With that stunning bit of infuriating sarcasm, he hung up, his face disappearing from the screen. Aggravation rolled through me, tightening my insides and making rage bubble up like lava. A solid minute of deep breathing didn’t help at all. I needed to punch something. Someone, actually.
Eventually, I stomped back into the castle, heading directly to the sun room that Eliza lovingly referred to as theFog Room.She said it was more accurate because that was normally the view. A fact I knew about my brother’sbridebecause I was here, getting to know her whilehewas the one who would get to have her. To call her his.
All without doing a single fucking thing to earn her respect or her love, and without even knowing anything there was to know about her. It rattled around inside me like a brewingthunderstorm, the injustice of it all, but as soon as I stormed in and saw her pouring a cup of tea for me, my mood immediately faded.
It was like magic. One minute, I’d been ready to commandeer the closest jet to fly straight to Miami so I could put a fist through Jesse’s face, and the next, I was smiling, calm, and looking forward to my tea, like a proper fucking gentleman.
I took my seat opposite her, wondering how it was possible that just seeing someone could have such an immediate effect on my blood pressure.
“Something is up with you,” she said quietly, handing over the delicate cup with a glint of knowing in her eyes. “Don’t bother trying to deny it, Jesse Westwood. What’s going on?”
Surprised that she’d even noticed, I considered lying and telling her it was just an issue at the office, but ultimately, I found that I actually wanted to talk to her about this. “That was my brother.”
“I thought it was work?”
“Yeah, but I work with most of my brothers, remember?”
She gave me a serene smile as she leaned back in her chair, her fingers wrapped around the cup and her features open and relaxed. “Well, yes, but not because you’ve told me much about it.”
“True.”
I raked the fingers of my free hand through my hair as I realized how weird this was going to be. I wanted to be honest with her, but I would have to switch my own name for Jesse’s, and right now, that was the last fucking thing I wanted to do.
Still, as I looked into her eyes, I decided to just mentally grab my balls and jump in. After this, she wasn’t going to think much of me, Will, but it was better that way anyway.
“Will is a genius,” I started slowly. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s one of the smartest guys you’ll ever meet, and sometimes, I envyhim for being exactly who he is, but he’s always had a hard time fitting in with our family. He doesn’t follow our traditions and he acts like he’s doing us a favor sometimes for just showing up.”
God, I hate this.
“Will,” she said thoughtfully. “Your twin, right?”
“Yeah, unfortunately,” I said before I could censor the reaction.
She frowned. “Unfortunately?”
Fuck.
I’d never really talked to anyone about the true nature of my relationship with my brother, but things just started pouring out now. It was like I’d opened the floodgates with that one careless word, and now that the genie was out of the bottle, there was no putting it back in.
The only thing I put any real thought into was substituting our names, telling Jesse’s story but with my name attached to it. It sucked, but at this point, it was what it was.
“He was stuck in the neonatal intensive care unit for three months after we were born,” I heard myself saying out loud for the first time ever. I’d literally never talked about this before. “Growing up, he needed all kinds of extra attention. Occupational therapy and speech therapy. Special tutors in school.”Shit, he’s going to kill me when he finds out I told her.“I spent my entire childhood feeling like I had to protect my brother, but he never let those things get to him.”
Her lips quirked into a faint smile. “He didn’t?”
“No, he really didn’t. He breezed through it all,” I said. “Truth be told, he didn’t even just breeze through it. He thrived. By the time we hit college, he’d already made a small fortune in trading and he’d bought real estate in his own name.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it didn’t take him long to break away from the family after that. He found his own path and he took it without looking back.”
Shit, I need to find a way to spin this that brings me back into the fold somehow.
Once we got back, she was sure to find out just how deeply entrenched I was at W&S, which would make no sense considering I’d just told her thatWillhad taken his own path. Suddenly panicked, I lied through my teeth and I did it without skipping a beat.
“It was only recently that he came back into the proverbial fold,” I said. “When Alex appointed him as COO.”
“I thought you were in operations too?” she said, frowning slightly. “Why wouldn’tyouget the COO position if you’ve been working for them all alongandyou help out in operations anyway?”
