“Richard Ames Borroughs,” Sebastian answered.
“Yeah, him. God, what an obnoxious asshole. He called me and filled me in on Dad’s fucked-up will, and, well, that was that. Bros before ball, you know? And besides, I was good, but NFL good? I dunno. Those guys aregood.”
I was trying to keep up, but they were skipping large chunks of information, since they were both familiar enough with the subject to use shorthand.
“Wait,” I cut in, “you gave up a chance to play football in the NFL to come back home?”
Bax shrugged, picking at a scabbed-over scar on one of his knuckles. “Uh…yeah.”
“Why?”
He was quiet a moment, and the whole room was silent. “Um. Our dad died, leaving a pretty specific will. All of us had to come back to help out at the bar for a year before any of the inheritance he’d left could be distributed to any of us. It was his way of bringing us all back together. We’d sort of scattered to the four winds, and I guess he wanted us to reunite as brothers.”
“Wow. I—that’s—”
“I want to hear the rest of Claire’s story,” he interrupted, clearly not wanting to talk about it any further.
Claire jumped at her name. “Oh. Um. Well, when the cruise put in here, I went out to find a decent dive bar to drink at, which happened to be Badd’s, and I met Brock, and we spent a rather, um,memorable…night together. Which led to a day together, and then another night, and then somehow we just forgot to stop sleeping together, because like I said, sex with Brock is a twenty on a one-to-ten scale, and how am I gonna quit the best sex of my life? And then his stupid ass fell in love with me and begged me to keep fucking him, and I’m super generous, so I agreed.”
“Hate to break it to you, babe,” Brock put in, amused, “butyourstupid ass fell in love withme.”
“Um, no. I’m pretty sure you fell first.”
“Pretty sure I didn’t,” Brock argued. “And I also wasn’t the one who ran off like a scared little puppy at the first sign of real emotions.”
Claire elbowed him in the diaphragm. “No reason to bring ridiculous shit like the truth into this.”
It seemed a bit odd to me, how they were arguing about who fell in love first. And Brock’s statement about running? That had sounded pretty brutal to me, yet Claire literally acknowledged it as truth without flinching, and even made a joke out of it.
I didnotunderstand these people.
Claire looked at me. “He’s right, you know. I totally did run away like a pussy. Being in love with a Badd brother is no joke.” She looked at Dru and then Mara. “Am I right, ladies?”
“Word,” Dru and Mara said, in unison.
I just blinked, because what was I supposed to say? “Um. Okay. I suppose I can see how that might be, um…”
Claire just laughed. “So. Thomas. Dish.”
I sighed. “Well, you’ll probably need a little backstory. He’s ten years older than me, and works for my father. He started out working as an intern during college, and stayed on until he graduated with a double major from Harvard, in business and politics.
“He’s the only son of Richard and Elaine Haverton, which, unless you’re well-versed in the who’s who of the East Coast business and politics scene, won’t mean anything to you. They’re a wealthy family, powerful and influential. Richard Haverton and my father, Lawrence du Maurier, were both senators, and now they’re two of the most influential men on the East Coast, my father as a political consultant and Richard as a lobbyist for several of the big energy companies. They’ve been friends for thirty years, and our families have been vacationing together to the same estate in Mallorca for twenty-five years, longer than I’ve even been alive, mind you.
“And if you’re not familiar, all these wealthy East Coast business and politics families are the modern American version of the Old World aristocracy, meaning marriages are pretty much arranged from birth, and you don’t marry outside certain circles, and you go to the right schools and you intern at the right firms and you take residencies at the right hospitals with the right physicians, and everything is…just so. Stuffy, pretentious, conceited, materialistic, and stupid. But it’s what I was born into.
“And Thomas, as my father’s best friend’s son, has been pushed at me my whole life. Meaning, they assume I’m going to marry him because that’s what’s expected, and arranged. He’s wealthy in his own right as well as coming from the Haverton’s money, having worked for my father’s firm since he graduated from Harvard, and invested well, and all that.
“Father has, quite literally and in so many words, promised Thomas that Iwillmarry him someday, even though no one ever asked me what I wanted, or if I evenlikedhim. Which I don’t. I despise him. Yet he shows up everywhere I am, and he corners me on family vacations with these elaborate marriage proposals. He’s purchased at least three different engagement rings that I know of, each more expensive than the last, and he just keeps proposing. He shows up at Yale and whisks me away on these ridiculous dates and expects me to…well, you can imagine—and then gets mad when I won’t, and gets mad when I refuse his proposals, and never takes a hint.”
I blew out a long breath, because I’d never said so much about Thomas all at once to anyone.
“Sounds horrible,” Claire said, frowning.
“You have no idea,” I said, waving a hand. “Everyone at Yale thinks I’m crazy for turning him down. But they all think I’m crazy anyway because Father set up an internship for me at this lobbyist firm in Boston, and it’s one of the most prestigious firms on the whole East Coast, so getting internships there is practically a gladiatorial process, and I refused to go because I hate politics.
“But Father is paying, and he has the ear of the dean since he’s a major benefactor, so he can basically get whatever he wants, which is me with a degree in political science even though I have absolutelynointention whatsoever of ever going anywhere near politics, which means I’m double majoring in poli-sci and fine arts, because I’m an artist and that’s my dream and my passion, but the only way I’ll get the degree and thus the opportunities the degree will provide is if I keep Father happy.
“But really, I barely attend the political science classes and only do enough work to pass, focusing the majority of my attention on my art studies. Which makes Father furious, of course, because art is a waste of time and not a worthy profession for his daughter. Mainly because he wishes I’d been born male so I could follow in his footsteps. Which is the stupidest thing ever, because why couldn’t I follow in his steps as a politician if I wanted to? I mean, hello, Hillary? Elizabeth Warren? Maxine Waters? Kamala Harris? But it’s just not what I want.
