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Prologue
WINTER
On the day I turned fifteen, I knew I loved James Blakney. There was a look in his eye that told me he'd finally noticed I existed in a realm beyond best-friend's-much-younger-off-limits-don't-even-think-about-it-little sister. Call it womanly intuition, despite the fact I was barely qualified for being an actual woman at fifteen—and only in the biological sense—but still, I knew my own feelings.
I shared those feelings with no one.
James came to my birthday that year. To the gathering at Blackwater on the island where my family summered and vacationed as often as my father could convince my mother to spend time at the old estate perched on its coast. We were in the pool playing chicken fights when it happened. Wyatt was carrying me on his shoulders while Lucas carried Janice Thorndike, and the two of us squared off. Janice was one of those people we were forced to tolerate because our parents were close. She was a manipulative attention whore most of the time, and it being my birthday didn't change that one iota. Why she would go out of her way to humiliate someone who was much younger than her, and during their birthday celebration no less, was beyond me.
But she did.
Janice yanked on the tie at my neck that held up my bikini top and announced to all within shouting distance to have a look at my tits when it fell down. I was mortified to the depths of my soul as I frantically tried to cover back up after jumping from Wyatt's shoulders into the water. Awkwardly struggling with my chest submerged, I turned away from everyone and pulled myself together as best I could through hot tears. I think my brothers were either too freaked out or oblivious to what had happened, because neither said anything to me as I made for the edge of the pool to leave. Maybe they figured I didn't want any more attention drawn to myself—which I most certainly didn't—but a little compassion would have been nice too. Brothers can be stupidly dense.
It was James who met me at the steps with a towel and told me Janice was a jealous bitch who wished she looked as good as I did without her bikini top.
"You saw?" I asked him on a sob.
His striking greeny-brown eyes burned right into me before he answered. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, Winter, and you didn't do anything wrong. You can't help that you're beautiful and sweet." The way he looked at me told me we'd moved beyond our big brother/little sister relationship in that moment. It wasn't him being pervy with me either. It was simply James being my champion when I desperately needed one.
"Thank you," I mumbled, still mortified that he'd seen my boobs, but strangely aware the incident had given me the gift of James Blakney's attention at the same time.
"Don't let this ruin your special day, Win. You are perfectly lovely in every way," he said before grinning at me in a way that could only be described as a tiny bit wicked. My skin pebbled along with my nipples, as I stood there like a mute. James winked as he took a swig of his Sam Adams before going back to his group of friends on the grass as if nothing had ever happened.
And just like that I fell in love with him.
Not even my twin sister, Willow, was privy to the innermost secrets of my heart concerning James Blakney. Within the safety of my dreams he was mine alone, and I didn't have to share him with anyone else. Or be humiliated because I'd set my sights far too high on a man who could never possibly be interested in a young girl like me. And that right there was the division between us. James was a man at twenty-three, and I was merely a girl at fifteen. Those eight years spanning between us was gargantuan—far too great of a distance to cross over.
Then.
But I'd always known him. James had been around and in my life for as long as I could remember. He met my oldest brother, Caleb, at St. Damien's when they were ten years old, and they'd been friends ever since. I was two. Willow and I went to St. Damien's eight years later when it was our turn to be shipped off to boarding school—our twin brothers, Wyatt and Lucas, five years before us. In the Blackstone f
amily, children were schooled away from home because it built character and toughened them up for the real world. Even though the "real world" was so far removed from our lifestyle it was laughable. Things like: twenty-year-old mothers who worked the streets so her children could have food and a place to sleep; or homeless vets struggling with wartime PTSD manifested in drug abuse and suicide were the real world.
Those things just weren't the "real world" examples my parents referred to.
Boarding school was only one of the many requirements that came with the territory of growing up rich. James understood completely because he'd been raised in much the same way. The Blakneys owned a beach retreat on Blackstone Island not far from my family's ancestral estate, Blackwater, and so our time had been spent at the same gatherings and social functions for as long as we both could remember.
As the years went along, I loved James from afar, watching him grow more serious…and more cynical. I think his fiancée dumping him at the altar five years ago to run away with a senior partner in his father's law firm had a lot to do with the change in his personality. Leah Rawlings turned out to be a money-hungry bitch who'd left a trail of destruction in her wake. She broke my James's heart. And she did it publicly in a way that was cruel and unnecessary, and on the day they were to be married. With the guests already arriving at the church. I'll never forget the look on James's face when Caleb led him out of there.
Crushed.
I didn't know all the reasons for his devastation at the time. It was more than just Leah leaving him hanging at the altar. Worse than that, I would discover in time.
I couldn't have known all of the machinations that went on behind the scenes in our world when I was barely nineteen years old, but I'd learned enough to know a lot of it wasn't nice.
Despicable was a much better adjective.
James had been twenty-seven when he found out there were many secret deals and plenty of depravity in plain sight if you knew where to look.
I think the discovery of just how depraved was part of my interest in choosing social work at Boston University. I wanted to live my life differently than the people in my "social" circle. I didn't desire to be impoverished, but I didn't desire to waste my money on frivolous excess either. I wanted to use it to help make a difference for people who desperately needed someone to care, and had no one.
No one at all.
After his wedding-that-didn't-happen, I heard that James stayed drunk for about a month before pulling himself back together. With fierce resolve to overcome the betrayal of those who'd done him wrong, a mask descended over his handsome face. James lost his carefree manner and the easy smile he'd always had for others, and most importantly, in my mind, for me. He became more closed off, and far less engaging after Leah worked him over.
I missed the old James terribly at first, but I didn't have many encounters with him during the years I was an undergrad at BU. I was busy being a student, and James was busy separating himself from his father's firm. There was drama over that decision at the time. I remember my parents discussing it, but in the end, James made his own stamp in the legal community, establishing himself as the go-to guy for contract law in New England. James R. Blakney & Associates, P.C. was retained by my dad for Blackstone Global Enterprises as soon as James had set up on his own. Nothing had changed with Caleb heading up BGE since Dad's death. In fact, James probated his will—a complicated undertaking for anyone faced with settling the billion-dollar personal fortune our father left to us—and he handled it without a blip. On top of being a close family friend, James knew the conditions of my trust fund. He knew what was required for me to gain access to it before my thirtieth birthday, too. He was the one who'd explained it to my sister and me at the reading of the will. Lucas and Wyatt had nothing to worry about given they were twenty-nine when Dad passed away.
