Jesse Page 2

  “Where’s Joey again?” I ask.

  If Johnny’s the serious oldest child, Joey’s the troubled middle kid and I’m the spoiled youngest. Even though I’m thirty-three now, they still call me Baby Boston.

  Fuckin’ hate it.

  “He’s… I dunno. Tokyo, I think. Not really sure. He just called last week apologizing and asked me to make you do it.”

  “Last week?” I say. “How come you just told me this today?”

  “Because I know you.” He laughs. “You’d have disappeared on me if you knew ahead of time.”

  “But everyone knows I’m showing up in his place, right?”

  God, I can’t even imagine how people would react if I just popped in out of nowhere. A nightmare scenario plays out in my head of Joey being introduced and me walking out on that stage to glares and gasps. Finger-pointing and accusations.

  “Of course,” Zach says, pulling me back into reality. "Can you just trust me for once? Jesus. I know what I’m doing.”

  Goddamned Joey. He’s probably gambling over in Japan. Or making dumbass deals with the Yakuza. How come no one cares when Joey fucks up? He does it all the time still. He hasn’t spent the last five years cleaning up his act and getting sober, that’s for fucking sure. It’s only me they hate. It’s only ever me.

  “OK.” I sigh with resignation. Because I said I’d do this, so I will. “What time we gotta be there? Should we be leaving now?”

  “Punctualality is overrated.”

  “Punctualality?” I say. “Dude, that’s not even a word. Did you even attend those classes I paid for?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “No. The word is punctuality.”

  “Whatever. You know what I meant.”

  “How come no one calls you the dumb one?”

  He laughs. “They’re too busy calling you the spoiled, rich asshole one.”

  I exhale. Feeling defeated and already in a bad mood about tonight and the whole shit show hasn’t even started yet.

  “I’ll call for the car if it’ll make you happy.”

  The car isn’t gonna make me happy. But Zach doesn’t wait for me to protest, just walks out of my bedroom to do his job.

  He’s ten years younger than me. The youngest of all the Boston Boys. My first cousin, my father’s brother’s only child. But his father died a long time back when he was just ten, so he came to live here in the building with us.

  Zach is really the Baby Boston. Not me. But his side of the fam never caught the public’s curiosity like our side did.

  I blame my father for that. He’s the reason people hate me.

  My father died just as Zach was graduating high school and that’s when we learned that Zach’s trust fund was missing in my father’s documents. We knew Zach had one. He has to have one. We all have one. But my father did something with it. Or hell, knowing my father, he got drunk one night and gambled it away, or used it to pay someone off. He was just that irresponsible with his money. When you have so much of it you don’t miss a few million going missing you are a breed apart.

  We’ve found cash stashed everywhere after he died. In the walls of the penthouse upstairs. In the goddamned floorboards. In the ceiling. And statements from bank accounts in places like the Cayman Islands, and Costa Rica, and Panama.

  But none of it ever had Zach Boston’s name on it.

  So I took over and paid his way through college. My trust fund is obscene. Whatever our father was really up to, it never touched us. So I guess I can’t complain too much about him.

  But how come nobody talks about that? How nobody trashed his name? How come no one ever followed his ass around taking sneaky pictures to publish in the tabloids?

  Why only me?

  Everything Johnny did. Everything my father did. No one ever saw any of it. All they ever saw was me. Fucking up.

  I just never understood that. And it got to me. It got to me pretty bad back when I was a teenager. That’s how my twenties turned into one long drunken, drugged-up sex party.

  But I’m not such a bad guy. I’ve cleaned up my act a lot since my father’s funeral five years ago. A lot. I’m a totally different guy, but no one cares. All they see is the boy in the tabloids. The golden-haired, spoiled, rich asshole.

  It’s really not fair.

  Everyone in my position would’ve done the exact same thing in their twenties. It’s your twenties, for fuck’s sake. That’s what they’re for. Fucking off and fucking girls.

  And racing yachts.

  I smile. Because I’d do it all again. I wouldn’t change a damn thing.

  Fuck the public. Fuck all the people. They don’t know me. They have no clue what my brothers and I have been through. And anyone who judges someone they don’t know is the asshole, not the one being judged.

  They see the public persona my father cultivated. They see the yearly listings under Richest Men in the World in those finance magazines. They see our good looks and the tall building we live in, and they hear rumors. Rumors about money and how we spend it. Is it anyone’s fucking business how we spend it?

  So what if I like yachts? Joey likes racehorses. And Johnny likes to collect art.

  But yachts, no. That’s what people focus on. That’s why they hate me.

  I smirk into the mirror. Can’t help it.

  Because it’s possible—maybe even probable—that guys like me give yachts a bad name and not the other way around.

  “Stop it,” Zach says, entering the room again.

  I glance at him in the mirror. “What?”

  “I can hear that spoiled, rich asshole voice in your head. You did this to yourself, Jesse. No one did this to you.”

  “Fuck off. I wasn’t thinking that. And besides, I’ve changed. I’m a totally different person these days.”

  “So you say,” Zach says.

  “I take care of you, don’t I? You didn’t see Johnny or Joey come to your rescue when you found out you were broke.”

  “I’m not broke. I’m just—”

  “Waiting for that trust fund. Yeah, I get it. Is the car downstairs or what?”

  “Yup. We’re all set.”

  “Then let’s go do this thing.”

  Change the hearts and minds of the public.

  Or…whatever.

  CHAPTER THREE - EMMA

  Confession time.

  I hired a stylist for tonight.

  I’ve done this before. It’s not my first glam-night rodeo. The first time was when Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics was up for an opportunity award. One million dollars on the line and we won it. That was our first big break and while we didn’t have the extra money to hire the stylist because that kind of award takes a while to come in and we were on a tight budget, we did it anyway. Just one girl for all four of us. That’s all we could afford.

  And even though I understand that the winners were not decided that night of the ceremony, I somehow always felt like the reason we won was because we were playing the game of ‘fake it till you make it’.

  I feel like I’m playing that game again tonight.

  I get that it’s maybe a little bit ironic that I’m one-fourth owner of the fifth biggest cosmetics company in the entire world and I don’t even wear makeup. But that’s how life rolls for me most of the time.

  Irony is always laughing in my face.

  I always get things I’m not really interested in. Big things. Like cosmetics companies. Or cars. Because I don't actually drive. I know how to drive. I have a license. But this is the city. There’s nowhere to park. And two years ago a very high-end luxury car company came and asked me to be their spokesperson. I said yes, because why the fuck not?

  And they gave me a car.

  I paid an ungodly amount of money to park that car in the city for an entire year before I finally came to my senses and had someone drive it out to the country estate we bought for company retreats. So that’s where it lives now.

  Or the time that tennis racket company called and wanted
me to do a commercial for them. Because you know, cosmetics and tennis rackets totally go together.

  I don’t play tennis but now they send me three new rackets a year.

  And somehow I got on a golf club company’s list and I get my picture taken with a brand-new set of clubs every spring too.

  All that stuff is up at the country estate.

  And I just want to say, “What the fuck, people? I don’t need a new car, I don’t need a tennis racket, and I don’t need golf clubs. Why can’t someone—for once in my life— send me something I want?”

  Like Jesse Boston.

  Because yeah. I’m just gonna admit it.

  I fell for that asshole while on spring break thirteen years ago.

  Hard.

  Like jumped off a building and crashed my head into the cement kind of hard.

  And even though I did find solace in the company of the three women who would become my best friends and business partners, I never got over him.

  I stalk him. I do.

  I stalk him. I read about him every time he pops up in the tabloids. And that was pretty frequent for many years. All the way up until I was nearly twenty-six he was regular in my life.

  But then his father died and I don’t know what happened. Jesse… went underground or something. Supposedly cleaned up his act.

  His brothers still make the society blogs. But not the tabloids. Mostly Joey. He’s Mr. City Bachelor almost every year. Which was why he was invited to be in this charity auction. But Johnny is the one everyone wants to hear about now. He’s all dark and broody and mysterious. And no one has seen him in public for like a million years or something.

  Or at least since their father died. Whichever came first.

  Johnny lives up in that building doing… whatever he does.

  He’s too dark for me. And Joey is too enthusiastic about his personal life.

  But Jesse… Jesus Christ. He’s always been the one who floated my boat.

  Which is a little inside joke, since he was on the yacht-racing circuit when we met all those years ago.

  I’ve missed my Jesse fix these past few years since he went quiet. So when I found out that Joey cancelled and Jesse was taking his place in the auction, I rallied.

  Now the other girls—Nat, and Mila, and Hannah—they’re not into the Baby Boston anymore. Their interest waned long time ago. Right around the time we won that million-dollar opportunity award, in fact. Their obsession with him just disappeared. They simply stopped caring. And every time I brought him up they said things like, “Fuck him,” and, “I’m so over that asshole!” and, “If I never have to speak his name again it will be too soon.”

  But that’s not how I felt.

  I know it’s a little bit sad, but I can’t help it.

  I really, really fell for him. And so even though I knew the other girls had already moved on, I took a chance and presented them with this one last way to put him behind us forever.

  They said yes. Now maybe I don’t have that wicked tongue for sales like Natalie does. And maybe I can’t market like Mila or cook things up like Hannah. But I sold the hell out of this plan.

  And they bought it.

  Anyway. I know this is pretty much a done deal and at the end of the night he will come home with me, because I’m in charge of numbers and I managed to find a way to spare one million dollars to buy Baby Boston for this date. For charity, of course.

  For the kids.

  And yes, even though I don’t regularly wear makeup, I do know how to apply it. I do own one-fourth of the world’s fifth largest cosmetic company, after all.

  But I hired a stylist anyway. Because this is my last chance to see this man and tell him all those things I’ve been wanting to say all these years.

  Not how I fell for him. Or how he hurt me.

  But how much I hate him.

  Hate him with a passion.

  I don’t care if he’s the one indirectly responsible for hooking Nat, Mila, Hannah, and me up into this mega-woman company, I want revenge.

  I want him to look us in the eyes and repent. I want him to feel as horrible about what he did to us that week as we felt after he used us up like things and threw us away.

  Not only that. I want him to want me.

  I want him to fall for me the way I did him.

  And then I want to walk away. Forever. Vindicated that I was not trash to be thrown away. He is the trash. He will be thrown away. He is the loser now.

  So I get glammed up to the nines. I went shopping after the welcome ceremony this morning for the most fabulous dress.

  Red, of course. Long, with one slit up each thigh. Strapless. Hand-sewn crystals on the bodice.

  My dark hair is piled high up on my head. My makeup is exquisite and the color on my lips…

  Not Bright Berry Beach.

  But Woman Scorned Red.

  Glossy with an all-night wear guarantee. Courtesy of Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics Heat line.

  “Wow,” Natalie says when I get in the limo. “You look… just… wow.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mila says. “He does not deserve you.”

  “He’s gonna die when he sees you again, Emma. Just die!” Hannah squeals.

  “Please,” I say, taking a champagne flute from Natalie as the limo pulls away from my building. “I’ll bet you a million dollars each that he has no recollection of us.”

  “Well, I should hope not,” Mila says. “Once we get to the estate no one takes off their ski masks. Got it?”

  “Got it,” we all say.

  “This will be the most efficient kidnapping in the history of kidnappings,” Hannah says.

  “We’re not kidnapping him,” I correct. “We’re buying him.”

  I have to look away to hide my evil grin.

  Because I have been dreaming about a night like this with Jesse Boston ever since he walked out on me.

  It’s the reason why I pushed us so hard all these years.

  Success is the best revenge.

  But buying the man who scorned you when you were eighteen and making him regret treating you like trash comes in a close second.

  CHAPTER FOUR - JESSE

  New revelations about myself always come to me at the most inappropriate times. Like this one, for instance.

  I hate being around people. How come I didn’t realize this about myself until this very moment? Maybe it was all those years on the ocean that changed me? Or maybe it was the exclusive circle of friends and family I grew up with?

  I don’t know. But you’d think I’d have figured this out before I was thirty-three years old, standing in a crowd of people who want to buy me for a night.

  What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to this?

  “Tell me again why I’m doing this?” I lean over to whisper to Zach.

  He leans into me and says, just as discreetly, “Because you got busted for drugs five years ago, were stripped of all your yachting titles, and now the only people who will hire you as a yacht racing consultant are criminals?”

  I side-eye him and say, “You’re an asshole.”

  “You asked,” he says. “I’m just here to tell you the truth, cousin. And that was it.”

  He’s not lying. I did get busted for drugs right after my father died. And then tested for drugs. And then I failed that test, and the yachting association stripped me of every title race I ever won. And even though I didn’t have to pay back the winnings, I did.

  Which, who cares? No one gets into yachting for the prize money. It’s a total waste of resources. And they couldn’t legally make me give that money back. I did it to… you know. Plump up my image. It was Zach’s idea, actually. I’m joking when I chide him about being dumb. He’s not dumb. He’s actually the smartest person I know. That’s why I hired him. Plus, he’s more of a brother to me than Joey or Johnny.

  Zach was always hanging out with me when he was a kid. Always wanted to be like me. Except he never made my mistakes. Never got into drinking and drugs. N
ever got arrested or anything like that.

  And it’s not like he wasn’t around during my racing days. He was on my crew from age fifteen to after he graduated high school. We went all over the world together.

  But for me, yacht racing was a passion. An escape. It was the only thing that mattered for so long and then after I got busted for drugs the whole thing was over in an instant.

  Until that drug bust, yachting was all I thought about. Every day was filled with sails, and wind, and speed. And after, well. I was reduced to teaching.

  Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

  Isn’t that what they say?

  It’s not fair. Lots of teachers can ‘do’ just fine. Some of them just get busted for drugs and get kicked out of the racing association.

  This is not making me feel any better.

  Anyway, I’m not a teacher. I’m a consultant. Big difference. I get paid better, for one. When I actually have clients. But Zach is right. My reputation is shit. The only people who trust my opinion these days are the cheaters.

  I took on a few of those clients in the early days after I got busted. But I figured out pretty quick that the more I perpetuated the image, the more it stuck. So I stopped. That was four years ago and I haven’t had a single client since.

  Four long years of drought.

  I still sail. Alone.

  And every once in a while I’ll meet up with some of my old friends in the yacht club and we’ll have an impromptu race.

  But it’s not the same. One-hundred-and-eighty-degree difference, in fact.

  “This is good PR,” Zach says, sensing my deteriorating mood. “Trust me. It’s gonna be good. You’ll see. Monday morning everyone will be talking about you again.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Because I’ve basically turned into Johnny over the last four years and just disappeared. I can see the headlines now. ‘Bad boy turns good.’”

  “That’s not a bad headline.”

  “It is if the article highlights all your past mistakes and not the one good thing you did over the weekend.”

  “So you’ll just do more good things. Just relax. Have some fun. Look at all the pretty ladies here who will bid on you.”