Tell Me You're Mine (The British Billionaires #1) - J. S. Scott Page 0,29

gripped my shirt harder and tried to shake me, but he didn’t have the strength to move me very far in his intoxicated state. “You can’t do that, Damian. I’m a Lancaster, too. You can’t just take everything.”

Remorse continued to claw at me, but I shrugged it off. “I can. You gave me that right when you wanted to disappear from the public eye. You signed over all of your responsibilities to me two years ago. Pull yourself together, and we’ll talk. You look like shit.”

Dylan’s eyes lit with fury, his usual icy stare completely gone as he pulled his arm back in what I knew was going to be the first punch ever thrown between the two of us.

Not today, brother. Not today.

He was shirtless, dressed only in swim trunks, so I gripped his shoulders and heaved before he could land a single hit on me, sending him hurtling into the swimming pool.

I folded my arms over my chest as I watched him come to the surface, making sure the idiot wasn’t drunk enough to drown. “Meet me for breakfast in the morning, and make sure you’re sober,” I instructed.

Dylan sputtered. “I swear, I’ll beat the crap out of you for this, Damian.”

I grinned back at him as I said, “Try it, tosser.” If he ever got sober and balanced enough to throw a real punch, I’d probably be fucking ecstatic.

I turned and left the pool area.

Maybe I couldn’t make Dylan pull himself together, but I could certainly make him uncomfortable enough to try.

CHAPTER 10

Nicole

“I PICKED UP YOUR usual,” Kylie said as she breezed through the door of my office with a couple of food bags in her arms.

My eyes raised to the clock. “Wow! It is lunchtime already.” I was surprised at how fast the morning had flown by.

I’d had a lot of work back up while I’d been in London, so I hadn’t even paused to look at the clock after I’d gotten into the office this morning.

“You’ve been pretty quiet in here.” Kylie pulled the soup and sandwiches from the bags. “You’re not still upset over the whole Damian Lancaster thing, right? I mean, he’s a jerk, and it was just a kiss.”

I looked up at her and frowned. Okay. Yeah. It was just a kiss, and I couldn’t think of a way to explain just how intimate that embrace had been. “I’m good. I was just trying to get my email caught up and some proposals done.”

Kylie shot me a puzzled gaze. “You know you don’t have to do any proposals, right? You own the business. You can leave that to the rest of us.”

“Mom did some of her own proposals,” I argued. “And I feel like I need to know every part of this business to be able to lead everyone else.”

How could I be in control of a business I knew nothing about?

Kylie dropped my lunch in front of me, grabbed her own soup, and plopped down in a chair in front of my desk.

Even though she’d just made a food run outside in the heat, my best friend still looked as fresh as she’d appeared first thing this morning.

Her makeup was perfect, covering every freckle she’d abhorred since childhood. Kylie had gotten teased in grade school about her endless freckles, bright-red braids, and her willingness to take on anything a boy could do.

That tough girl had blossomed into a beautiful redheaded woman with more confidence in her little finger than I had in my entire body.

“Your mother loved doing proposals, which is why she did some herself,” Kylie pointed out. “She didn’t need to be that hands-on, either. And since you don’t exactly enjoy doing proposals, neither do you. Nic, you’re allowed to be who you are. You don’t need to be your mother. You’re the boss, which means you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just because you’re keeping your Mom’s business, it doesn’t mean you can’t put your own spin on it, and do things your way.”

I pulled the lid off what I already knew was minestrone soup. I’d caught the mouthwatering aroma before Kylie had pulled the food out of the bag. “I’ve been doing this for a year, and I still feel lost,” I confessed.

Kylie lifted a brow. “Did you really expect to be perfect in just a year? You were a corporate attorney, not a PR expert.”

“I don’t think I knew what to expect. I just wanted to keep Mom’s company alive.” I’d