The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart

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      Until he sweated the mean out of him. Or tried his best.

      And when his phone rang, indicating another one of those damned video calls he’d used to have to suffer through only with his PR people and now had to deal with at least once a week, and with his shiny new family to boot, he took it.

      Even though it wasn’t the right time or place for their strained family discussions, mandated by their father’s will and trust.

      “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you without palm trees in the background and a shit-eating grin on your face,” his half brother Charlie drawled, all his usual Texas in his voice and a sunny balcony behind him with a different sea entirely in the distance. “I don’t how to process that, brother.”

      Jason wiped his face with the nearest T-shirt and produced a grin. “Aloha, dick.”

      “Oh, good. There’s that island charm I hear so much about.”

      “I’m thinking about burning this house down,” Jason said, conversationally. “The lawyer said Dear Old Dad spent years building it. Almost like he planned to live in it one day, though I know that can’t be true. He wasn’t one to settle down, and particularly not this far out of the limelight. How would he get all that attention he was always jonesing for?”

      Charlie’s head tilted slightly to one side, the blue eyes everyone but Jason had shared with Daniel St. George going canny. “I was calling to tell you some deeply boring shit about the hotel industry that Angelique passed on because Thor’s on a plane and I’m nothing if not obedient. But if you’re burning down houses, I’m suddenly way more interested.”

      Charlie wasn’t obedient. Fun fact, none of the children Daniel St. George had left littered around in his wake were particularly obedient. Hell, if they’d met under different circumstances, Jason might have considered them friends. Or decent drinking buddies, anyway.

      “He left you fuckers hotels,” Jason pointed out now, warming to the topic he’d been turning over in his head while he tried to exhaust himself. “He left me a whole island. Why should I turn it into a hotel? Why should there even be a house here? Maybe the greatest kindness I could do is give this whole place to the jungle again, like the old man never existed in the first place.”

      He had the strangest sensation he wasn’t really talking about the island, but he didn’t care to explore that notion. He found himself rubbing at his chest as if his heart hurt again, but he didn’t like that very much, either.

      Lucinda was on a plane somewhere. She’d claimed she felt nothing.

      He should have felt nothing himself.

      “I don’t really get the drama,” Charlie said after a moment. “You don’t have to run the hotel. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to stay there if you don’t want. You can just own it and go about your business.”

      “That’s a great idea. And then I can be him in every possible way.”

      “Or not.” Charlie shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of the guy. But I’m also not exactly crying a river over my circumstances these days. And I wouldn’t have any of the things I do if it wasn’t for the old man’s will.”

      “You’re not the one in danger of turning into Daniel St. George.”

      Charlie’s grin was razor-sharp, reminding Jason that this particular half brother had spent most of his life playing outlaw games in the wilds of Texas, surrounded by far more dangerous men than Jason had ever been.

      “If you don’t want to turn into the old man, brother,” Charlie said quietly, “it’s real simple. Don’t.”

      Jason listened to the business-related part of the call then, but after they hung up, he wandered outside and found himself brooding out at the view. The sky, the sea. And all the impenetrable jungle in between, with chattering birds in the trees and the dance of trade winds over his face.

      All this tropical beauty that didn’t go along with all he thought he knew about the man who’d made him. It was too remote here. Too unspoiled. Too perfect.

      But then again, the real truth was that he didn’t know Daniel St. George at all. He’d never met the man while he was alive. He’d had to read all the same articles and watch the same videos online that the rest of the word had if he wanted to know anything about the guy. The only thing Jason really knew about his father was how he felt about the man’s absence. The stories he’d told himself as a kid to explain that absence. And the understanding he’d come to over time of what that brief affair had done to his mother.

      And yeah, maybe he’d spent a little too much time and energy pushing himself to be the best he could be in everything he was even remotely good at, just to prove something.

      Not to his mama, who had adored him since the day he was born. Not to his actual ohana, his mother’s people spread out over the Hawaiian Islands, who had actually been there for him while his mama worked her butt off and tried to keep him fed and clothed and happy.

      In his football heyday, interviewers had always asked Jason where he’d gotten the drive to pursue the game the way he had. And he’d always told them some bullshit cobbled together from the kinds of things he thought he ought to feel, always bringing it back to his mother’s sacrifices.

      But he knew the truth. And here on this deserted island, with only the pieces of himself Lucinda had left behind, he let himself face it at last.

      He’d spent his entire life trying to get his father to notice him.

      He’d figured if he got a little famous, if he made a little noise, sooner or later his birth father would show up. Tell him how the desertion had been a mistake, or in Jason’s best interest, or something. Maybe even hit him up for money. One way or another, Jason had figured he’d smoke the asshole out.

      But Daniel had never shown up. If he’d been proud of Jason at all, he kept to himself.

      The only thing Jason had of his father was his silence.

      And if his mother was correct, the dedication to losing himself in disposable pussy because that was a hell of a lot easier than connecting with other people.

      In case he had any doubts about that, Lucinda had given him a crash course in what it looked like to experience some crazy, life-altering intimacy and then fall all over herself to pretend it hadn’t been that at all.

      Had that been part of it, too? Had he been afraid that if he stopped roaming around the planet, sleeping with everything that moved, he’d lose the only link he had to a father he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even like?

      That had the ring of unfortunate, uncomfortable truth inside him.

      But the other thing he knew was that when push came to shove, he was far more his mother’s child than his father’s.

      And Leilani Kaoki had suffered exactly one fool, one time. Never before and never since. Daniel St. George had been her one mistake, and she’d spent every day since making sure she raised up a son who knew how to see the truth of everyone he encountered—even himself. Eventually.

      And Jason knew a little something about excuses, sure. And the way a person could hide right there СКАЧАТЬ