Free LoversFeud by Ann Jacobs Page B

old, previously well-kept secret, all their lives had changed.
    Of course Bye didn’t give a fuck about Jack. Not when the bastard had let Deidre fall halfway in love with him and done nothing overt to let her know he couldn’t be enticed, even in the couple of months when he’d known a relationship between them was impossible. And not when Jack had professed to be Bye’s friend but had left that generation-old secret hanging silent for months, never revealed until today.
    I’m your brother.
    Would Bye have felt less betrayed if Jack had told him when he’d first learned he and Bye were half brothers? At least when they’d teamed up to pleasure Karen that night at the Neon Lasso, neither he nor Jack had known. That was to Jack’s credit.
    Had that encounter constituted incest? Probably not since they hadn’t pleasured each other, just Karen. And technically speaking, Jack hadn’t fucked Karen where it mattered. Still…
    Bye had let his older brother take the lead with him and Karen, even though he hadn’t known it at the time. The memory left a dirty taste in Bye’s mouth. It had to have been wrong. Or was it? Did a lack of knowledge get them off the hook for having sort of violated Nature’s laws?
    He didn’t know. He did know his life had changed. His world had tipped on its axis, all because he had a half brother whose accomplishments to date were so much greater than his own, academically, career-wise and God only knew where else. In their father’s eyes, Bye knew he’d pale by comparison with the man who’d come so much farther, who’d had to scrap and fight for each accomplishment while Bye had everything handed to him as his due.
    Had Jack ever had to extricate himself from trouble? Bye doubted he’d been stupid enough to get in the sorts of scrapes Bye had frequently experienced. Knowing he’d only have his own wits to fight his way out of trouble would have been one hell of a motivator for Jack to stay on the straight and narrow.
    Bye recalled how many times he’d picked up the phone and let Byron Four take care of making his problems go away. School project not turned in on time? Daddy got him an extension. Damages at a campus bar after a drunken fraternity fight? Caden money made the barkeeper’s threats to press charges go away. A bag of pot found by campus cops during a routine check of his car? Four had made that charge go away as well, although he’d been royally pissed off because the fix had apparently cost him some costly political capital as well as a bundle of cold, hard cash.
    Finally, he was beginning to realize he’d have been better off, not having had that lifeline to Byron’s cadre of cronies and his seemingly unlimited flow of cash and influence. If he hadn’t had those crutches, maybe he’d have studied harder, partied less.
    Stroking his mount’s elegantly arched neck, Bye looked out over the wind farm. He couldn’t have achieved this particular dream by now, even with the electrical engineering degree it had taken him six years to earn, if not for Four’s reluctant help. Yeah, he’d done the planning and the sweating, but it was Bar C land and Bar C money that had made this all happen.
    Would he have to share his dream with Jack now? Karen was a lawyer. She’d know the ins and outs of laws governing inheritance and sweat equity if there was such a thing a whole lot better than Bye did. He’d ask her. And he’d use her as his personal attorney from now on. It would give him a good excuse to see her in public, away from the Neon Lasso.
    Fuck her old man and his, and whatever it was that had gone on generations earlier and had them itching to do each other in. Despite the fact Jack had seemed strained by the day’s events, Bye ungraciously imagined him chuckling over the situation his mother had foisted on his half siblings today. Bye wasn’t in a mood to be charitable about what his older brother might be feeling. To tell the truth, he felt hurt that his friend