“Were you willing to let Mitcham Vandenberg pull those strings?”
“To an extent,” he admitted. “Existing in the Hamptons requires a working income if you’re going to leave the grounds. So I followed some of the rules.”
“But not all of them?”
“I wasn’t interested in taking the corporate helicopter into the city after school to put in late hours at Vandenberg Enterprises. I suspect that’s one of the reasons Mitcham never elected to adopt me or even broached the subject with my mother.”
Scarlet’s head tilted in contemplation. “Did you want him to adopt you?”
“No.” Sam tore his gaze from hers and straightened. He went for the wine bottle. As he refreshed their glasses, he said, “All I wanted was for my mom to be happy. Did I enjoy the sports car and the parties and the royal treatment because I lived on the estate? Naturally. Who the hell wouldn’t? But was I willing to jump through massive hoops to make Mitcham love me or treat me like his very own son? No.”
“Because you had a close relationship with your real father?”
“I don’t know who my real father is. Disappeared without a trace when he found out my mother was pregnant. She tried to find him, but she’s convinced he went so far as to change his name to keep from having any sort of connection to us or financial responsibility. That’s all I really know, all I really care to know. I’ve never considered him to be my father, not in the true sense. I don’t subscribe to running away from your commitments.… Even as a kid I couldn’t abide by it.”
“Yes, that is pretty shitty.”
Sam nodded.
Getting back on track, Scarlet asked, “How’d you get into Princeton? Expensive school.”
The angst left Sam’s eyes, so he presumably preferred this line of questioning to anything pertaining to his deadbeat dad.
“Princeton is one of the few Ivy Leaguers to offer grants,” he explained. “I had the grades and the accolades to apply for one, plus I received a partial football scholarship. I’ll confess that I told the Admissions people my stepfather was Mitcham Vandenberg, alumnus, and my stepbrother was Michael, who’d been immediately accepted into the university, as though ordained. The name-dropping greased the wheels.” He rapped his knuckles on the granite, a bit pensively. “I still had to work my ass off to survive, though—both academically and with a part-time job.”
“I can imagine. You were an architecture major. That had to be all-consuming unto itself.”
Sam regarded her a few moments, then asked, “Is there anything about me that you don’t know?”
“Plenty, I assure you.”
“Well, I’m feeling at a slight disadvantage.”
“Fair enough.” She slid off the stool and grabbed the cutting board with the ’shrooms and went to the stove. As she drizzled olive oil into the pan and turned on the burner, she said, “Ask me whatever you’d like. However, I regret to inform you up front that unless you’re fascinated by unsolved mysteries and sketchy locales and shady characters you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“I’m interested in you,” he said, his voice a low, arousing rumble.
Scarlet’s stomach fluttered. She glanced at him over her shoulder. He stared intently at her with those intense blue eyes of his, making her think that the inquisitiveness radiating from him had less to do with wanting to know her backstory and more to do with her silent admission and acceptance that the idea of a ménage scenario with him and his stepbrother titillated her.
Exhilaration trilled through her at the image of their naked bodies entwined flashing in her mind. All other thoughts fled her usually sensible brain as she fixated on the mental trailer playing in her head.
Geez, Scarlet. Get it together.
Speak!
Her mouth worked like a gaping fish trying to expel a hook lodged in its throat as she fought to free the words on her tongue.
But not a single one materialized.
So she turned back to the stove and continued what she was doing while also trying to block the fantasy of Michael and Sam working in tandem to make her come. Over and over.
Her nipples tightened further. Her pussy ached.
&
nbsp; These two men were preying on her senses.
“Why don’t we start with the basics?” Sam proposed. “Where in California do you live?”