The Tycoon Read online

  I turned my back on him and went to go find my mother, who was buried under a big oak tree.

  “Mom,” I breathed, and I put down the pink alstroemeria I’d brought with me. They had been her favorite. “I’m sorry I haven’t been back. I won’t be gone so long again.”

  With Dad gone, I could come back a few times a year. The thought actually made me smile.

  “Oh,” Bea whispered. “I didn’t even think about bringing Mom flowers.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I did it for both of us.”

  The minister called everyone over to that open hole in the earth and I stood beside Hank King’s casket, in between my two sisters, and felt nothing.

  You were a son of a bitch, Dad. And you don’t deserve my grief.

  Sabrina and Bea cried enough for me, anyway.

  We dropped white roses onto his casket and then climbed back into the limo. Bea put her head on my shoulder and I could feel her shaking breaths. Sabrina looked out the window. Even puffy eyed from crying she was beautiful.

  “I feel like everything is different,” she said. “Like…it’s all going to change.”

  “Why?”

  “If we don’t have Dad?” she asked. “And the ranch? Will we see each other?”

  “We didn’t see each other before,” Bea said.

  “We’re still sisters,” I said, holding Bea’s hand.

  “Hardly,” Sabrina said.

  “I think it will be better without Dad,” I said. “Easier. We can come back to the ranch more often. We can have holidays here. Summers.”

  “Who wants this ranch?” Sabrina’s beautiful face wrinkled with disgust.

  “Don’t say it like that,” Bea snapped. “This was our home.”

  “Stop,” I said, before the two of them could get into it any further. “We’ll find out when the will is read.”

  “I bet you get it,” Sabrina said to me, and I laughed.

  “That’d be a mistake.” I turned and looked out the window, too. And soon the limo was filled with our silence.

  Dad, I thought, don’t fuck us up with this will.

  Back at the ranch, the party was kicking into full swing. All of Dad’s business associates were there, drinking his bourbon. White-gloved waitstaff walked around with canapés and glasses of wine. I had a flashback to the engagement party and nearly turned around and left.

  But my sisters and the thought of the damage that damn will could cause kept me rooted to the spot.

  The secret was to go dead inside. Like when I had to do any public speaking. I just… went numb. And cold and far, far outside my body. Like a distant moon or something.

  Of course, when I stepped into the house, the first person to come up to me was Clayton.

  I was rocked slightly by the sight of him in his trim black suit and crisp white shirt. He seemed so much bigger than I remembered. And the memory of how, at one time, he’d belonged to me—or I’d thought he belonged to me—and I’d been able to walk up to him and put my head against that wide plane of his chest and be comforted by the warmth of him…

  Well, for a moment, the cool slipped and the pain was sharp.

  “Everything all right?” he asked in a low, quiet tone, like he was trying to be respectful or some shit.

  “Peachy,” I said and walked away from him, right to the first glass of wine I saw.

  I downed it.

  “Well, well,” a man said as he walked up to me. His smile was completely inappropriate for a funeral; it was like he was trying to swallow back his glee and just couldn’t seem to do it. He was familiar, but just about everyone in this room was kind of familiar. There was something deeply unsettling about him, though.

  Fuck, I thought. What was his name?

  “The prodigal daughter returns to put her old man in the ground.”

  “James!” The name appeared out the fog. James Court. Yeah. I did not like this guy. His interest in me had seemed…gross.

  “You know, I’m over at Chase Financial now,” he said.

  “I didn’t know.” And I really didn’t care.

  I looked over my wine glass for one of my sisters, hoping I could catch her eye and get a rescue, but the only one looking at me was Clayton. And he was looking furious.

  “Now that the old man is dead, maybe you and I could come to our own agreement,” he said, and I was shocked, because it seemed like I was getting propositioned at my father’s funeral. “You’re still not the King sister I’d like to fuck, but if you were good enough for Rorick, I suppose I could take a shot.”

  I didn’t realize he was going to touch me until it was too late. A strand of my hair had fallen out of the bun I’d wrestled it into and lay against the skin of my neck, and he reached out and touched the hair and the skin of my neck, and a wave of revulsion rolled over me so thick and so fast I nearly gagged.

  Before I could get my shit together to slap him, Clayton was there. Right between us.

  “James,” he said in a low, quiet voice that I’d never heard before. “Get out.”

  “Well,” James said, smug and sneering. “It’s been a long time since you were my boss, and since you fucked up whatever deal you got with the old man and didn’t saddle the bitch when—”

  Clayton took the drink out of James’s hand and then did something to his fingers that made his face go white and sweat bead up on his lip.

  “You’re leaving,” Clayton said and walked James toward the front door, his arm over the other man’s shoulders like they were old friends. I turned on my heel the other way. Looking for my sisters and some fresh air.

  If you were good enough for Rorick…

  Tears, hot and completely unnecessary, burned in my eyes. I pushed my glasses up onto my head to wipe them away.

  Once I finally got outside, through the back by the kitchens, I looked up at the sun until the tears went away.

  “Veronica?”

  “No,” I moaned. “No. Just…go away, Clayton.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked. I felt more than heard him step closer and turned away again, because the tears were back. And this was all just too fucking much.

  He was too fucking much.

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  “Veronica,” he said my name like I was hurting him, and I turned on him. Whirled, really, not caring about the tears in my eyes.

  “You don’t get to do this, Clayton,” I said.

  “I just want to be sure you’re okay.”

  “No! You don’t get to be the hero. You can kick out all the jerks and look as concerned as you can force yourself to look, and you’re still not the hero.”

  He nodded slowly as if the words were not new to him, and to my horror, a tear slid down my cheek.

  Thank God for my sisters, who both showed up at that moment like avenging angels.

  “What are you doing, Clayton?” Bea demanded.

  “Are you making her cry?” Sabrina asked, putting her long thin arms around me and holding me close. “Are you for real? Like today isn’t hard enough?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and then ducked his head like a butler and turned around.

  I was locked in a Bea and Sabrina sandwich and for a moment it felt exactly like sisterhood should feel. I was supported and loved and protected. Fiercely.

  “I love you guys,” I said.

  It was just too bad Hank King had to die to get us here.

  At some point during the endless afternoon, I gave up talking to other people, kicked off my shoes and sat next to Bea on one of Jennifer’s white couches.

  Bea clinked the edge of her bourbon glass against my teacup.

  “You don’t want anything stronger?” she asked.

  I was on my eighth cup of tea and was in danger of crawling out of my skin. But staying sober seemed like a good idea, otherwise I might key Clayton’s car.

  Or cry again.

  “I’m good.”

  Thelma had put her head on my knee and I was petting that sweet
soft spot on the top of her nose with my thumb. It was outrageously comforting.

  Also, she was getting fur all over Jennifer’s white couch and that felt good, too.

  Louise the Chihuahua, always on the lookout for a dropped shrimp, found her promised land in the kitchen.

  “I’m glad we brought the dogs,” I said.

  “Yeah, gives you an excuse not to have to talk to anyone.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It was worth it for Sabrina’s abject horror.”

  Thelma had greeted Sabrina with long trails of saliva hanging off her smiling face. Sabrina had not been pleased and had tried her best to keep Thelma on the back porch, but Thelma disagreed. And the 120-pound mastiff usually got her way.

  “Hey,” I said and shifted next to her on the love seat, trying to wedge down between the pillows. It was surprisingly comfy and completely slouchy and exactly our kind of couch, which made me wonder if we’d actually never sat on these couches. “Before I told you about Dad what did you need to talk to me about?”

  Bea watched the ice cubes melt in her glass. “You sure this is the right time?”

  I glanced around with my eyes wide at the sea of people barely registering grief at our father’s funeral. “I could not think of a better time!”

  She laughed, but it was so fleeting, I knew that, whatever was wrong, it was big.

  “Tell me,” I said and bumped my shoulder against hers, and we slouched a little deeper into each other.

  “It’s about Frank,” she said, nearly whispering. “And the bar.”

  “Yeah? He okay?”

  Did you break up and back out of that terrible bar idea? Because that, sweet sister, would be a silver lining on this shit day.

  She was quiet just long enough that all my sister senses started to tingle. “Bea? What’s wrong?”

  I braced my hand against her leg to try and turn a little bit, and the skirt of my black suit hitched up, revealing the thick black fabric of my shapewear. I tried to pull the skirt down and ended up spilling tea on myself.

  “Veronica?”

  God. Yes. Of course Clayton would show up now.

  “What?” I snapped, twisting myself nearly in two so I could put my cup down on the side table.

  “The lawyer is ready to read the will.”

  Bea and I shared one look and then struggled to stand up out of the old love seat. Clayton offered his hand and we both ignored it.

  My sister’s solidarity was righteous and warming.

  We followed Clayton into the study and I stumbled at the door. It was the same in there. Same as it always was. The big leather couches. The fireplace. The animal heads. Dad’s big plank of a desk.

  This was where my heart had been broken so badly the only way to recover was to become someone else. The only way to keep moving was to burn off all those memories, like a trash pile.

  “You coming?” Bea asked from just inside the door. She dropped her voice. “Because you don’t have to.”

  Oh, if only that were the case. But I did have to. Not just for her, but for me. To prove to myself, and maybe to Clayton, that those memories couldn’t hurt me anymore.

  It was full in there. Sabrina, Bea, Clayton. Trudy and Oscar. The lawyer was a gorgeous, cool woman with dark blond hair, thin and sharp, and she stood in front of the desk like an ice sculpture. I kind of wanted to vomit.

  Clayton turned to look at me, and for a second there was a look in his eyes, a kind of sympathy or regret. Or maybe that was just what I wanted to see. I wanted him to be sorry. Human.

  But he wasn’t.

  I gathered myself, stepped into the study and quickly joined my sisters in the corner.

  “We’re all here?” the lawyer asked, and we all glanced around and nodded.

  “Do you think Dad slept with her?” Bea whispered.

  “That’s the rumor,” Sabrina whispered back.

  “She’s his type,” I said. Young. Beautiful. Icy but sexy. Deeply rooted in a conflict of interest.

  Trudy shushed us and we ducked our heads, embarrassed.

  “I’m Madison White,” the lawyer said and launched into some legalese that I barely listened to. The will, as I understood it, after Dad’s divorce from Jennifer, would give my sisters and me each a fairly healthy chunk of change and controlling interest in King Industries.

  And, of course, the ranch.

  Maybe Bea wanted it. Sabrina and I definitely didn’t.

  Or we could sell it. The thought, vicious and bright, actually made me smile.

  The question for me was—what happened to the Shelly King Foundation?

  And could I get it back?

  My mom had started it when she and my Dad got married, and when she died I took the money she left me and put it back into the foundation. Bea gave me hers, too.

  But Clayton had convinced me to tie the foundation to the company as a way to keep it funded. And to give King Industries a healthy tax break—but that hadn’t been one of the selling points.

  Stupidly in love, I’d listened to Clayton.

  Just another one of my mistakes.

  If you don’t get it, it’s all right. You’ve got work to go back to. A home. A life.

  But part of me wanted that foundation back so bad I could taste it.

  The lawyer opened a folder and handed out papers to all of us. “Hank King changed his will a year ago and I am handing out copies of that new will to everyone. It’s exceedingly straightforward.”

  Sabrina, Bea, and I looked at each other and I could see their stress.

  Literally anything could happen.

  “I understand that Dylan King is not in attendance, correct?” Madison asked, looking over the audience with her cool blue eyes. I could tell she already knew the answer to the question. She must have known who Dylan was, what he looked like.

  “No,” I said. “He’s not here.”

  “Then this will be simple. In the absence of Dylan King, the ranch, controlling shares of the King Industries, and all assets, with the exceptions I’ll tell you about in a moment, are left to Clayton Rorick.”

  5

  VERONICA

  Sabrina was shaking her head, and beside me Bea went white as a ghost.

  I wasn’t sure what my face was doing but I struggled to control the completely inappropriate urge to laugh.

  Nice one, Dad.

  “This is a joke,” Sabrina cried.

  “It’s all there in the will,” Madison White said. Or tried to before Bea interrupted.

  “I don’t give a shit what this will says,” Bea said. “We’re his kids!”

  Now this was getting weird. Why in the world did Bea care? But she looked like she was going to cry so I put my arm around her.

  “He can’t just…forget about us like that, can he?” Sabrina asked.

  I wanted to tell my sisters that it was never a matter of forgetting about us. He’d never thought about us. We weren’t the boy children he wanted. We weren’t Dylan, who he’d waged—and lost—a custody battle for. We were pretty. Well, some of us were.

  I was plain and dull.

  And if he couldn’t marry us off, we were useless.

  “This can’t be right, can it?” Bea asked, and I grabbed her shaking hands. “He can’t leave us nothing…can he? Surely there’s a trust. Some money.”

  My sister spidey senses went on full alert again.

  “What happens if Dylan decides to come back?” Clayton asked. He sat in the big leather chair closest to the fireplace. He had a half-empty tumbler of bourbon in his hand and his face was folded into careful lines.

  Had he known about this?

  “If Dylan comes back within the next six months, by June 17th, specifically, the estate is his,” Madison answered

  “He’s never going to come back,” I said.

  “Not even to save us?” Bea asked.

  “Save us?” That was some dire language coming from a woman with a plan and a life far away from The King’s Land. And w
e had no idea what Dylan would do. He could come back, take over the estate, and sell everything. Burn it all to the ground.

  “We have six months,” Sabrina said. “We might be able to convince him.”

  There was no way. Just zero way Dylan was going to come back and be a hero. But I couldn’t say that to Sabrina, whose big brown eyes were wet with tears. Oh, God, she’d hero-worshiped him that summer. Pinned all this little-sister love onto the guy and he just…he just wasn’t worth it.

  “Maybe,” I said, but to my own ears I wasn’t very convincing.

  “There’s more,” Madison said.

  “Oh, great!” My laughter was broken glass.

  “There is some acreage that is left to Veronica King.”

  All the eyes in the room turned to face me, and I found myself staring at Clayton. Warning bells were ringing in my head.

  “Land?” I said.

  “Twenty acres. It’s noted on the map on the third page.”

  Clayton ripped through his packet of papers to the third page and whatever he saw there made him laugh. Harsh and ugly. We all flinched.

  “Is this a joke?” he asked, holding up the paper.

  Madison, still cool as a cucumber, shook her head. “It’s all included in the will.”

  “Hank King,” Clayton said and stood up to refresh his glass of bourbon. Only this time he filled it all the way up. “An asshole to the very end.”

  There was something powerful and infuriating about Clayton being pissed about the will.

  Clayton, who just got every damn thing.

  Except for the twenty acres that were mine.

  I turned on Clayton. “Did you know he was doing this?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Because this is exactly what you wanted all along. This is what you would have married me to get. What a relief this must be, to get it without that pesky marriage part—”

  Bea grabbed my hand and I realized what I sounded like. Unhinged. I took a deep breath and pulled myself back together.

  “We need to talk,” Bea said to me. “Just…the three of us.”

  She meant us. The sisters. And she was right. I tore my gaze away from Clayton and addressed Madison. “Could we please have the room?”