The Bachelors Read online

  Charles’ wife had died when the girls were very young, leaving a rich, powerful, and busy man suddenly a single parent to three girls. Despite this, it appeared that his girls doted on him.

  Wick found numerous articles about the family and they painted a picture-perfect view of Charles Bennet and his parenting skills.

  The information he found also included a lot about each sister.

  Eliza, unsurprisingly, followed in her father’s footsteps as a take no prisoners, determined and canny businesswoman. She made a name for herself in the family business long before Charles Bennet’s untimely death. She took on new acquisitions and expanded The Bennet Group’s reach into other industries, including retail.

  Wick had punched the air in excitement when he’d found out that TBG recently invested in a well-known stationery firm. Books and stationery are not so far removed from each other, and he knew he could tempt the business savvy Eliza into pumping some much-needed funds Austen’s way.

  He only skimmed the information on the middle sister, deeming her charity based work of no use to him, and besides, it was the youngest, Lydia, that intrigued him the most.

  The tabloids loved her. Lydia was the ‘it’ girl of her generation, gracing everything from full spreads in high-end fashion magazines, to inches upon inches written about her in gossip columns. She covered more than her fair share of front pages and seemed to lap up the attention and revel in her notoriety. At only twenty-one, three years younger than Wick, it seemed the media loved the high society bad girl and looking at her face, Wick could see why.

  She was stunning.

  With dark, almost oil black locks and striking wide blue eyes, Lydia looked every inch the rich beauty, but it was the glint in those remarkable coloured eyes that called to Wick. This girl promised everything she’d been accused of—naughtiness, debauchery, and trouble—and Wick hadn’t gone looking for trouble for such a long time that he itched with the need to indulge.

  Wick stretched his long legs out from under the desk, his knees cracking with the movement. He’d been sat in the office, pouring over website after website for so long that early morning had turned into late lunchtime.

  His assistant had informed him that both Darcy and Bing were in the building when he arrived this morning, but he hadn’t yet bothered to seek out either of his brothers.

  With the tickets purchased for the ball tomorrow night—his mother’s handiwork that saw his parents also attending—Wick wanted to ensure both his brothers would be in attendance for his plan to work. Because his plan was foolproof.

  At least one of the Bennet sisters would fall for an Austen brother. It was inevitable, and he knew just which sister he had his eyes on. Now to plant the seed with his brothers.

  Wick knew he couldn’t divulge his scheme, but he still needed to guide his brothers in the right direction. Bing would be easy to sway. Darcy, on the other hand, would be a right pain in the arse.

  Wick shut down his computer, but not before printing off the news article that featured Eliza closing the stationery firm deal, and a short article on Jane’s charity work. He would use that information to tempt Darcy into approaching the eldest sister, leaving Wick free to pursue Lydia. The little he knew about Jane led him to believe that Bing was the perfect brother to charm her knickers off. Bing was a bleeding heart, always considering worthy causes to donate his time to help. Noble wasn’t a word Wick attributed to himself, but his middle brother had that quality in spades. Yes, he thought while walking the short distance to Bing’s office, Jane would be perfect for Bing. His plan was coming together nicely.

  “Bing-bada-bing,” he greeted rather obnoxiously in his usual way while pushing open his brother’s office door without knocking. “You got a few minutes to talk about tonight?”

  Bing popped his head up from behind the screen of his computer and pushed at the thick-framed glasses that had slipped down his nose. Bing only wore his glasses at work, preferring contacts at other times. They made him look nerdy but endearing, kind of like the man himself.

  “What can I help you with, Wick?” he asked with an ever-present smile.

  Wick strode purposefully into the office and placed a sheet of paper in front of his brother. He hid the conniving smirk he could feel fighting to break free and as flatly as possible stated, “I’ve been researching potential investors for Austen’s and came across something I thought might interest you. Jane Bennet is organising tonight’s ball, and it benefits her mother’s foundation.”

  Bing furrowed his brows, causing his glasses to slip once more, and lightly shook his head to indicate he didn’t have any clue where Wick was going with this.

  “The Bennet Foundation—” Wick continued intently, as if he’d just discovered the meaning of life. “—is currently working with that homeless shelter you’ve been volunteering at on the weekends.”

  Bing’s back straightened, and he manoeuvred himself away from the desk to give Wick his full attention.

  Bingo. Gotcha.

  This time Wick was unable to contain his glee, and a grin split his face wide. Luckily, Bing was already too engrossed in the article about Jane Bennet to notice.

  “It could be an excellent opportunity to introduce yourself, and maybe secure more funds for the shelter,” Wick added, keeping the smile from his voice.

  He sat and watched his brother until Bing set down the paper and looked up at him. Wick made sure to keep his face blank when Bing said, “Thanks for this, but you’ve never seemed interested in my work before. Why the change of heart? Were you thinking of volunteering because if you are, I can-”

  “Fuck, no,” Wick rushed out, cutting his brother off mid-sentence before tempering his reaction when he caught Bing’s confused stare. “What I mean is, volunteering isn’t my thing. I’ve got my hands full here trying to make sure we don’t go under. I just saw that—” he motioned with a flick of his hand to the article, “—and thought of you.”

  Bing eyed him sceptically for a moment before his smile returned.

  “This is great, Wick. Thanks for bringing this to me. I’ll be sure to try and get a few minutes of Miss Bennet’s time to discuss the shelter with her.”

  If Wick had a generous bone in his body, he’d be moved by Bing’s obvious passion and enthusiasm for doing good. But Wick didn’t unless it benefitted himself or his company. And making sure Bing sought out Jane Bennet would help both.

  “No problem,” Wick offered. He stood and ran his palms down his thighs as if brushing lint off his expensive suit trousers, but it was more a tactic not to meet Bing’s gaze. “I need to have a chat with Darcy.”

  Wick walked towards the office door and halted on the threshold. Looking over his shoulder at Bing he asked, “I’ll see you tonight at the house? I think mother has convinced father to hire a town car, although he did put up a bit of a fight about the extra cost.”

  He lifted his eyes to meet Bing’s honest stare.

  “It would be good to travel together,” Bing offered genuinely.

  “See you tonight then. First drinks are on me.”

  Wick pulled open the door and made to leave hearing Bing shout at his back, “It’s an open bar.”

  Wick smirked but didn’t reply.

  Bing wasn’t as easily manipulated as he seemed and wasn’t that a damn shame, but it was Darcy that would be the hardest to influence if he could at all.

  Wick took the short walk to Darcy’s office slowly. His mind kept going over and over the speech he’d prepared for his oldest brother, and Wick was starting to doubt he had any chance of persuading Darcy to approach Eliza Bennet. When he arrived at Darcy’s door, unlike with Bing’s, he knocked and waited to be called inside. Wick didn’t often have cause to come to Darcy’s office. It was normally his brother that came to him, annoyed by some problem or other that he’d deemed Wick responsible for causing. So, just the fact that Wick was here at all would give Darcy reason to assess his motives. He needed to play this cool. Super, arctic cool
.

  “Come in,” Darcy called seconds after Wick’s knuckles rapped on the oak door.

  Wick took a deep breath, steeled his features, and pushed open the door.

  Darcy wasn’t behind his desk, but at the floor to ceiling windows that afforded his office a panoramic view of the streets below. His mobile was in his hand, but he wasn’t on a call. His gaze was on the pale spring sky and not on the throngs of people milling around below like little worker ants.

  Here goes nothing.

  “I’ve got some info for you on a potential investor.”

  Wick got straight to it, after all Darcy was nobody’s fool so he was better off sticking to as many facts as possible.

  Darcy swung around abruptly on recognising Wick’s voice, not expecting his youngest brother to be the person walking into his office. For the briefest moment, Darcy’s face displayed the confusion he felt at seeing his little brother in his space, but he covered it quickly. Not before Wick saw, though, and he swiftly capitalised on Darcy’s silence.

  “Here. Take a look at this.”

  He walked towards Darcy, held out the article he’d printed off earlier and launched into his practiced spiel.

  “Less than twelve months ago, The Bennet Group invested heavily in a large stationery chain. Eliza Bennet has been broadening their horizons, and with her father gone, is likely to keep expanding into retail.”

  Darcy remained mute but took the offered sheet of paper from his brother.

  Wick took that as a sign to continue with his pitch.

  “She’s our in, Darce. Eliza Bennet is the key to saving Austen’s.”

  Darcy read the article without saying a word. When he finished, he lifted his hand and offered it back to Wick who looked from Darcy’s face to the paper and back again.

  “This means nothing.” He flicked the paper between them motioning for Wick to take it, and when he didn’t, Darcy let it slip from his fingers to the carpeted floor.

  “So, she invested in some stationery business before her father died? Big deal. It was likely a pet project he gave her to keep her off his back and out of the boardroom. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Wick’s fists clenched at Darcy’s easy dismissal, and his rebuttal burned his tongue, but he held it back and waited.

  Darcy stared at him for a beat and then asked with an air of impatience, “Is that all you have, Wick?”

  When Wick’s eyes slid from his face down to the discarded paper at his feet, Darcy laughed humourlessly.

  “It is, isn’t it? You think you’ve got the smarts to snare Eliza Bennet’s interest and save Austen’s via her fat bank account.”

  Wick smirked and played his ace card, Darcy having unwittingly stepped right into his trap.

  “No brother, I don’t,” he admitted, the grin never leaving his face. “But you do.”

  Chapter Five

  Bing didn’t relish the thought of travelling to the ball with his parents, but not because he found their company difficult, more because he could see the strain on Darcy’s face every time their mother made a comment that grated on his nerves.

  “I can’t wait to catch up with the de Bourghs. I haven’t seen Catherine in an age. I wonder if she still attends the fortnightly ladies’ luncheons at the club.”

  “You haven’t seen her in an age because she’s avoiding you, my dear,” Claude Austen flatly pointed out to his wife.

  Bing absently took in his parents’ exchange while watching Darcy’s features tighten.

  “She is not,” Anne Austen stated angrily, backhanding his father across the chest before fussing with the lace edging her gown and primping her hair. “The last time we met she told me how much I’d been missed from the club. It was mean of you to cancel my membership.”

  “It was necessary,” Claude rebuked. “It was that or the mortgage. Would you rather a roof above your head, or the ability to gossip with a herd of malicious, backstabbing women with too much money and time on their hands?”

  Anne huffed and shot a glare at her husband. Bing swore he saw the steam rise from his father’s skin as the heat of his mother’s stare scorched through to his bones.

  “You don’t know anything about the women from the club. Just like you know nothing of their husbands. If you did, we’d have more connections and wouldn’t be in this bloody mess in the first place.”

  Anne Austen rarely cursed, but when she did Bing knew it was because she was close to snapping, and even he knew that wasn’t a pretty sight.

  “I can’t wait to hear more about the charities this ball is benefitting. It says here—” Bing indicated to a glossy programme in his hand “—that Longbourn Shelter is one of the primary beneficiaries, and I know they could do with all the help they can get.”

  Bing spoke casually as if the air in the town car wasn’t thick with an acidic cloud caused by his parents’ spat.

  His father muttered a quiet, “That’s nice”, making it obvious he hadn’t listened to Bing’s words, while his mother stared out of the window at the passing buildings with her face still showing signs of the annoyance that festered inside her.

  Bing cleared his throat and this time spoke to Wick and Darcy.

  “It also says that it’s a tradition for each of the Bennet sisters to perform for us on the night. That’s got to be worth the five-grand entrance alone.”

  “Perform for us?” Darcy snorted, suddenly more interested in the conversation. “What are they going to do, tell jokes? Put on an interpretive dance? Juggle?”

  Wick couldn’t help but join in with, “Maybe it’ll be a burlesque show or a fan dance.” A gleam lit his eyes when he added, “I’d pay double for a private performance.”

  “You couldn’t afford to give them your loose change, let alone proposition anyone with your wealth,” Darcy jibed.

  Bing saw yet another spat on the horizon, but this time between his brothers, so he spoke up quickly to diffuse it.

  “You’re both wrong.”

  Wick and Darcy twisted in their seats to look at him.

  “It says that each sister performs on their favoured instruments.”

  At Bing’s words, Darcy held out his hand to halt Wick’s retort, having rightly assumed by Wick’s open mouth and devious smirk that nothing good was about to come spilling from his lips.

  “What?” Wick asked in mock affront, after initially closing his mouth but deciding he was going to risk Darcy’s wrath anyway. “I wasn’t going to say anything inappropriate about trumpet blowing or horn polishing, I swear.”

  Darcy glared at his grinning younger brother, and Bing was about to cut in before more barbs were thrown around, but his mother interrupted with, “Horn polishing will get a girl into nothing but trouble.” She stared at the side of his father’s head before adding caustically, “I should know. Some horns take more than a little spit and polish to energise them. Some horns are completely bloody useless.”

  Bing ran his hand down his face before pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Still think tonight was a good idea?” Darcy all but gloated. He didn’t need to say ‘I told you so’ because the meaning was clear.

  “Oh, brothers,” Wick answered before Bing could. “I think tonight was my best idea yet.”

  Jane completed a final lap of the venue, talking to each worker she passed by, be they wait staff or event managers.

  Everything was perfect, leaving her plenty of time to return to the suites on the top floor that were reserved for her and her sisters.

  Netherfield had been in her family for generations. The exclusive hotel was the first of many that built the foundations of The Bennet Group. Only the uber-rich stayed within its walls, slept on the one-thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, and ate in the Michelin three-starred restaurant.

  In Jane’s world, people judged you as a nobody if you hadn’t at some point been one of Netherfield’s clientele.

  She was in the middle of thanking a young
waitress for her work when Eliza strode into the vast ballroom with her sights set firmly on her.

  “Lize, is everything okay?” Jane asked immediately, her eyes locked on her sister’s tight jaw and completely missing the glossy brochure held tightly in her hand.

  Eliza stopped an arm’s length away and lifted the programme into view.

  “I thought we talked about this, Jane. I told you I wouldn’t play this year and yet it’s announced on this evening’s schedule.”

  Jane looked in confusion from her sister’s steely gaze to the brochure in her hand and back again.

  “I took your name out. I swear I did. When the proofs were sent over a few weeks ago, I emailed the amendments directly to the printers.”

  “You didn’t. I’m still listed along with you and Lydia.”

  Jane took a step forward and held out her hand. Eliza unrolled the pamphlet which was opened to the schedule for the evening and watched with accusing eyes as Jane read the details under her hushed breaths.

  With apology swimming in her eyes, Jane lifted her head and begged forgiveness before even opening her mouth.

  “I swear, Lize. I removed you from the details. I don’t know… I don’t understand…,” she stuttered before settling on the words. “I have no idea why it wasn’t changed.”

  “I’m not playing,” Eliza stated calmly and with no room for argument. “You can tell them whatever you want, but I’m not playing.”

  Before Jane had the chance to reply, the sound of sky-high heels click-clacking across the Italian marble floors caught both their attention.

  “Sisters,” Lydia exclaimed in greeting. “I’m glad I found you both before this evening. My flight was delayed, and Conrad insisted on lunch at the Bay Tree before letting me go. You know how he gets—”

  “Save us the boring details, Lydia,” Eliza interrupted as their sister came to a stop in front of them both. “I can practically finish everything you have to say. South of France—yadda, yadda, yadda. Appalling food on the Yacht—blah, blah, blah. Conrad’s big cock—and so on and so on. Did I get the gist?”