Free Dangerous Games by Marie Ferrarella Page A

life worth living. I knew it couldn’t be about the money. She hadn’t been with me because of the money.” It was almost a plea for agreement. Tears shimmered in his eyes again. “I never felt about anyone the way I did about her. You know what I mean?”
    No, Cole thought, he didn’t. He’d never loved anyone, never felt that tightening in the gut he’d heard about. His emotions had all been frozen years ago. “Not firsthand, but yeah, I know what you mean.”
    The guard entered the room. “Time’s up.”
    Cole nodded, rising. He saw Eric flinch as the latter got to his feet. The handcuffs returned. His brother looked at him with supplicating eyes. “Get me out of here, Cole. Please.”

    The words still rang in his ears as he drove up the familiar winding path that brought him to the mansion. He’d come against his better judgment, come not because he wanted to see them after ten years, but because they were where the money was. At least they could be good for that. God knew they hadn’t been good for anything else.
    They hadn’t aged any.
    It was the first thought that occurred to him when, walking behind a maid he didn’t recognize, he was brought into the secondary living room. Fifty years ago the room might have been called a parlor, a place where guests who belonged to the B-list of acquaintances were politely received.
    Unlike Eric, whose lifestyle had embedded itself on his face, making his brother look years older than he was, his parents looked as if not a day had gone by since he’d last seen them.
    “We hear you’re doing very well, Cole,” his father said after the obligatory words of greeting had been gotten out of the way.
    Cole looked from one parent to the other. His mother resembled an old painting, demurely posed. His father was the personification of old money. Not a single true emotion between the two of them.
    “I can’t complain,” he finally answered.
    And then his father smiled at him. Cole was hard-pressed to remember if he had ever seen the expression on his father’s face within this house. There had been plenty of instances when a smiling face had looked up at him from the society papers, but he didn’t recall ever seeing it in person.
    “Well, we’re proud of you,” his father said heartily.
    The words of praise, of approval, left him cold. The last time Cole had wanted either from one of his parents, he’d been eight years old. Trying to get his father’s attention after some accomplishment, he’d been shunted to the side.
    Any further chitchat would just be perpetrating a lie. These people had never cared about him and he no longer cared about them. Eric’s plight was the reason he was here, so he got down to the heart of the matter.
    “I’m here about Eric.”
    The smile vanished as if it had only been a figment of his imagination. His father’s still-handsome face frosted over. “Who we are definitely not proud of.”
    Cole watched his mother knot her fingers together as she sat ramrod-straight on the Louis XIV chair she’d lavished more attention on than either one of her children.
    He wasn’t here to debate that, or to point out that had they not failed as parents, maybe they would have had a son to be proud of.
    “You can still bail him out of jail until the trial.”
    His father looked at him as if he’d just been asked to disrobe and run naked through the center of the city. “Why should we do that?”
    No, he wasn’t devoid of emotion, Cole thought, because he felt anger welling up inside of him. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to shout at this man who had sired him. He didn’t waste his time or his breath to say that he believed Eric was innocent. If they’d had bothered to get to know his brother, they would have known that already.
    His voice was steely as he said, “Because he’s your son.”
    His father eyed the liquor cabinet. It was an open secret that Lyle Garrison lubricated his brain cells with healthy doses of liquid