Addicted: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (35 page)

"
S
o what the
hell were you doing going all Castaway on Miami Beach, man?" Dwayne asked the next day. He'd brought me a very simple breakfast of fruits and watery oatmeal, both because my body needed the fluids still, and because he was worried I'd vomit anything stronger. "Seriously, you looked like a homeless guy there, with your bag on the sand next to you, your eyes blinded almost, and as red as a lobster."

I slowly chewed at the piece of mango that was currently on my fork, swallowing carefully before answering. "I think I was trying to kill myself," I said. "I don't really know; I was just kind of walking until I gave out."

Dwayne sat across from me in the dining room, still carefully studying me. I was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from my bag, both of which hung on my body. I'd probably lost close to twenty pounds in the three days since I'd left Castelbon Manor, mostly water weight though, and my hands still shook slightly from the effort of trying to feed myself. "So what happened? This isn't the same Julian that I knew years ago."

I thought back to soon after I'd left college for the second time. Wanting to get away again, I'd flown to the Virgin Islands, where I'd met Dwayne Forrester. The youngest son of the Forrester Hotel empire, he and I had hit it off well, with a lot of second hand familiar connections. He was a few years older than me, and we formed a kind of mentor-apprentice friendship. We'd spent close to three months partying it up among the islands, hopping from place to place probably about two steps ahead of the local constabulary. "Yeah, Curacao was pretty wild, wasn't it?"

Dwayne nodded and gave me a ghost of a grin. "And Trinidad, and Maracaibo, and St. Kitts, and Santiago. Hell, by the end of it I was wondering if we were just going to become a pair of buccaneers and start raiding the Spanish Main again."

"Well, we did plunder quite a few bootys," I joked, feeling a bit of strength return. "Although I don't remember who got more."

"Doesn't really matter," he replied. "But what's up with you now? I mean, I've read your name from time to time, you seem to have kept your penchant for getting yourself in trouble."

I nodded. "Yeah, I have at that. Meanwhile, the little I've read about you has been nothing but good news. Congratulations on taking over the Forrester chain. By the way, what's this about Erica and Liz? Is your sister living with you or something?"

Dwayne shook his head and got up, getting a photo from the kitchen. "Here, take a look."

I looked at the simple snapshot, and was blown away. The woman with Dwayne was tall, easily five ten, and beautiful in a lot of the same ways Krystal is. Their bodies weren't at all alike, Krystal being shorter and more voluptuous, but they both had a quality to their eyes that told me she was a good person. Held between them was a precious little girl that looked maybe a year old, I wasn't too sure. "You're married?"

"I am," Dwayne told me, a huge grin on his face. "The picture's a little old, but that's Liz in between me and Erica."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Wow man. You found yourself a beautiful woman too. Just your type, tall, leggy.... she looks like she should be a model or something."

"Would you believe she was? She then went into designing, and we met through a fashion show in London. There were a lot of bumps along the road, but we found happiness together. Now that you look a little more like a human being, I wish she and Liz were in town. But, they're overseas in France right now. I'd be with them, but I have a quarterly shareholders meeting I have to go to tomorrow, and frankly I can't miss that. I'm flying to Paris the day after tomorrow though."

"I see. Wow, you've got your life on the right track. Jesus," I said, before the enormity of my crisis crashed down on me. I sat there, emotion choking my throat so that I could barely even make a noise, and told Dwayne everything. I had to give it to him, he didn't once interrupt me or look at me in any way that would make me think he was being disparaging towards what I'd laid out. Instead, he waited until my words trickled off, making sure I was done.

"Dammit Dwayne, what am I supposed to do?"

He thought about it for a second before answering. "I'm of two minds, Julian, and they aren't exactly disagreeing with each other in terms of wanting to help you, but they do disagree on the best way on how to do it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, intrigued. Dwayne was one of those guys I respected for quite a few reasons. First of all, his family is about as rich as the Castelbons. Both of us could, and probably at some point in our family histories, had bought a US Senator or two. Hell, we could probably afford to buy a whole country. So for Dwayne, there was never any reason for him to be intimidated or in any way, shape, or form be concerned about my money. Secondly, Dwayne was almost as fit as I was. While his height and frame were a bit lankier, he wasn't a beanpole by any means. In fact, there was one time the two of us had gotten into a bar fight during our carousing of the Caribbean that I had to admit, he did more than carry his half of the brawl as we took on seven merchant marines. Finally, Dwayne was smart, plain and simple. Whereas I'd been blinded by my anger all my life, Dwayne had actually turned his anger into something constructive. Even when we were younger, it was obvious he was going places, despite his partying with me.

"A part of me wants to get up and slap the piss out of you for even thinking of such a fucked up thing to do," Dwayne said, "and to slap the piss out of you for not manning the fuck up and doing the right thing, which would have been to stick it out at the Castelbon Manor, and try and patch things up yourself. You shouldn't even be here in Miami; you should be in Chicago right now begging Krystal to let your sorry ass back into her life. By the way, I know who she is, although I doubt she knows me. When she was at Kendall College, Forrester Hotels sponsored a culinary competition for students. She was a sophomore at the time, but still cooked her way into the top five, losing out in the end to two seniors and a junior. My father was the presenter of the awards, but I was on the judging panel."

"I didn't know," I said, chagrined. Dwayne was right, I should never have come to Miami. Running away was just kind of a habit of mine. "Okay, point taken, no slapping required. What's the other part of your mind thinking though, before I go and book a flight to Chicago?"

"The other part of me wants to cut you at least a little bit of slack. Julian, the reason you and I bonded so closely all those years ago is that we both identified with being pissed off at our fathers, although I was angry with both of my parents. But, your anger was always hotter than mine, it was almost always an incoherent rage. Hell, I kept expecting to read you'd really gone off the deep end and gotten yourself killed because you were so pissed off at the world, when really at the time you were pissed off at John Castelbon. Ironically, while my anger was legitimate, yours was misplaced, but I've been the one to come out the other side of my anger stronger and better than I was, or at least earlier than you have. It took almost losing the best thing to ever happen in my life to understand that, and to set aside my anger for the love of Erica. That's still so new for you, I can understand you making a mistake. Did you know that after my mother and father found out about me falling in love with Erica, we went almost four months without talking to each other?"

"Whoa, no shit?" I noticed that around Dwayne, the cursing, foul mouthed Julian was coming back, and I reminded myself not to let it go too far. Dwayne may have been a friend, but that didn't mean I wanted to go back to the way I was.

"No shit. It was Erica in fact who came to me, and found me in Chicago. I also found out she was pregnant with Liz, and that one fact, that she came to me and loved me, gave me the strength to risk it all and stand up to my father and mother."

"Yeah, well, the problem is Dwayne, that I don't exactly have anyone to stand up to. My father is not the bastard I thought he was, and while I think Sandra probably wants to shoot me right now, there is no reason for me to hate her."

Dwayne nodded, conceding the point. "Perhaps, but there is someone you need to stand up to and confront."

"Who?" I asked, perplexed.

Dwayne finished his glass of juice and pointed at me. "Yourself. You need to stand up to who you were. Julian, I'm going to take a big risk here, but only because I saw strength in you when we were younger, strength that I think if harnessed the right way, would do you good. Just that you've made as much progress as you have over the little time you've fallen for Krystal tells me that I was right."

"What risk? Dwayne, I'm planning on going to Chicago and trying to get Krystal back. The rest of it is secondary."

He nodded, then looked me in the eye. "I have a new resort that I'm building. My current markets are pretty well tapped out, and while I could take the chain international, or at least more international than it already is, quite frankly I'm not in a mental space right now to deal with the governments of the South Pacific. Those guys make the slimiest on the take politician in the US look like a saint. So, instead of another sun and sand resort, or in the ski areas of the Rockies and the Appalachians, I'm expanding into New England. I've got a new resort scheduled to open next summer near Kennebunkport, Maine. Right on the ocean, and I think I can get a lot of the summer tourists that find my Florida and Caribbean resorts too hot, and the winter tourists that aren't interested in skiing might like the place too."

"Okay, that sounds pretty nice, but what's that got to do with me?"

Dwayne set down his juice and looked me in the eye. "How far are you willing to go to prove to yourself and to Krystal that you are the kind of man she deserves to have?"

I didn't even need to think of my answer. "As far as it takes. I love her, Dwayne."

"Good, because if we do this, we do it all the way. Here's the deal. My resorts are famous for not only having top of the line rooms, but some of the best, top of the line facilities as well. So I'm going to put that rep at a bit of risk. You enter the Forrester Hotels management training program. And yes, before you ask, it is a real program that we've had in place for decades. Normally I save it for talented college students who come from underprivileged backgrounds, although in my father's time it was a way to make sure buddies of his got their kids into good jobs along with the occasional feel-good PR piece. It's a three-year program, and in that time you're going to bust your ass learning the ins and outs of how to run a hotel. You'll start as a section manager. I'm thinking with your background, you'll be the manager of the guest fitness center. I'll even let you do personal training there if you want, although you'll have to wear long sleeves and cover those tatts while on the job."

"Go on," I said, feeling for the first time in days a bit of excitement. It was a challenge, but not a negative one. Instead, a challenge that Dwayne was laying out for me because he wanted to help me out. "What else, because knowing you, there always is something else."

"Yes, there is. One of our corporate bylaws is that all executives in the company must, and this is set in stone, must have at least a Bachelor's degree or its foreign equivalent for those from overseas. You don't. So, in addition to your duties for the hotel, I'm going to pull the right strings, and get you enrolled in a university. It'll most likely be online, since I doubt you want to go to the University of Maine at Ogunquit, but don't think it's going to be some pushover. Even Harvard and Stanford are offering online courses nowadays. You're going to graduate that program, in four years, with at least a
cum laude
."

"And if I don't?" I asked. "I'm not saying no Dwayne, but you don't lay out a challenge like that without some sort of both reward and punishment."

Dwayne nodded. "Reward is simple. If you do it, at the end of four years you'll be made a Vice President of Forrester Hotels, and you can choose your area to work in. We still have offices in Chicago, if you want to know, I couldn't move everything to Miami. You'd be on the third tier down in the company. I'm the top tier. My sister Elizabeth, despite selling me her shares and starting her own law firm, is the second tier down according to corporate structure. If I died today, my shares would go into trust for Erica and my daughter, and Elizabeth would take over as Chairman and CEO. You'd be on the level below her, along with about ten other people. You'd command a handsome salary, though I'm not sure you really need that. Frankly, it's hard to keep that third tier staffed because as soon as I do, someone else comes in and offers them a shot at the top tier in their chain. Half of my biggest competitors worked for Forrester at some point or another.

"More importantly than that though, is that you'll be what Krystal deserves. You'll have made something of yourself, and whether you take my job, go back to Castelbon and work with your father, or strike out on your own, you'll be successful. The stick, well, I don't really need one. The stick will be looking yourself in the mirror if you fail. Your punishment will be denial of your happiness, forever. The stick will be looking your own child in the eyes, because from what you tell me, I suspect this Gina woman will want you involved, and telling them not to follow in your footsteps, that their father is nothing more than an overgrown child."

Dwayne's words hit me hard, he was never one to pull any punches. Could I do it? Could I take on this challenge? Could I do all that and be a good father to Gina's baby? Could I be a man, and not an overgrown child, as Dwayne put it? I swallowed hard, and made my decision. "Alright, I'm in. On a few conditions of my own."

Dwayne nodded for me to continue. "Interesting negotiation tactic, considering I seem to be the one with all the power in this, but go ahead."

"First, that you let me work with whoever you have pulling the strings to decide what I'm going to study. I'm not being forced into studying business administration just because I'm working for you."