RICH
“No wonder you like her,” Stella said.
She was wearing a long, flowing dress made from some silky white material, and she even wore a tiara with what I suspected were real diamonds studding almost every inch. A live band played pretentious classical music, and all the guests of the party looked appropriately bored. It was the way of these things. Being a true blue blood meant the world had lost its charm for you. The only appropriate expression to wear was one that said you’d been there, done that, and in fact, you’d had a more expensive, more distinguished version of that, several times.
Of course, Cade’s expression said something more along the lines of that looks expensive—I’d like to find a way to break it. He was looking at a display of a brontosaurus skeleton that was nearly intact. In a museum, it would be too priceless to have anywhere but behind protective glass. At a party like this, it was the norm to have offensively valuable items out in the open. After all, is there a better way to say you’re filthy rich than to have your priceless possessions one accident away from utter destruction?
The party was in New York, and I’d agreed to fly in to make it, because I had an unquenchable interest in anything dinosaur related. It was a poorly kept secret that I’d never completely grown out of the phase most five-year-old boys pass through. Bones, history, videos, and even wild theories were all fair game. Big and heavy bones were even better. I grinned to myself, then said a quick prayer of thanks that Cade’s claims of having a “twinepathic mental connection” that let him read my thoughts were bogus. He would’ve never let me live that thought down.
My parents were somewhere in the crowd. They came because this was an old-money party, and simply showing up proved you were invited, which reinforced your status as a member of the exclusive circle. Miss too many of these kinds of things and you’d risk someone’s assuming you’d been exiled for some reason or another, and you could quickly find yourself on the outside looking in.
Stella nudged me. “I said I’m not surprised you like her. But I guess I’m supposed to have a one-sided conversation, because you’re looking at that ridiculous thing like it’s about to grow tits and sleep with you.”
I pulled my eyes away from the brontosaurus. “Sorry. I just can’t quite believe a private collector managed to get such an intact skeleton. Usually it’s—”
Stella made a snoring sound and then smirked at me. “How undignified of me. I must have spontaneously fallen asleep when you started talking about your overgrown birds again.”
“I’m just trying to figure out if that’s actually a brontosaurus skull, or if they maybe substituted something like an apatosaurus skull. No one has ever reported finding an actual brontosaurus skull, so if—”
“Rich, please,” Stella said. “I wanted to talk about your sexy librarian who is very much alive, not a pile of bones.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Stella rolled her eyes. “You won’t even let me live vicariously through you a little bit?”
“Believe it or not, trying to convince Kira I’m not an asshole hasn’t been smooth sailing. I also know you have a crush on her, so I’m not about to feed you any information. I may be failing spectacularly with Kira, but I don’t plan to let you take a swing at her either. She’s mine.”
“And what exactly do you plan to do about us and our little arrangement? I know something happened between you two last night. I heard you whistling after she left. Whistling, Rich. Will I at least get two weeks’ notice before I’m fired from my role as your pretend girlfriend?”
“Nothing changes. Not yet, at least. If we call things off, my parents are going to start looking a hell of a lot closer at what I do. They already found out I was taking Kira to a magic show. The only thing stopping them from staging a full-blown intervention is you.”
“I’m glad you’re worried about yourself and not at all about my parents trying to force a dick in my mouth.”
I choked out a laugh. “Somehow I think that’s not their primary goal.”
“Oh, trust me. If they knew I was gay, they’d stop at nothing to convert me. Whatever they thought would work.”
I sighed. “I’ll try to think of a way to get through this that doesn’t end with you getting screwed.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind getting screwed, I just don’t want my parents to find out, and I’d prefer it was by someone who shaves their legs.”
“I’m sure Cade would shave his legs for you if you asked nicely.”
She made a gagging sound but smiled nonetheless. “You King brothers are far too manly for my taste. I like the softer things in life. Like breasts.”
“Well, at least we can agree on that much. But why does it even matter if your parents don’t approve? You’re a grown woman now. Can’t you just live your life and tell them to get over it by now?”
Stella shrugged my question off, and it was clear she didn’t want to give me a real answer.
Cade saved us the trouble of an awkward silence when he walked up and slung his arm around my shoulder. “I have an idea, and before you say no—”
“No,” I said.
He groaned. “What if my idea was that we should find a totally sensible way to legally purchase one of them there dinosaur bones? Hmm? What then? Would you wish you’d let me finish my damn sentence?”
“And was that your idea?” I asked dryly.
“No. But you shouldn’t just assume you know what people are going to say before they say it. It’s dickish.”
“You were going to say we should steal one of the bones, weren’t you?”
“Not permanently. I thought it’d be hilarious to see if we could make it out of here with one. I’d put money on that one trying to tackle us if he saw.” Cade nodded toward an elderly man with broad shoulders, a prominent belly, and a mustache that made him look like a walrus.
“I wish I didn’t know you as well as I do, because then I could just laugh this off and assume you were kidding.”
“Why would I joke about something like this?”
“Good luck with him,” Stella said. “I’m going to get out of here before you two end up getting a cavity search from security.”
“Cavity search?” Cade asked. “What kind of dinosaur bone could we fit up our asses?”
From the way Cade asked, I didn’t think it was a hypothetical question.
“If you want to jam dinosaur bones up your ass,” I said, “then you can count me out of the plan. If you actually wanted to see about buying them, then you could count me in.”
“I wasn’t thinking about my ass. I was thinking about yours.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
Cade pulled a face and did a not-so-subtle oh shit, look at that kind of bulge of his eyes.
I turned to follow his gaze and saw my parents approaching. Cade started slowly trying to back away, but I grabbed his elbow. “You’re not weaseling out of this.”
“Ass,” he muttered.
“Are you two behaving for once?” my father asked.
“Of course,” I said.
My mother stood a half step behind my father with her lips pursed like she’d been sucking on lemons. Sometimes I wondered what would actually satisfy the woman, but I thought it was a pointless question. Some people walked into a restaurant planning to be disappointed. Even if the service and the food were almost perfect, they’d ask for a manager and complain about the nearby group that was too rowdy or about the water spots on the silverware. That was my mother. She woke every morning with the unshakable belief that the world and everything in it was going to utterly fail to impress her, and she made sure she was never wrong.
“Would it kill you to run a comb through your hair, Cadwick?” asked my mother.
I covered a laugh with my hand. No matter how many times I heard my mother use Cade’s real name, it cracked me up.
Cade straightened. “Cade,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Honestly. I don’t know what possessed you to start going by such a crude name. Cadwick was your grandfather’s—”
“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe he was tired of people assuming he was an eighteenth-century butler?”
“Or,” Cade added, “maybe it was just that my name sounded like some deadly disease a sailor would come down with before shitting his guts out.”
My father’s lips trembled. I almost burst out laughing at the sight of it. Of all the things that could actually get a laugh out of my father, it was making fun of the name my mother had chosen for Cade. My father had named me, and my mother had named Cadwick. After Cadwick, they’d agreed to compromise on Nick’s name. That was the arrangement, and though my father would never admit it, I knew he thought Cadwick was just as ridiculous a name as we did.
“Your grandfather would be rolling over in his grave if he could hear you two,” my mother said.
“Then maybe we should go have this conversation over his grave. I’ve always wanted to see a zombie,” Cade said.
“Cadwick!” my mother said through tight lips.
“As good as it has been to catch up, Cade and I were just getting ready to retire for the night,” I said.
“Cade and you?” asked my father. “Shouldn’t you be retiring somewhere with your lovely girlfriend? I’ve given you a long leash with Stella, but people are starting to whisper. The two of you are never seen touching. You hardly speak to one another. And now there are rumors you’ve been spending an obscene amount of time following around this local girl.”
My mother clicked her tongue. “Locals. It’s obscene.”
I held on to my patience with white knuckles. Obscene was one of their favorite buzzwords. Anything that might make people think we weren’t as wealthy or prestigious was obscene. Chewing gum was obscene. Scratching your neck was obscene. Showing an interest in a local girl with no money to her name was probably the obscenity of all obscenities, in their eyes.
“My relationships are my business,” I said. “You’re my parents, and I show you as much respect as I think you deserve for that. I let Cade and Nick shower you with money. I let you follow us around the country like hungry puppies hoping for table scraps. I even let you think you have some kind of say in who I will date because it gets you off my fucking back.”
My mother’s head looked like it was retreating from her body—sliding ever backward until she’d given herself a few extra chins and her eyes were wide as saucers. My father was watching me with a tight jaw and clenched fists.
“But,” I continued, “there’s a point where I think it’s good to give you two a reminder. You don’t have any say in who I date or what I do with my life. You’re spectators.”
Cade was leaning in with an eager, amused look on his face. “This is fucking awesome,” he whispered.
My father took a step closer to me, eyes intense. “Spectators? Maybe it’s time to give you a reminder. You think your mother and I are some crusty, useless old bastards. I know you do. But all our ‘frivolous’ socializing means we have connections. Deep connections. Cross us, and I think you’ll find yourself meeting unexpected difficulties at every turn.”
I met his stare. “If you’re going to blackmail me, why don’t we make the terms crystal clear.”
“Find a way to make it work with Stella, or you’re going to find we have more than enough clout with the mayor and the federal government to delay the construction of your headquarters. We’ll hamstring you as much as we see fit when it’s finally done too. We’ll make moving to West Valley the most costly mistake Sion Enterprises has ever endured. I guarantee it.”
I laughed. “That sounds great. I’ll be interested to see how long Cadwick and Nick continue funding your lifestyle when you start fucking with our company.”
My mother was sneering. “We take their money because it’s convenient, but we aren’t fools. We’ve set aside plenty to get us comfortably by. We don’t need you. Any of you.”
Cade whistled. “Damn. This went from zero to a hundred really fast. So, just to be clear, does this mean I should cancel the check I was supposed to get to you guys for that west wing you wanted to add to the house?”
As much as I wanted to spit on their little threats and dismiss it all, I knew I wasn’t just putting my own interests at risk. Calling off my relationship with Stella would put her directly back into her father’s dating pool of eligible, rich bastards. I had the misfortune of knowing pretty much all of them, and I knew they’d be pawing endlessly at her, no matter how much she chose to disclose about her sexuality. I’d be selling her to the wolves for my own pride, but there was no reasonable endgame in this for us. Stella and I were never going to marry. We were only buying time.
Either way, I needed to give her a warning before I pressed the detonation button on this thing with my parents.
I gritted my teeth. “I’ll think about your threat, and I’ll talk to Stella. We’ll see what she thinks.”
Cade pursed his lips. “Very gentlemanly of you. Sorry, Mom and Dad, but I’m just kind of along for the ride on this one. Besides, odds are you two are going to die first—no offense—and I’ve got to pick allies with more . . . vitality.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “Seriously? That’s your argument? They’re going to die first?”
“Statistically,” he said. “I mean, they’re—oh, they’re gone.”
He was right. My parents had stormed off. I blew out a long breath. “Fuck,” I said.
“Yeah. You kind of blew a gasket on them. What happened to you being the rational one?”
“It was a few dozen years of pent-up fuck them, I guess?”
He slapped my back. “It was good. Next time, though, give me some kind of signal so I can join in. We could’ve tag teamed it or something. Good twin, bad twin.”
I grinned. “Well, now we get to see if Dad was full of shit, or if he’s really as connected as he says.”
“What, you’re not willing to just shack up with Stella to shut them up?”
“Stella is a lesbian,” I said.
“Dude. That’s so politically incorrect. You can’t just call somebody a lesbian because you don’t like them.”
I laughed. “No. She’s actually a lesbian.”
“Yeah, you’re actually a dick, but it’s not okay to just go around saying shit like that. Jesus.”
“Stella prefers women over men.”
Cade raised his eyebrows and threw up his hands. “I know what a lesbian is, dickweed. Oh, wait. You mean literally? If she’s a lesbian . . .” Cade leaned in very close and scanned me from head to toe with his eyes. “Why is she dating you?” His eyes fell meaningfully to my crotch and then widened. “You do have a dick, right?”