LITMIR.BIZ

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held up her hand. “Ladies, there’s an obvious solution to this problem. I’ll loan Shelby’s parents the money to get by.”

      Shelby shook her head. “No. No way.” When Victoria looked on the verge of insisting, she added, “They can’t pay back a loan. The money they got from selling their dry cleaning business went to the down payment on the condo.”

      “A beachside condo won’t be easy to sell these days,” Calla said in an I-told-you-so kind of voice.

      Shelby scowled. “No kidding.”

      “Our social lives are in a serious rut,” Calla continued. “We need an adventure to break the monotony.” She paused and grinned. “Plus, when is revenge against a creepy guy not fun?”

      At this, even Victoria seemed intrigued.

      Apparently, Shelby was staring desperation right in the eye, since the Robin Hood plan suddenly sounded like a viable option.

      Victoria drummed her manicured fingernails on the table. “We’ve got one other problem.”

      “What’s that?” Shelby asked, tensing.

      “Robin Hood was a myth,” Victoria said.

      Calla cleared her throat. “Well, yes. That’s a small wrinkle.”

      Shelby resisted the urge to drown herself in her latte.

      2

      “MR. BANFIELD, YOUR brother is on line one.”

      Trevor glanced up from the financial report he’d been reading to see his assistant filling his office doorway.

      Hands planted on her ample hips, Florence Windemere scowled. “He’s very insistent.”

      “I’ll bet.”

      Max was, no doubt, caught in yet another mess of his own making. Who else could he call?

      “Did he flirt with you again?” he asked Florence.

      “Cheeky, that’s what he is. Unprofessional, too.”

      Trevor smiled slightly at the flushed indignation of the woman who’d been his childhood governess after Max had gone off to boarding school at age eight—the year of their parents’ divorce. “So was I at one time.”

      She drew herself to her full five-foot, one-inch height. “You were simply energetic, maybe a bit precocious and certainly a child. He’s a grown man.”

      “He appears to be anyway.”

      Florence gave him a sage smile. “There comes a time, my boy, when you have to push the baby bird from the nest.”

      “Would you have given up on me?”

      “He’s not you.”

      “Which I, for one, am thankful. He is my brother, however.”

      “Older brother,” Florence reminded him significantly as she retreated from the room.

      Trevor understood her implication—the older sibling should be wiser, looking out for the younger. Somehow, almost right from the beginning, his family had been turned backward. And they’d all been paying for that quirk of fate ever since.

      Bracing himself, Trevor lifted the phone receiver.

      “Know anything about the hotel business?” Max asked him casually.

      Way too casually.

      Recalling the time Max had asked him about the hot-air-balloon business, only to have his ever-ambitious brother ignore his advice and buy four used ones with the ridiculous dream of them bobbing over and around the skyscrapers of Manhattan and/or Paris, Trevor knew he had to nip this blossoming idea in the bud. “It’s volatile, labor intensive, multifaceted and in no way, shape or form an industry you should be involved in.”

      “Ah.” Long pause. “Uh … okay. What’d ya think of that Jets game on Sunday?”

      Trevor got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

      And not just because the Jets played football and it was the middle of April.

      “What’ve you done?” he asked Max.

      “Me?” he asked with affronted innocence that was well practiced and generally effective. “Not a thing. Though I did have a spicy dinner with a hottie from Venezuela last night. Maybe she’s got a sister, you could come with us next time.”

      Max the Pimping Earl. Lovely. “I can get my own dates, thank you. Did you take Ms. Venezuela to a hotel?”

      “No. My apartment.”

      “Did you eat in a hotel restaurant last night?”

      “Uh, well—Hmm … Let me think.”

      He shared genes with this man. It was terrifying.

      And since Trevor didn’t have time to wait for the how-can-I-save-my-ass Max thought process to play out, he prompted, “Where did you have dinner?”

      “I can’t quite remember the name,” Max said faintly. “It might have been a color.”

      “What color?”

      “Hmm … red, maybe yellow.”

      “Where were you?”

      “The Theatre District?”

      “You’re not sure?”

      “I was half-pissed. We had drinks before at the top-floor lounge.”

      The Theatre District was clogged full of hotels. But a hotel with a restaurant whose name was a color—red, maybe yellow—and had a bar on its roof?

      “Golden.”

      Max coughed.

      It was mostly a tourist place, but the hotel had endured for more than fifty years and the lounge had its moments being hip and interesting, depending on the nostalgic whims of the NYC elite.

      “Oh, damn. That’s my other line. Gotta go.” Max hung up abruptly but not unexpectedly.

      Having flown into New York that afternoon from San Francisco, Trevor had grabbed newspapers at the airport, but other than glancing at the headlines in the cab, and answering a few pending emails on his phone, he hadn’t delved further.

      Max, at least in this country, was not front-page news.

      An internet search on Max yielded thousands of hits on an article titled “Financial Finagling” in the New York Tattletale. The author’s name was Peeps Galloway.

      Talk about cheeky.

      “Financial guru?” he muttered aloud as he read. “Since when?”

      He had to shut his eyes when he reached the part about The Crown Jewel. Bloody hell, Max owned a hotel.

      Clearly, their mother’s most recent husband was gullible as well as rich, as their father had indeed cut off his oldest son financially.

      At least publicly.

      Trevor forced himself to read the rest, wincing when he read his father’s title. He’d probably be getting a call from his secretary by tomorrow. Maybe even the old man himself. The heir apparent had indeed slithered away from several sticky situations, and yet again, it would no doubt be Trevor’s responsibility to shove the mess under the rug.

      He’d officially become his family’s janitor.

      Being the second son of the Earl of Westmore—who was related, by some convoluted and ancient way, to George III of England—Trevor had always known he’d have to make his way in the world. Nothing was going to be handed to him.

      His brother would one day be the earl, and Trevor was largely superfluous. Like an insurance policy.

      Frankly,

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