A Taste of Peace - J. J. Sorel Page 0,1

if it was rare to be a virgin at twenty-three. Because when it came to who not to hook up with, I had a front-row seat to my sister’s poor choice in men.

Ava giggled while pointing at the pirouetting pig dressed as a ballerina on TV. Mimicking the dance steps, she was good. I’d suggested dance classes, but Harriet couldn’t afford it, and there was no child support either. Aaron, Ava’s father and Harriet’s college sweetheart, had bailed after finding out she was pregnant.

When Harriet became a single mom at twenty-one while studying for her nursing degree, I promised to help as much as I could, which meant me minding Ava while my sister worked. If the situation had been reversed, she would have done the same for me. Besides, I loved spending time with my niece.

Harry, as everyone called her, worked as a nurse in rehab. Before that, she had a short stint at a drug rehab facility, which had its setbacks. She had this thing for damaged guys who were heavily tattooed, reeked of smoke and alcohol, and looked as though they lived on the streets.

I’d given up judging Harriet and her revolving door of swaggering bad boys. After Aaron broke her heart, she changed virtually overnight and thumbed her nose at my suggestion she get therapy. But despite her flaws, deep down inside my older sister was a good soul.

While she traded sanity for a night of pleasure, I traded mine for a slice of action in the glamorous but cutthroat art scene.

Art had always been a passion for me, ever since I was a child. From the moment my father’s anthology of Renaissance art weighed down heavily on my little arms, I was hooked. The problem was that finding a job after graduation had proved more difficult than I’d expected.

I owed big-time on my student loans, and so I had to take what I could get. Every interview I’d gone to had dozens of applicants. Often, the positions were in Silicon Valley, where job titles required you to have a degree in linguistics to decipher.

Art would just have to wait. Or at least, I’d keep looking until something right came along.

“Mommy, can I have ballet lessons?” asked Ava.

Harriet looked at me and sighed. “We’ll see, sweetie. The shoes don’t come cheap.”

“I’ll help,” I said. “Now that I’ve got a job, I’ll be able to pay for leotards and ballet slippers.”

Harriet hugged me. “You’re the best.” She turned to Ava. “Did you hear that? Auntie Andie’s taking you to ballet classes.”

“Did I say that?” I asked.

Harriet looked at me and crossed her eyes, making a stupid face. It was something she did whenever she was trying to butter me up, and as always, I laughed.

2

LACHLAN

Britney looked at me as though I’d asked her to swim in a tank full of sharks.

“I’m not sure if there’s a Tinder equivalent for what you’re asking.”

“Well, there should be.” I scratched my prickly jaw.

One of the biggest downsides to running a billion-dollar empire were the endless charity balls I was forced to attend, not to mention the many advances that sashayed my way.

That wasn’t me bragging but a genuine snapshot of the women who attended these glittering galas. That they sought to marry into wealth didn’t come as a surprise. I just wasn’t in the market for marriage or even a girlfriend.

Being propositioned with offers to have my dick sucked in a dark corner was not my idea of a fun night. It wasn’t that I disliked blow jobs; like any hot-blooded male, I loved them. It was the gossip and expectations that came afterward that I hated, particularly since it was impossible to keep people out of your business. Everyone knew everyone in that scene.

Britney, who loved hanging around wealth in the same way wolves loved roaming among sheep, insisted that we attend. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t deny it would be smart to network and make up for lost time.

When it came to talking shop about the money market, I missed out on that gene. But with my father in the hospital, in experimental drug trials for his pancreatic cancer, it was incumbent on me, his remaining son, to run his empire. And due to my older brother’s untimely death, I’d developed this burning need to prove that I could cut it.

My dad had always favored Brent, which made perfect sense, given that they’d matched like a pair of socks.

“Why don’t I go as your date?” Britney