Saint: A BWWM Romance Novel (The Corbett Billionaire Brothers) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Copyright

  Saint

  The Corbett Billionaire Brothers

  By Imani King

  © 2016 Imani King

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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  PROLOGUE

  “Saint? What the hell kind of name is that?” The receptionist looks up at me with a smirk on her face. She sees guys like me every day--probably a bit down on their luck, may a tattoo peeking out over their hastily selected button-down shirt, and more than a subtle hint of desperation in their eyes. And one after the other, I can bet they’re rejected. This woman looks like she just loves rejecting people from the specialty program she’s got going here.

  “It’s St. John. My grandmother was Catholic and stipulated in her will that—you know what I don’t think you really care, do you—” I look down at her name tag. “Cynthia?”

  Her eyes grow wide, and I crack a smile. The smile that says, “I’m up to no good, and I’m wondering if you’ll come along with me.” It’s tried and true, and it works on every woman. Even my grandmother.

  “I guess—I guess not.” Cynthia taps her pencil against the scheduling book and leans back in her chair. It’s expensive looking--one of those chairs that starts at a thousand bucks. Of course, the city’s finest fertility clinic wouldn’t spare a dime on their staff’s comfort. They’d keep the chairs and the leather scheduling books and the expensive paintings on the wall coming, so they could keep the patients coming. Fertility is an expensive business--and this particular clinic pays a lofty premium for special clients like myself. Cynthia just doesn’t know how special I am.

  “You might have guessed, but I’m here for the special—uh—donation program.” I grin again and lean against the counter, making sure she gets a glimpse of my tattoo.

  “And what makes you think you’d qualify for that, St. John?”

  “Please, Saint. Cynthia, I thought we were friends. I just want to help people complete their families—”

  “That’s what they all say, Saint. What happened to you? Gambling debt from Atlantic City? Or a girl’s trying to bleed you for a little money?” She taps her pencil again and then blows her hair out of her face, swiveling back and forth in her chair. It’s eight in the morning, and I’m fairly certain when real clients start rolling in, Cynthia won’t even entertain the thought of me in her office anymore.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does if you’re applying for the specialty program. We take samples from extremely high-quality men only. That means—”

  I rest my head in my hand and give Cynthia a doe-eyed expression. “I did my homework, Cynthia. You look for donors with GPAs over 3.5 from the best universities in the nation. You look for men who don’t need money, but yet you pay $5000 a pop. Scuse my pun there.”

  She rolls her eyes, but she can’t hide the blush sweeping over her cheeks. “And you’re going to tell me that you qualify, Mr. Corbett?”

  “Between you and me and the four walls, Cynthia,” I say, leaning across the counter conspiratorially. “I definitely need the money. But it’s for a start-up business that my father won’t fund because of something about my reputation.”

  Cynthia huffs and crosses her arms. “Mr. Corbett, I’m afraid that we’ll have to ask you to leave. We can’t accept—”

  “Just listen.” I fish several pieces of paper out of my pocket and toss them onto the desk in front of little Miss Cynthia. “My brothers might be the ones with successful businesses. Oil, farming, the whole lot. But I am a Corbett. That means that I’m smart as hell, more determined than a pit bull, and I’ve got a cock the size of—”

  Cynthia leans forward and raises her eyebrows, looking a little like she might fall out of her chair.

  “You know what?” I continue. “That doesn’t matter right now, does it? Not to these wonderful people who just want a child. Go ahead, look. That’s a copy of my diploma from Princeton University. I maintained a 4.0 GPA while I was there. The other envelope shows my courses from the Harvard MBA program. 3.9 there, but that was just because one of my professors got angry I wasn’t interested in taking her out and showing her—well, my finest asset.”

  With a slightly bemused look, Cynthia takes the envelopes and inspects their contents, lips moving ever so slightly as she reads the courses, the grades, and checks them all against the copies of my driver’s license and passport that I included for good measure. She looks up at me. “This is highly irregular... uh, Saint. I still don’t think we can—”

  But Cynthia doesn’t know just how much research I’ve done. She’s a single mom, dumped by her boyfriend six months ago. And my insides source tells me she hosts those sex toy parties—even though she hasn’t gotten laid in quite some time. “I have one last hope. You know, I’d have to leave a sample, and I don’t really like the paper materials I’m sure this wonderful office provides.”

  She goes beet red. “We also have videos—shit, I told you to leave.” Her voice sounds like it’s trying to be angry, but I can see her eyes taking me in, moving over my shoulders and down my chest. And she didn’t even let her see the good part yet.

  “You don’t open for another hour. If you just let me donate, write the check, I’ll be out of here--and I can let you help me out with the, uh, process.” I grin. Cynthia is a little older than me, but she’s quite attractive, and I love helping out moms who haven’t hopped on the horse in a good little while.

  “Oh my God—” Her fingers over the button to call security, but I put my hand up to stop her.

  “Cynthia. The best aphrodisiac for me is making a woman come. With my fingers. My tongue. I’ll keep my cock to myself since I need it for the—”

  “This is highly—just—inappropriate. Irregular. What if—we couldn’t possibly—” Cynthia stumbles over her words like they’re roadblocks and she can’t quite get herself together.

  I lick my lips. “No one would know.”

  She hesitates for a second, and then the doors to the back hallway swing open.

  I stride back and have Cynthia lead me to the staff lounge, where I bury my face between her legs, leave a flawless sample that will hopefully help some random couple struggling with infertility, and collect $5000.

  *
**

  The New York Times recently asked me if I’d change any of my actions, looking back. Fuck no. I’d keep the story exactly how it is.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Come on Trixie.” The little girl—my little girl—twirls around in circles, as she always does. Except today, she has one glittery ballerina slipper on, and the other one is who-knows-where. Really, it’s anyone’s guess. Her gold-blond hair bounces as she twirls, her curls wild and natural and utterly free. I didn’t ask for any particular race when I selected a sperm donor—it didn’t sit well with me to choose anything related to what someone looked like. But her daddy—her donor—must be a damn good looking man. Sometimes when I think of him, I imagine him with blond hair and blue eyes, but who knows? He could be anyone, and that’s just the way things are.

  Trixie’s deep gold-brown eyes flash in my direction. “Come on, Mommy! Dance with me!”

  I cross my arms. “And what are you going to tell my boss when I get into work? That I’m late because I had to have a dance with my daughter?”

  “Hmmm... yes. I think that’s what you should tell her.” She nods her head dramatically, opening and closing her mouth as she nods. She raises her arms up high and takes a bow.

  And that man—he must be something of a show-off. Lord knows Trixie doesn’t get it from me.

  “And what are we going to say to Teacher Maddie? Are we going to say, ‘Trixie was late to kindergarten because she needed to dance?’”

  “Yep!” Trixie says. She runs over to me and pulls me into the middle of our living room and starts wiggling, dancing around and laughing. I might be crazy, but I can’t help but join in, letting my hips sway in my pencil skirt that’s probably a little too tight these days.

  “Well okay, then. I guess we have a little bit of time before we’re really, really late. By the way, where is your shoe?”

  She shrugs and keeps dancing.

  After a minute, Trixie comes up to me and hugs me hard, looking up at me with her huge eyes, framed with those beautiful long lashes. “Mommy?”

  My heart beats fast. Not that question again. Not the one about daddy, or the one about Kellan, who left six months ago. “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “What does ‘late’ mean?”

  Relieved, I laugh along with her and pick her up, crouching to look under the red sofa in the corner of our apartment. It’s where all of our shoes go to die. Absently, Trixie takes a lock of my hair and plays with it, her little fingers pulling pieces loose from my carefully fixed style. “Find the shoe, Mom,” she whispers dramatically in my ear. There’s a silver flash, and I reach under and among the dust bunnies to grab a silver glitter ballerina slipper.

  “Got it,” I say. And then we’re out the door, just barely late for where we need to be going.

  As we speed down from Goleta to the Montessori kindergarten in downtown Santa Barbara, I breathe deeply and sigh again. Trixie is in the back, happily rocking out to the old playlist on my iPod Shuffle from 2007. Crazy that thing still works, and it’s even crazier that I make a damn good salary but I have so little money after rent and school that we can’t afford a used iPad for Trixie. I search myself for a minute, remembering what it was like to live in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. Cheaper, yes. But there were no walks to the beach at night time, no trips to the waterfalls, no parade of trick-or-treaters on Halloween. No kindergarten that would take a four-year-old, even though she could read chapter books.

  “It wasn’t much of a life. But here? This is paradise.” I repeat it to myself like a mantra as we roll into the Sunrise Montessori parking lot, as I park my beater Honda Civic between a Lexus and a BMW. If only a student adviser at UCSB made enough for us to actually fit in in this town... that would be something. An acceptable price to pay for paradise, I tell myself.

  Trixie pulls off her headphones. “What does ‘ironic’ mean?”

  My little genius. Always collecting words.

  “Listening to Alanis this morning?”

  She nods.

  “I guess it means... you expect one thing, like really expect it. And then something else happens.” Kind of. Right?

  “I’ll think about that one.”

  “You do, that Trixie. All right, we’ve got to get out of the car really fast, like lightning fast, and we’ll run into the school.”

  “Why?” I turn around to watch Trixie. She’s pressing the button over and over again on the Shuffle, and she hasn’t even reached down to unbuckle herself yet. I reach back and unbuckle her and then hurl my own body out of the car and rush over to open her door. There are so many, many advantages to having a brilliant, dreamy, artistic little girl. But being on time or ever getting anything done--I’ve had to let those things go. I gently lift Trixie up from her seat. If it were a day we weren’t going to be late, well, I’d encourage her to think through the getting to school process herself.

  “Beatrix Adelind Landon, I do so love you,” I say, brushing through her curls with my fingers and helping her get her ladybug backpack on.

  “And I love you, Mama,” she says, and gives me a big squeeze around my legs, refusing to let go even when I start walking. As we walk into the door, she lets go and squeezes my hand instead. “You know, Mama,” she says, pulling me down the hall. “I asked you about if I have a daddy—”

  My heart sinks. “Everyone has a daddy, sweetheart. Mom just did things a little differently.”

  “I know, Mama. Don’t interrupt me.” She pauses, and looks up at me. “Please.”

  I suppress a laugh. At least she’s learned one thing from me. “Okay. Go on.”

  “I know he doesn’t live with us, but I might like to meet him someday. I think he must have hair like me.” She pats her blond curls, that stand out in beautiful, stark contrast to her deep tan skin. I have people stop me on the street stop to just admire her--and thank God, I’m not back home in South Carolina, where people ask intrusive bullshit questions and blatantly ask about her race. Another reason I’m grateful California hasn’t yet burnt up and fallen into the sea.

  “He must. To tell the truth, Trixie, like I said before, I don’t know. He must be someone special, is all I know. Because you are. Why don’t we leave off meeting him for a while?”

  “Why’s that?”

  Because I don’t want to be belittled. Or disappointed. Or worse yet, angry and hateful toward the man who gave me this gift. And besides, I think he marked that he didn’t want to be contacted on his file, so we couldn’t find him. I hope she’ll drop it before then. “Because I want to--talk to him first—and make sure he’s a nice sort of man.”

  “Not like Kellan.”

  “No, not like Kellan was in the end. He was nice to you—but he didn’t have a lot of nice words for Mama, did he?”

  So much for being a single mother by choice, I think. Kellan fell into our lives, and I thought we could be a family. But here I am, back where I started. And everything is still okay.

  “No Mama,” Trixie says, shuffling from side to side.

  Teacher Maddie pokes her head out of the door of Trixie’s classroom. “Helena?” She looks nicely in my direction and smiles. “It’s time for our morning meeting. Does Trixie have her snack ready?”

  I nod and pat Trixie on the back. “Love you, Peanut,” I say in a whisper.

  Yeah, whoever that man was, he did give me a gift. But I won’t be digging up that bit of my past any time soon.

  Still, the thought of him keeps flashing through my mind as I make the drive back to Goleta and park by South Hall at UCSB. It’s nearly October, and the trees are doing what little changing they’re going to do. Before going inside, I take in the campus for a second, just watching as the students roll by on their bikes, wearing long-sleeved shirts that are far too warm for the actual weather forecast.

  I take out my phone and check my personal email, and sitting there is the strangest thing.

  I open the email.

  Dear Client, it reads. The donor for your case, #24562, has ch
anged his information from “Do not contact” to “Open to communication.” His information is as follows...

  Before I finish reading it, I click my phone closed and run up the stairs to the second floor, dashing into my office and slamming the door shut behind me.

  “Fuck,” I mutter. “What now, Helena?”

  What now, indeed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rowan got married in some private ceremony. And I’ve attended weddings for all three of my other brothers in the past year. It’s all a big load of bullshit.

  That one payment of $5000 got me started. Yes it did. But I don’t have much to show for it beyond a big office, a big company, and lots of people who call me “Mr. Corbett.”

  “There are women, though. Yes, there are women.” I pull my whiskey out from under my desk and pour a glass. I’m in the penthouse office, and the market value of my company just passed two billion dollars. No one in the world is going to care a damn bit if I take a drink in the middle of the day. The whole thing practically runs itself now—SameChat took off and became this whole big thing that I never expected. And now look at me. The black sheep of the Corbett family, worth just as much as any one of my brothers.

  I sip the whiskey and think about the woman from last night. She was Hawaiian, or that’s what she said anyway. I’m not sure I caught the full ins and outs of her name, but I did appreciate waking up to her and that fine tan skin this morning. But she was gone before I could even finish my shower, running out the door and not even pausing to say goodbye.

  I can’t really blame her.

  My reputation always precedes me, even in a big city like Los Angeles. They all know I want them for a night, and then there’s an Uber prepped and ready the next morning to take them wherever they need to go.

  The whiskey is a little too warm from the sun that hits under my desk midday, and I wander over to my ice machine and fill it up, sipping again and crushing the cubes between my teeth.