AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirteen Thea
I hovered outside Mark’s office door, wondering if I should go in. Maybe it would have been smarter to just let him cool down for a while, but I couldn’t let him get away with what he had pulled last night. No matter how much he seemed to think he had been in the right, I wasn’t about to let my brother dictate who I could spend time with, even if he clearly hated the thought of me being anywhere near Scott.
He had made such a scene in the casino. I’d hurried off to my room the first chance I’d gotten, barely even saying goodbye to Shelby before I vanished. I was so humiliated at how he had stepped in between us, forcing himself into a situation that had nothing to do with him. I wished I had the nerve to tell him to fuck off and keep his nose out of it, but the fury he was showing was something I’d never seen before in my life, not from him. Not over anything I’d done, at least.
But I wasn’t about to let it stand without actually taking the time to discuss with him what he had done. I wasn’t sure how he was going to take it, but we were family, and the last thing I needed was a wedge driven even further between us.
Because I had enjoyed spending time with Scott, even though I knew I shouldn’t have. The sexy games he played, and the closeness we shared lit a fire within me, and I knew that if my brother hadn’t stuck his nose into it, something more would have happened last night. I wished it had. I wished I could have taken Scott to my room. I wished the two of us could have spent the night together, but Mark took that choice away from us.
All the staff were talking about it this morning. When I came downstairs for breakfast, the staff had all quietened down at once, a sure sign they were discussing me. I could feel my cheeks blazing as I tried to brush it off, but I couldn’t. I hated being the subject of gossip, and right now, it seemed as though everyone was interested in my business.
I couldn’t let it get to me. Not until I’d had a chance to speak to my brother about it, at least—I needed to know what was going on with him, why he had kicked off so aggressively when he had seen Scott talking to me. Yes, I got it. He was protective of me. He was my older brother, but he didn’t need to go so batshit crazy about it, did he?
Because...well, what if I wanted to spend more time with Scott? What if I wanted to get to know him a bit more? What if I was starting to see a side to him I had never imagined could have existed in someone like him? I didn’t know if he would even believe me if I told him that, but I needed Mark to understand there was more to Scott than he knew, more than the label he had pinned on him.
I inhaled deeply and pushed open the door.
Mark was sitting behind his desk, glowering at some papers before him. Clearly, he was still furious with everything that had happened, and maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He had never been good at letting things go, and this seemed unlikely to slip his mind. He had been so mad last night that I was sure the event had burned itself into his brain, forcing him to confront the possibility of the two of us together.
His head snapped up when he heard me enter, and he looked up at me with irritation.
"Thea, what are you doing here?"
"I want to talk to you, Mark," I told him, crossing my arms over my chest. "About what happened last night. You know you can’t be making that kind of scene in public. People will talk—"
"And you think they’re going to keep their mouths shut when they see you with someone like Scott?" He fired back. He had clearly already decided how this was going to go, and I hated how quickly he was off the mark—how fast he was to shut me down. And that he had a point.
"Look, I know you’re just doing the big brother thing," I rationalized. "I get it. And I don’t begrudge you that. I really don’t. I just...I want you to know that I’m not just going to be letting you decide how my life will go. I still have a life outside of you, outside of this place, okay? And if that involves Scott—"
"Then it’s not outside of this place at all," he shot back angrily. "Because he’s working with me, remember? You really want to shit where you eat like that?"
"You’re the one running the hotel, not me," I reminded him. "If I want to date someone—"
"Date someone?" He exclaimed. "You’d think about dating a guy like that?"
"He’s not what you think he is," I protested, and he shook his head, lifting his hand to stop me in my tracks.
"This isn’t about what I think," he told me, his voice sharp. "This is about what I know. And what I know about him...you don’t even want to find out."
"So tell me," I replied, incredulous. "Tell me if it’s that bad, and you really think it’ll keep me away from him. Go on."
I raised my eyebrows, and he just sat there. Just like I thought—he didn’t have anything. He was trying to throw shit out there to scare me, to get me to back off, but it didn’t work that way, not for me. I had already decided I wasn’t going to let Scott’s reputation scare me off. Whatever Scott had done, whatever kind of person he projected to the world, I could sense something else behind the façade. I could tell there was another man there, a man who was kinder, softer, gentler. A man who might not even have wanted any of this in the first place but didn’t have any choice but to take on his family business and hope he could make it out in one piece.
"You don’t know him like I do," I argued.
"Oh, I know I don’t," he replied, rolling his eyes. "I don’t want to, either. It’s just business with us. I'm not stupid to let myself actually get attached to the guy."
Anger flared in my system. I hated when he talked down to me like that. Hated when he spoke to me like I was an idiot who didn’t know what was good for me. But I was more than that. I wouldn’t stand for him acting as though I couldn’t make the right decisions for my own life, no matter how much he seemed to think they were the wrong ones.
"He’s...different," I protested. "Trust me. There’s something else, something he tries to hide from everyone, but it’s there. I know it. I’ve seen it."
"Yeah, he’s doing a pretty good job hiding it from everyone, then," he replied. "Because nobody thinks he’s anything other than a gangster."
I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut as I tried to gather myself. I couldn’t let him get to me. He was just angry, lost in his emotions, and I had to cut through them to get him to see things from my perspective.
But when I opened them again and looked at him, I could see there would be no getting through to him. He had made up his mind about Scott, and I could have stood there all day and fought with him, and he wouldn’t have budged. He was fuming with me, and I wasn’t going to get past that to get him to accept my perspective.
I gritted my teeth and turned my back on him. I wouldn’t let him try to fight me into believing he was right. He hadn’t seen those glimpses of Scott that I had, he never would. He was too closed off to it, and the thought of him seeing Scott through that twisted lens stung, badly.
