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“We thought because you guys have ‘Hollywood’ clients.” Iris quotes just like her father, bringing the resemblances forth. “Maybe you’ve dealt with a situation such as this before.”
“We have,” I answer truthfully. I saw at least Crawford’s signature on the NDAs as well, so I’m not worried about speaking bluntly and truthfully. “Twice. The first time went perfectly, the second did as well except for the ending. The ending was… messy.”To say the fucking least.
“Wolf Storm, right?” Mike pipes in.
“Yes,” I answer, surprised once more. Man, I’m off my game today.
He does a seriously cute—who knew giants could be cute?—pump with his fist and mutters, “Yesss.” He smiles down at his boyfriend, smug. “Told you so.”
“Yeah, you did,” Theodore answers indulgently then looks back at me. “Would you be able to avoid a messy ending in this case?” he asks with a sudden seriousness in his voice. Protective. The Crawfords are not what I expected.
“We can. We learned from that experience. It’s solvable simply by putting it in writing that the breakup is to be mutual in the public eye and not messy at all.”
“I have an idea,” Zoe pipes in. Her eyes shift quickly to mine before going to our audience. I see a flash of trepidation in them, but I can’t figure out what she’s thinking. “You can’t be with an athlete of any kind because of the Kings, an actor or singer are out because they don’t represent the ‘family’ image you’re going for. Even though having two fully grown functioning humans as children should be enough for that,” she mutters the last sentence then shakes her head and goes on. “In my opinion, another businessman is the best option. We don’t have any of those as clients, though.” She bites her bottom lip and her eyes do that shifting-to-me-then-quickly-away thing again. Where is she going with this? “So I propose Tristan does it.”
I choke on air. “Saywhatnow?”
She looks at me apologetically. “Look, it’s the only way I can see this working fast and painlessly.” She turns back to Crawford who looks surprised but… interested.Interested?! What the fuck is happening right now?“You definitely won’t be paying for this consult or any others,” she assures him and me. “There will be a contract of course. And yeah, he’s a good decade and a half younger, but he’s older than your oldest child by more than five years, accomplished, kind of well-known, has no skeletons in his closet.” Iris snickers, but Zoe ignores her. “And you won’t be the first or last rich man to go for a younger partner. He also knows how to act and what to do for this to work in your favor. Especially because we all know your board still won’t be happy with this. In return for Tristan acting as your boyfriend for a… period of time, you could maybe recommend us to some of your billionaire friends and we call it even.”
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that follows Zoe’s explanation.
THREE
Harrison
I takeadvantage of everyone’s surprise and look at the man in front of me.
Tristan Jones, blond, perfectly styled bouncy hair, nice tailored dark blue suit, bright green intelligent eyes, and… confident.
I like confidence.
Well, he looked confident until about a minute ago. His surprise at his sister’s idea is genuine. I don’t think this is some grand scheme to take advantage of me in some way. Not only because of his surprise but also because of the way Zoe is looking at her twin brother.
Another confident person. A lot more confident than her brother—a hard feat to accomplish—except when she looks at him. They share all physical traits except the obvious gender difference and her hair is straight.
Clearly, they’re each other’s weak spots. It also makes me trust them business-wise and to an extent. It’s always to an extent with anyone who doesn’t have the last name Crawford. That rule, of course, excludes my ex-wife who for some fucking reason never changed her last name back to her maiden name. I’ll never trust her again after the way she acted when Theo came out to her. One would think if you get pregnant having a threesome with two men you wouldn’t be a homophobe, right? Wrong. After Theo told her he’s gay and I heard her reaction, I started suspecting she was looking to get pregnant when she met Chase and I and it wasn’t accidental. I don’t regret it either way, though I wish Theo had a mother who loved him unconditionally, but I could never regret Theo.
Mike McKinnley is close to being one of the few exceptions. Those are Eian, my best friends Chase and Gab, Matt, Connor, and Zeke, our bodyguards, and Theo’s two best friends, Paula and Casey. It’s hard to trust strangers when you have the amount of money, property, and power I do.
I turn to look at Zoe and see her eyes are on me now, assessing my reaction. They tell me she’s taking in every flinch or slight movement in my expression. I trained myself out of reacting in any way decades ago, so I’m not worried, but seeing her look for any clues into my thoughts makes me actually feel better about this situation.
She’s smart, and not just text-book smart, I can see a predator hiding behind her perfectly poised façade.
I saw the same intelligence hiding behind her brother’s eyes when I got lost in them earlier. I snapped out of it fast enough that I don’t think anyone noticed, thankfully, but damn.
Tristan Jones is a fine-looking man.
And yeah, I haven’t been in a relationship in a long time, but I definitely haven’t been a saint. I’m way more careful about who I fuck, when, and where, but I haven’t been celibate since Iris was born.
My tastes since college haven’t changed, I like to fuck women and I like to fuck men. And since the situation with Iris’ birth mother, I prefer to hook up with men, so it’s become a habit to focus more on them than on women.
“I’m in,” I declare at the same time that Iris says, “Maybe you can call him Daddy.”
Her smirk doesn’t move as Ma shouts “Iris!”, Theo screams “Jesus fuck, EW!”, and Mike turns beet-red and groans out a “Noooooo,” while covering his eyes.
I can’t pull up my jaw from where it fell. The audacity of this little demon. I think fast, though. “That’s it. Seems you need a little reminder of your age and your place.” I reach out my hand palm up. “Phone,” I demand, her eye roll makes me double and triple down. “Go upstairs and bring down your laptop and your tablet.” She stands to do as I say without another word or expression. At least she knows not to argue with me about this. And of course, she’ll have to get her phone back for security reasons alone.
“Sorry.” I wince when I look back at Zoe and Tristan. They both still look stunned. “My daughter is not a spoiled brat, I promise she’s not, she’s just… outspoken.”
