“You have so many servants, you don’t know anything about their family members?” she asked.
“No, that’s not it. Maybe I’ve seen you before, maybe I haven’t. I just didn’t care enough to remember you until you came between me and my coffee.”
She closed her large textbook and said, “What if I was one of the servants’ daughters? Would you have her or him fired just because I didn’t get your cup of coffee?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “That depends. If you get me coffee now that you know what the situation is, then no, I won’t fire your mother or father. If you don’t…” He let the threat hang in the air.
“Wow,” she said. Then she expelled a breath of air, before she picked up the thick textbook, held it high above her head, and dropped it. The resulting bang against the kitchen table sent a piercing pain arcing through the back of his brain.
He groaned. “What are you doing?”
“My mother’s dead and thank goodness my father doesn’t work here,” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “So I’m taking advantage of the fact that you can’t fire them because I won’t fetch.”
Her yelling had the equivalent effect of beating drumsticks against his throbbing head. “Shut up,” he commanded.
“Make me!” she shouted back. “Make me you ridiculous, arrogant, spoiled, rich boy!”
Nathan covered his ears, trying to block out her voice. But then it turned out he didn’t have to. Footsteps sounded from the other room, and Layla’s head jerked up, like an animal that had caught the scent of another.
She picked up the book and scrambled back into her chair with it, opening it to the page she had been studying before Nathan had come in through the back door.
By the time Andrew entered the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a light blue polo, Layla was the very picture of someone studying peacefully.
“Seriously, bro,” he said, upon seeing Nathan. “It’s ten in the morning and you smell like the Yuengling distillery.”
Yuengling was a local beer, and it happened to be exactly what Nathan had been drinking in copious amounts the night before. But Nathan was too furious with Layla to respond to his brother’s insult. He pointed at Layla, his head throbbing even worse than before. “Who is she?” he demanded. “And what the hell is she doing here?”
“This is Layla,” his brother said. “She’s tutoring me in chemistry.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going into the family business. What do you care about chemistry?”
Layla looked up at him, confused, and Andrew blushed. “I’ve always liked chemistry,” he said, despite his red face.
Nathan turned back to Layla. “Where did he find you?”
“In the school academic development office,” she said. “He came in for peer counseling.”
“How old are you?” Nathan asked.
“I’m eighteen,” she answered.
“And he’s a twenty-one-year-old junior, who supposedly needs a freshman’s help in chemistry. A really cute freshman’s help. Yeah right. He just split up with his girlfriend and now he’s trying to get laid.” He turned back to his brother. “You probably aren’t even taking chemistry. No room for it on your business major schedule, right?”
Andrew didn’t answer, but the deeper shade of red he turned was answer enough. Nathan stood up. “Well, good luck with this harpy. If you see a servant, tell her to bring some coffee to the guest house.”
He left the kitchen on the high note of having blown his goody-two-shoes brother’s cover story.
But Layla even managed to thwart him in this. The last thing he heard her say before he left the room was, “It’s okay, Andrew. Actually, it’s kind of sweet...”
Less than two weeks later, they were officially dating, much to the consternation of their parents who had much preferred Andrew’s ex-girlfriend, Diana Swinton, a society blond, and the daughter of another prominent Pittsburgh business family.
But no one had disapproved of the relationship more than Nathan, who knew from the start what she was really like. He also knew he’d gone hard the moment he’d seen her sitting at the table, and he’d stayed that way for hours after that, until he jerked himself off, with visions of her underneath him, calling his name and begging him for more.
Now nine years later, he was in the shower and once again hard as a college-aged boy at the thought of seeing her again. Nathan turned the water fully to cold to try to calm himself down, but that didn’t work. Visions of her pulling her top off, revealing dark breasts with even darker aureoles came to mind, and despite the cold water, his dick pulsed with an aching, red hot longing. He took himself in his hand and started massaging the heat of the vision out of his rock hard flesh. But as he did so, he imagined himself bending her over his desk and taking her from behind, his hand pinching her pebbled nipple as she moaned.
His hand moved swifter over the rising tide of his cum until he finally released, spraying a thick stream of semen against the shower wall and down his leg.
He breathed hard into the cold shower spray. Yes, it had been a really bad idea to ask her to come to his office in person. But he refused to let her off the hook by telling her she could mail the installment. He was the cat and she was the mouse. And at the end of day, the cat would win. He promised himself that, even as he washed the sticky evidence of his desire for Layla Matthews off his body with freezing water.
CHAPTER FOUR
INSIDE HER cozy apartment in Squirrel Hill, Layla was also cursing herself. Honor was always being touted as such a great quality to have in movies and books, but in real life, it only caused you more trouble than it was worth. For instance, if she hadn’t felt compelled to pay back her father’s debts along with her student loans, she might have a bigger nest egg of her own by now. And if she weren’t so honorable, she definitely wouldn’t be in the position of having to meet with Nathan Sinclair, a man who didn’t even try to hide how much he despised her for reasons she still couldn’t remember.
Moving to Pittsburgh in order to unearth the mystery of her last year here had been a gift to herself for being so good and honorable all these years. For once, she was putting herself first. She had even started saving money toward hiring a private investigator. But then she’d had her run-in with Nathan Sinclair, and her honor hadn’t let her back down and walk away with a simple apology for her father’s deceit. Oh no, her honor demanded she not only pay him back the money her father had taken from his family, but that she also do so as quickly as humanly possible.