James: A College Girl Romance Read Online Free Page B
Author: Sheila Grace
merits, including fuckable little redheads who apparently stripped at clubs off the interstate to support their education.
The good thing about my “job,” which hadn’t been so much a job as an investment since going public, was that I never really had to be anywhere in particular at any specific time. Then there was my inheritance. Great-granddad had made a fucking mint in timber, or at least that was the story. Rumors, which were probably closer to the truth, had it that the real money had been made by great-great-granddad, who had been a bit of a bastard himself, so no one talked about that part of the family history—hence, I was James McDevitt IV, not James McDevitt V.
Long story short: I was what people often referred to as a “lucky bastard” with a trust fund that Papa McDevitt couldn’t fuck with.
Add onto that the fact that the Internet and tech start-up I was a partner in had gone from longshot to a multi-billion-dollar IPO, causing a truly ridiculous amount of money to rain from the sky. On paper, I was worth twenty billion more than Papa McDevitt—and he was a rich motherfucker. Operative word being motherfucker .
Working for worthless stock options suddenly hadn’t seemed like such “a colossally idiotic idea,” as my father had called it when I had taken tech geek Chris Hanover and turned his ideas into a multi-billion-dollar venture. My father was old school, and the only thing in life that mattered was cold, hard cash. Before Hanover Tech, Papa McDevitt had hoped I would become a lobbyist—to further his own aspirations.
And like I had told him back then—fuck that shit.
As I exited the interstate and drove through town, I could admit my appreciation for the almost complete stillness of a large, rural agricultural school in the middle of the summer. Sure, a couple of kids were still stumbling around the streets after the bars had closed—but that was about it.
I pulled into the garage, got out, and walked over to plug in. I had bought a Tesla and a house in the ’burbs all in one summer. Maybe Bennett was rubbing off on me. Next up, I’d be in lurv with some little college co-ed, thus heralding the Apocalypse.
I walked inside and looked around the modest little one-story. There was something to be said for coming home alone to a bottle of Macallan M I had lifted off the old man. Bastard had gotten it at auction for an unholy sum. It hadn’t been hard to guess the combination to the safe at his house in the Bahamas. 02-06-19-11. Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
I poured two fingers and sat on the sofa, raising my glass in salute to Papa McDevitt.
Bennett had never understood why I had always fucked with the old man as much as I had over the years. I still remembered my buddy’s sanctimonious shit in sophomore year when I had rented a Bentley on the old man’s tab and left it in the Tenderloin District of SF. Bennett’s family had its own demons—dead oldest son would fuck up anybody’s shit—but his family bullshit couldn’t touch mine.
The whisky soured on my tongue as I thought about my old man and his “proclivities.” An image of the girl from the club tonight caused me to crack my knuckles. My father was on wife number five, but his tastes outside of marriage ran on the young side, and consent was certainly questionable, given the sheer quantity of sedatives he had access to, his innate depravity, and the fact that he was as old as Monty Burns.
His wives, past and present—how had they coped with Pop? My mother? Suicide—though, it hadn’t been ruled such publically. After her? My guess was alcohol and healthy doses of pills, followed by powdered substances and apathy.
Maybe that was why I had given Bennett such shit about his conquest with his little freshman years back. The difference between him and my father, though, was that he had been twenty-eight to her eighteen and had thought he was in love with her. He still was in love with her more than three years later,
The good thing about my “job,” which hadn’t been so much a job as an investment since going public, was that I never really had to be anywhere in particular at any specific time. Then there was my inheritance. Great-granddad had made a fucking mint in timber, or at least that was the story. Rumors, which were probably closer to the truth, had it that the real money had been made by great-great-granddad, who had been a bit of a bastard himself, so no one talked about that part of the family history—hence, I was James McDevitt IV, not James McDevitt V.
Long story short: I was what people often referred to as a “lucky bastard” with a trust fund that Papa McDevitt couldn’t fuck with.
Add onto that the fact that the Internet and tech start-up I was a partner in had gone from longshot to a multi-billion-dollar IPO, causing a truly ridiculous amount of money to rain from the sky. On paper, I was worth twenty billion more than Papa McDevitt—and he was a rich motherfucker. Operative word being motherfucker .
Working for worthless stock options suddenly hadn’t seemed like such “a colossally idiotic idea,” as my father had called it when I had taken tech geek Chris Hanover and turned his ideas into a multi-billion-dollar venture. My father was old school, and the only thing in life that mattered was cold, hard cash. Before Hanover Tech, Papa McDevitt had hoped I would become a lobbyist—to further his own aspirations.
And like I had told him back then—fuck that shit.
As I exited the interstate and drove through town, I could admit my appreciation for the almost complete stillness of a large, rural agricultural school in the middle of the summer. Sure, a couple of kids were still stumbling around the streets after the bars had closed—but that was about it.
I pulled into the garage, got out, and walked over to plug in. I had bought a Tesla and a house in the ’burbs all in one summer. Maybe Bennett was rubbing off on me. Next up, I’d be in lurv with some little college co-ed, thus heralding the Apocalypse.
I walked inside and looked around the modest little one-story. There was something to be said for coming home alone to a bottle of Macallan M I had lifted off the old man. Bastard had gotten it at auction for an unholy sum. It hadn’t been hard to guess the combination to the safe at his house in the Bahamas. 02-06-19-11. Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
I poured two fingers and sat on the sofa, raising my glass in salute to Papa McDevitt.
Bennett had never understood why I had always fucked with the old man as much as I had over the years. I still remembered my buddy’s sanctimonious shit in sophomore year when I had rented a Bentley on the old man’s tab and left it in the Tenderloin District of SF. Bennett’s family had its own demons—dead oldest son would fuck up anybody’s shit—but his family bullshit couldn’t touch mine.
The whisky soured on my tongue as I thought about my old man and his “proclivities.” An image of the girl from the club tonight caused me to crack my knuckles. My father was on wife number five, but his tastes outside of marriage ran on the young side, and consent was certainly questionable, given the sheer quantity of sedatives he had access to, his innate depravity, and the fact that he was as old as Monty Burns.
His wives, past and present—how had they coped with Pop? My mother? Suicide—though, it hadn’t been ruled such publically. After her? My guess was alcohol and healthy doses of pills, followed by powdered substances and apathy.
Maybe that was why I had given Bennett such shit about his conquest with his little freshman years back. The difference between him and my father, though, was that he had been twenty-eight to her eighteen and had thought he was in love with her. He still was in love with her more than three years later,