My Book Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Summer Brooks

  Contents

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  BLURB

  1. Matt

  2. Amanda

  3. Matt

  4. Amanda

  5. Matt

  6. Amanda

  7. Matt

  8. Amanda

  9. Matt

  10. Amanda

  11. Matt

  12. Amanda

  13. Matt

  14. Amanda

  15. Matt

  16. Amanda

  17. Matt

  18. Amanda

  19. Matt

  20. Amanda

  21. Matt

  22. Amanda

  23. Matt

  24. Amanda

  Author’s Note

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

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  BLURB

  He took my innocence and made my world spiral out of control.

  Now he’s back.

  After nine years, there are three reasons I should stay away.

  For one, Matt is my boss.

  On top of that, he is my older brother’s business partner at the most prestigious law firm in the country.

  And to make things worse, Matt doesn’t know about our son.

  Matt Dawson, with his cool blue eyes and dominating persona, can send shivers down my spine with a single touch.

  His forearms are stronger than my resolve to resist him. And I know that he won’t stop until he makes me gasp and tremble with pleasure again.

  Hiding our son’s existence complicates things, but it’s my brother who is the gravest concern.

  If he discovers that Matt is the father of my child—or even that Matt and I are together—he would be angry enough to kill.

  And murder is something he is more than capable of doing.

  But Matt would go to unimaginable lengths to protect his family.

  One

  Matt

  When running through Central Park, there are a number of things you expect to see: moms pushing their babies in expensive strollers, old women feeding birds from park benches, homeless men trying to find some shade from the blistering New York heat, and of course, couples strolling hand-in-hand around Bethesda fountain. The last thing I expected to see was Brian, my law partner and former boss, kissing a woman beside the fountain.

  Brian was happily married, so seeing him in compromising positions was nothing new. If the woman in his embrace was his wife, I wouldn’t have given it a second glance, but it wasn’t.

  There had been obvious clues that he would one day cheat on his wife, but I still didn’t expect it. In college, we’d both been players, hooking up with different girls every weekend. In law school, it got a little harder to score, but we still did, owning the college bar circuit like a couple of pros. Five years ago, when he introduced me to his girlfriend, Megan, and told me that he was going to marry her, I probably wouldn’t have ever believed it if I hadn’t been the one to stand behind him and pass him the ring before he said “I do.”

  Seeing him standing in Central Park with a woman other than his wife was shocking to say the least. I almost tripped when I saw them, and had to catch myself before I landed face-first on the pavement.

  Just last year, when Dale Schumer finally retired, leaving Brian and I as the sole partners of the firm, we had celebrated for an entire week, and consumed enough alcohol to fuel a small car on a cross-country road trip. But even still, each night at eleven or so, he had insisted that he had to get home to Megan, so that he could be with her and their newborn baby, Charlie. Had so much changed since then? And if it had, why hadn’t he said anything? The two of us talked about everything.

  Still, I knew that Brian and I had our secrets. For instance, I thought he was extremely controlling—both of his wife, who was forbidden to have a job outside the home, and of his younger sister, Amanda, who was one of the most fiercely intelligent and ambitious young women I had ever met. He hadn’t mentioned his sister in a long time. In fact, I wondered if they even spoke anymore. But I couldn’t ask. Brian had made it clear a long time ago that his sister was off-limits.

  My younger self had nothing to lose by ignoring him, and I had done just that several years ago. It was only by sheer luck, and force of will, that our sexual relationship wasn’t discovered then. I knew that I’d never get so lucky again. Besides, as far as I knew, she still lived in Chicago, so it was useless to think about her. It would only bring up feelings about which I could do nothing. It was much easier to continue seducing paralegals.

  At Dawson and Fisher, we hired the hottest paralegals. Most of them had only gotten into the line of work to attract lawyers anyway, so they were all too willing to play. And because I was one of the two partners, human resources couldn’t touch me.

  The woman that Brian was kissing in the park was not a paralegal. She was not overly attractive—certainly not as beautiful as his wife, and I wondered, as I passed by them, why he was with her in the openness of Central Park, where anyone could see the two of them. Was he trying to end his marriage? New York was one of the most densely populated cities in the United States, but in a lot of ways, it was like a small town. I had been living here for almost two decades, and it never ceased to amaze me how often I ran into people who I knew. In a city with over eight million inhabitants who were constantly scurrying from one destination to the next like frantic ants trapped in a maze, it was easy to learn names and faces. Inevitably, one of those little ants would see Brian with his new paramour, exactly like I had, and the gossip would make its way back to Megan. This was surer than the sunrise.

  Unfortunately, I was caught in a trap of indecision. I had two options: talk to him about his affair, or act as if I hadn’t seen anything. I couldn’t be the moral authority, given my relative inability to maintain a relationship longer than a week. Though I felt that I owed it to Megan to confront him and demand that he stops. Or at the very least, I could suggest discretion. If he was going to be nuzzling a woman other than his wife, the least he could do was keep it behind closed doors.

  Historically though, Brian had not been great at taking constructive criticism—especially when related to his personal life. In law school, he hooked up briefly with one of our professors—a tough-as-nails, multiple divorcee who was probably in her fifties at the time. When I told him that it was going to end badly, he decked me. Granted, we were younger, and he’d been drunk at the time, but he also had a violent temper—one that I had seen many assholes incur in bars throughout the length of our friendship.

  Now that we were trying to run a law firm together, I would need serious motivation if I was going to provoke him. I felt bad for Megan, but seeing her husband with another less attractive woman in the park was simply not enough to make me throw away everything that Brian and I had built together. I’d keep it all to myself—for now, at least.

  Two

  Amanda

  “Can you put that in the bedroom, please?” I directed the movers. I had never hired movers before, and it felt odd to be in charge of the muscle-bound men who had been carrying my furniture up six flights of stairs for the past four hours. Unfortunately for them, it was necessary. Moving the heavy furniture and boxes alone was not an option, as I was not large or strong enough to do so. On top of that, I had a son who needed close supervision.

  The apartment was small, but it was all I could afford. New York was so much more expensive than Chicago. With student loan payments and all
other expenses, the money I had saved wasn’t going to go far. The landlord had told me I was lucky to find a place with a bedroom, which was likely true. Most of the advertised living areas were single room lofts, which was not an option. I was willing to deal with the smell of Chinese food from the restaurant on the first floor to avoid sharing a bedroom with Aaron. I loved my son more than anything, but we needed our own space.

  So, for now, he’d have the bedroom, while I’d sleep on a sofa bed in the living room. I only signed a lease for six months in hopes that we could move again after I started earning a salary from my new job.

  “That box goes to the kitchen,” I told one of the guys. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt that showed off the tattoos covering both of his arms. He was exactly the kind of guy I would have been attracted to when I was in high school—the kind of guy I’d sneak out of class to make out with under the bleachers. But in college, my taste changed. Now I liked clean-cut guys who took care of themselves and didn’t treat women like shit. Aaron’s dad had not been a clean-cut and respectful man, and since we split, I had been looking to avoid men like him.

  I heard Aaron’s footsteps running from around his bedroom. “Walk,” I shouted, using the mom-voice I had been working on for the better part of a decade. His footsteps slowed, until he appeared in the living room just a few feet in front of me.

  “I still don’t understand why we had to leave Chicago,” he whined, “my room was bigger in Chicago.”

  “I know, sweetie. Hopefully we won’t be here long.” I reached out to tousle his light brown hair, but he quickly ducked out of my grasp, and smoothed it down again.

  While it had been a challenge at times, having a kid when I was only eighteen was a blessing in many ways. I had skipped over the stupid part of my twenties when young women drink too much and party too hard. Instead, I had a little person to take care of, which motivated me to work harder than I had ever worked before.

  We stayed in my parents’ house in the northern suburbs while I was working on my undergraduate degree at Loyola, then moved to a little apartment in Hyde Park while I was in law school. But Aaron was right; our Hyde Park apartment was not as small as this. New York was going to present some challenges and compromises that were beyond what I had already considered.

  But, if I could pass the LSAT while taking care of a toddler and fighting with my older brother, then I could do anything.

  “Can I watch Ninjago?” Aaron asked, looking up at me with his clear blue eyes. I couldn’t refuse him anything when he looked at me like that. He reminded me a lot of his father, but only the best aspects of the man. He didn’t get those eyes from my olive-skinned, dark-haired side of the family.

  I reached into my purse to produce his iPad so he could watch his cartoon. “You have one hour,” I said to him, “then read your book.”

  Aaron nodded, accepting the iPad with glee. He loved reading almost as much as he loved cartoons, and he was in the middle of a book about Greek Gods and Goddesses in which he seemed extremely interested. I tried to steer him towards books whenever I could. Our urban lifestyle didn’t offer a lot of opportunities to play outside, but I didn’t want him to become one of those zombie children who stares at screens all day. I figured books were better. I didn’t even care what he was reading, as long as he was reading, but I did like to ask him about the world he explored in his books and cartoons.

  He took off toward the bedroom with his iPad clutched to his chest, forcing me to reiterate my earlier command. “Walk,” I said a little firmer this time, and listened for his steps to slow on the hardwood floor before relaxing for a few seconds on the sofa that the movers had brought inside. It was Sunday, which meant I had less than twenty-four hours before I started my new job, and I didn’t even know which box contained my professional clothes. I needed a glass of wine. Where in the hell did I pack the wine glasses?

  Three

  Matt

  What I hadn’t counted on, when I’d decided to forego talking to Brian about his mistress in the park, was that he had seen me watching. I had successfully avoided talking to him all weekend, ignoring his phone calls, and just responding in short sentences that indicated how busy I was in texts. He probably knew that I was avoiding him, but I hadn’t anticipated that he’d know the reason.

  The thing is, when you work right next to someone, it becomes difficult to avoid them. Our offices at Dawson and Fisher mirrored one another, with only a small seating area in between, so whenever Brian exited his office, the first thing he saw was mine. Most of the time, this facilitated communication between us, as the sole partners in the firm. Now it made the conversation I’d been dreading since Saturday afternoon all but inevitable.

  I didn’t even make it to lunch before Brian burst in, looking distressed.

  “You’re not going to tell Megan, are you?” he demanded, his voice sounding far more aggressive than it should have been, given the situation he was facing.

  I buried my face in my hands and rubbed at my temples to try to wake myself up. I hadn’t even completed my first cup of coffee for the day, and already I was handling one of Brian’s mistakes.

  “That’s your mess, man,” I answered finally. “It has nothing to do with me.” I wanted to believe that was true, but here he was, sitting in my office and making the drama mine. And if I saw Megan, what was I supposed to do, lie to her face? Brian had put me in a shitty situation, and he knew it.

  “You sleep around almost every night, man. It’s not much different.”

  I scoffed. “I’m not married, and I don’t have a kid.” Bringing my dirty laundry into the picture was typical of him. “It’s way different.”

  “What about the fight you got into a few months ago for that chick at the bar?” he mentioned. I raised my brow, wondering how that had any correlation to the situation of his mistress. “I got you out of there, scot free. The guy was in the hospital for days and you didn’t get charged because I helped you out.”

  Using that situation as leverage was a low blow, especially when his hot head had gotten him into numerous fights of his own. “I’m not telling Megan, man. Just fix this before she finds out,” I reassured.

  I was sure that Brian was going to leave then, his issue resolved, but the look on his face and the fact that he was still glued to the chair on the opposite side of my desk suggested otherwise.

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  Brian nodded, but didn’t move. I waited.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, man. I don’t want you to think I don’t love Megan. I do.”

  “I don’t think anything,” I lied. I had thoughts. Lots of thoughts. But I wasn’t about to share them. It didn’t seem like the time or the place, and it would be completely counterproductive. I just wanted him to leave so that I could get back to work. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as if that was going to be happening anytime soon.

  “Valerie is just…” His voice trailed off, and he made a grunting sound—something completely guttural and visceral, like a caveman thinking about a tasty carcass.

  I hadn’t realized that I hadn’t felt that way about someone in a long time. I hadn’t experienced the desire that stirs your blood and steals your words, reducing you to monosyllabic grunts, in quite a while. I had experienced it once in my life, and I was almost certain that it wasn’t going to happen again.

  “Wow, man. What are you going to do?” It was useless to offer Brian advice, even if I had some to give, which I didn’t. It was better to just ask him questions to see where his mind was headed. This, I had experienced before.

  “I don’t know,” was all he could say, shaking his head to punctuate the lack of thoughts inside his overeducated brain. Brian wasn’t stupid, but at times like this, it sure seemed that way. There was nothing left to do but let him stew for a while.

  “Want to do lunch?” I asked him.

  “Sure,” he said casually, as if the last several minutes of absurdist theatre in my office had never happened. �
�Mind if Amanda joins us?”

  I must admit that when he said the name, I had no idea who he was talking about. I ran through all the women in our office. Not an Amanda among them, as far as I knew. The mistress? No, Brian had said her name was Valerie. His wife was Megan. I was lost.

  “Amanda?” I repeated.

  “My sister,” he explained. “She just moved to town. I gave her a job on the third floor.”

  I am certain that in that moment, my jaw dropped through the floor, never to be retrieved. Amanda. My Amanda. She wasn’t in Chicago. She was here. Why? My brain was moving faster than I could process, flying through a list of questions that I couldn’t possibly ask. Why the third floor? Wasn’t that mostly tax attorneys? If you’re going to give your sister a job, shouldn’t you give her a less shitty one? And then, the question that did escape my lips:

  “You hired her without running it past me?”

  I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it out loud. When Schumer retired, Brian and I agreed that we’d make decisions together. But this was one fairly big decision that he had made without me. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were others.

  “I didn’t think it would be a big deal,” he responded dismissively. Then he added, “I thought you liked Amanda.”