've imposed on you. But one day, perhaps when you are a father yourself, you'll know why I did it."
It's the first time in all the time Jace's known him that Darren's hinted at his awareness of his own role as a father. Yet, Darren's always taken position as the patriarch to the extended family seriously. After his brother's death, he's ensured the future of his niece, Natalie.
But with his son—his only child—he's always been uncompromising. A part of Jace even recognizes the wisdom in that. That his father is trying to teach him discipline that will hold him in good stead in the future. And yet, that boy inside him who'd hungered for his father's love still resents the heavy hand with which his father had controlled his life.
