Modern Box Set 5-8, May 2021 by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mills & Boon Modern
Published: 2021-02-04T12:54:28+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

YOU WON’T EVEN know I’m here.

Well, that was impossible. Ash scowled. How was he going to forget the sight of her gleaming in the moonlight like a welcome beacon? She’d been rising out of that bath like a dryad at a magical spring, complete with champagne fountain and a flushing allure that had transfixed him. Only he’d been so jaded he’d mistaken her for a woman of the night and said so. Even for him it had been inappropriate, an unthinking utterance of the first possibility his tired brain had come up with. Wishful thinking, if he was being completely honest. The fantasy of her waiting nymph-like to give him pleasure had made perfect, albeit impossible, sense. He should’ve held his outrageous, rebellious tongue, but he never yet had.

And now?

He needed to be alone, but he’d never been going to stay a full week. It was going to be a couple of days max. He’d just wanted her well out of the way so he could be clear of any human contact while he absorbed the shock of what had been done to the place. But now he was stuck with her. Yet he wasn’t feeling as irritated about that as he had been only a second ago.

Yesterday’s headline should’ve been easy to ignore. The newspaper article comparing ‘playboy rebel Ash’ to his illegitimate half-brother, Leo, the ‘responsible leader’, had been rubbish. Yet it had forced him into the action he’d been deferring for months. Almost a year ago, Ash had inherited everything. His father, Hugh Castle, had refused to recognise Leo right to the end. He’d also refused to believe Ash’s own refusal to be involved in the family business. No matter that they’d been estranged for a full decade and that Ash hadn’t once set foot inside the company headquarters or any of the family properties in all that time. Or that he’d deliberately set out to make his own fortune—taking risks purely to have the satisfaction of being more successful to spite his father.

None of that had mattered. His father, as always, didn’t listen, didn’t care and only did what he wanted. As Ash was Hugh’s first-born, legitimate male heir, it was onto his unwilling shoulders that the company had been foisted. But Ash had immediately moved to ensure all Hugh Castle’s heirs got their fair share. He’d intended to liquidate all assets and split the wealth. But Leo had asked for a different solution. It wasn’t that Ash had ʻabandoned responsibility’, forcing Leo to take over Hugh’s company, Leo had insisted. He’d been determined to take over. Ash had simply stood aside and let him. How could he say no when Leo had been denied so much by the Castle family already?

Ash had half expected his half-brother to raze Castle Holdings to the ground. He wouldn’t have blamed him, in fact he would’ve enjoyed watching. But Leo hadn’t done that. Leo had obviously inherited integrity from his mother. Maybe growing up away from the malignant force that had been their father had benefited him.

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