The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,458

weird that in the space of three years, we've gone from enemies to friends, to family.

Well...some kind of family anyway. It's all very unconventional. My father and his wife, my mother and her...partner or whatever.

My half-brother with his wife who walks around barefoot even when she's wearing a ballgown, my brother his wife, her daughter.

My sister, her husband and her kids.

And then, there's me. On the outside, without a cluster of my own.

I've always felt like that…. born just as whatever party had brought them all together was ending.

But, I’ve only ever wanted to be a Wilde, in name, word, and deed.

I've worked for Wilde World since I was 14. I've got some real successes under my belt, but my mother still treats me like I’m the runt of the litter. I push back from the railing and roll my neck to loosen the knots that the strange blend of anger and apathy that always results from me thinking too long about my family.

This job I’ve been pursuing in Paris is going to give me a chance to breathe and see who I can be without them. And then tonight, my mother makes this announcement. Not only does she have a man - she's moving to London to head Wilde World's European expansion.

I'm happy for her, but I’m going after the job in Paris to get away from her.

A door on the other end of the verandah opens and a woman steps through it, but she’s too shadowed for me to see who it is.

"It doesn't matter what you say, I'm done. Sign the papers, or a judge will do it for you.” It's Dina, my brother's star employee, and current President of the Tyson Wilde Haters Association. The membership is comprised of disgruntled one-night stands, athletic rivals, men whose women call my name in bed, and guys I've fucked up for disrespecting my sister.

And Dina, for all her talk about forgetting the night we spent together, has proven that I live rent free in her head.

Not that I don’t hate that I can't ever tap that again, because she is fucking beautiful. She made “my seen everything at least once” eyes do a double take the first time I saw her.

Of course, if I'd known she had just been hired by my family, I would have run in the opposite direction.

When we saw each other at the office, she told me in no uncertain terms to keep my distance. And goes out of her way to do the same.

But, as much as she acts like she hates me, I remember how wide open I broke her that night. And if I’m honest, she left a mark on me, too. I don’t typically yearn for women after I’ve slept with them, but there was something about her…

I used the service that paired us twice after that night, and then stopped when it didn’t feel good, anymore. If I wasn’t so generally unhappy with my life right now, I’d think she’d ruined me. Once I get to Paris, and away from all of these people, I’ll feel more like myself again.

“If you think I’m paying you a single cent after what you did, and all the women you fucked in our bed, you are insane,” she snarls into the phone.

Fully aware that if she knew I was here she wouldn’t be speaking so freely, I clear my throat.

“Shit. I have to go.” The light from the phone dies and she calls out, “Is someone there?"

I don’t respond right away. Not when I have the chance to check her out without her glaring at me.

She’s wearing the same dress she wore the night we met. It’s the first time in almost a year that I’ve seen her in anything but the terrible clothes she wears to work. They do a near criminal disservice to classic coke bottle figure. Her hair is straight and she’s wearing makeup that makes her wide-set brown eyes look sultry, I’ve spent all night remembering how that beautiful light brown skin of hers felt like silk under my hands.

“Who’s there?” she repeats in a more forceful tone.

"Your walking wet dream,” I quip as I step into the light that’s spilling through the window between us.

She groans. "I should have known that on a hellish night like this, I'd bump into the very devil himself."

I laugh, amused by her vexation.

"I don't know why you put so much energy into disliking me and avoiding me, but it's really flattering."

She glares