The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“I’ve taken the liberty of making travel arrangements on your behalf.”

What a man

The world bent to the will of Grayson Hawthorne. What money couldn’t buy him, those eyes probably did.

“Take it from someone who’s both been there and done that—never lose your heart to a Hawthorne.”

“but Gray was my little streaker. A real free spirit. We couldn’t keep clothes on him at all, really, until he was four. Frankly, I didn’t even try.”

“Do you mind if I ask, dear, when is your birthday?” The question took me by surprise. I had a mouth. It was fully functioning.

Per the terms of the will, any heir who challenges Avery’s inheritance will forfeit their share of the estate entirely.”

“We can’t afford rooms here.” Alisa gave me an almost pitying look. “Oh, honey,” she said, then recovered her professionalism. “You own this hotel.”

Somehow, that was enough to allow me to say the exact words I’d been trying not to think. “Maybe my father isn’t really my father.”

“Don’t pay any attention to Gray,” Jameson told me lazily. “None of us do.” “Jamie,” Nash said. “Zip it.”

“Grayson is in training for the Insufferable Olympics, and we really think he can go all the way if he can just jam that stick a little farther up his—”

“Come on.” Xander bumped his shoulder lightly against mine. “We’ll stop for cookies on the way.”

“No cookies.” Grayson’s voice was strangled, like his throat was closing down around the words—like

PARTY POOPERRR

Xander brought a hand melodramatically to his chest. “Harsh.” I shrugged. “My house, my rules.” He gawked at me.

“Too soon?” I asked. “I’m a Hawthorne.” Xander gave me his most dignified look. “It’s never too soon to start trash-talking.”

“She’s the package,” he told Jameson. “If there’s an incident…” “You save her first,” Jameson finished.

“But the last thing you need on your first day at this school is for anyone to see you getting cozy with me.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked. “That depends on how attached you are to your eyebrows.” Xander raised his one remaining eyebrow very high.

“What if we’re wasting our time?” I asked. My question echoed through the room. “Time is money, Heiress. You have plenty to waste.”

“Thea said there was a girl and that she died.” I spoke like I was ripping off a bandage, too fast to second-guess what I was saying. Overhead, the rhythm of Jameson’s work slowed. I counted five seconds of utter silence before he spoke. “Her name was Emily.”

Emily mattered to him. She still matters to him.

“Frankly, now that the issue of relatedness has been settled in the negative, I’d be game if she did.”

WOAHHH

“If I were a guy, there’d be two racks of clothing in this room, max.” “And if I were White,” Xander returned loftily, “people wouldn’t look at me like I’m half a Hawthorne. Scone?”

We were here for a reason—and that reason had exactly nothing to do with the way my body fit against his.

Everyone had things they found inexplicably attractive. Apparently, for me it was suit-wearing, silver-eyed guys using the word empirically and taking for granted that I knew what it meant.

Get your mind out of the gutter, Avery. Grayson Hawthorne is not for you.

“If the gentleman so much as tries to lay a finger on her, I assure you, my brother would take pleasure in removing that finger.”

“Did you take her driving?” I asked. If I could have taken the question back, I would have, but it hung in the air between us.

“Did she live at the cottage?” Jameson ignored my second question and answered the first. “Grayson happened to her.”

“Fact the third,” Jameson said, standing statue-still for the span of a heartbeat. “I watched Emily Laughlin die.”

First times. But this particular first—being dangled off a bridge by a boy who’d just confessed to watching his last girlfriend die—wasn’t exactly on the to-do list.

and the door drifted inward, just far enough for me to catch sight of a chair and ottoman—and the man currently occupying them.

Nash Hawthorne’s long legs were stretched out on the ottoman, his boots still on. A cowboy hat covered his face. He was sleeping.

In my sister’s room. Nash Hawthorne was sleeping in ...