His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Other Penthouse
At the sponsor party, Crews blames Emmy for his illegal part, fires her and gets engaged to Brinley; Emmy tears up her severance, walks across the hall and seduces his uncle Sutton, and the whole party opens the door on them at midnight.
The penthouse windows ran floor to ceiling, and all of Charlotte was lit up behind my boyfriend's head.
Crews tapped his champagne glass with a pen.
Eighty people turned around.
Sponsors. Crew. Three reporters. His mother in cream by the bar.
I stood by the glass with a club soda, because somebody had to drive him home.
"Y'all know we lost a championship in November," Crews said.
The room went quiet.
"We crossed the line first at Phoenix. Then the inspectors found a rear mount on my car that never should've been there."
He found me in the crowd and smiled.
"Tonight I'm going to be honest with the people who pay for this team. The engineer who built that part is standing right over there."
Every face in the room turned to me.
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
"Her initials are on the work order," Crews said. "E.B. I trusted her with my car for three years. As of tonight, Emmy Burcham doesn't work for Tillery Racing."
Somebody clapped once and stopped.
I had refused to build that mount.
Twice.
In his kitchen, in October, I told him it was illegal and I wouldn't touch it.
He kissed my forehead and said, "Okay, genius. Forget I asked."
"And because the best things come after the worst," Crews said, "I want y'all to meet my fiancee."
A tiny blonde in white walked out of the crowd and into his arm.
Brinley Sizemore.
Her daddy's freight company had just signed on as our new sponsor.
Fourteen million dollars a season.
She lifted her hand for the cameras.
The ring was an old square diamond in yellow gold.
His grandmother's ring.
He'd shown it to me on Christmas Eve and said he was saving it for when the time was right.
Four years.
The time was right tonight, with her.
Twyla Tillery crossed the room in her soft cream suit and pressed an envelope into my hand.
"An NDA and a severance check, sugar," she said. "Forty thousand. Sign it and you'll work again somewhere."
Her pearls didn't even move when she breathed.
I looked at the envelope.
Then I walked through the crowd to the front of the room.
People stepped out of my way.
Crews held the mic away from me, grinning.
"Em. Don't do this."
I took it out of his hand.
"I refused to build that part," I said. "Twice. You had it built anyway, and you put my initials on the paper."
The room breathed in.
Crews laughed into Brinley's hair. "She's upset. Give her a minute."
I tore the check in half.
Then I tore the NDA in half.
I pulled my team ring off my finger, the heavy gold one with the 17 on it, and dropped it in his champagne.
It sank to the bottom with a little click.
I handed the mic to Brinley.
"Congratulations. He snores."
Then I walked out.
Reba Tackett, our hauler driver for sixteen years, was the only one who didn't step back.
She squeezed my arm as I passed, right in front of Twyla.
"Go on, baby," she said. "Don't you cry in front of these people."
The hallway was cool and empty.
Across from the party, the other penthouse door was propped open with a room service tray.
A man stood inside at the windows with his back to me.
Dark suit. Big shoulders. A wristwatch held open in his palm.
He turned around.
I knew him.
Every engineer in North Carolina knew him.
Sutton Tillery, champion at twenty-seven, gone at twenty-nine.
The uncle nobody at Twyla's table ever said out loud.
Crews called him the quitter.
His beard had gray in it now, and his eyes were gray too.
"The door was open," he said. "I heard all of it."
"Then you heard I'm a cheat."
"I heard you say you refused twice." He looked at me a long moment. "I believed that part."
"Why?"
"Because he's been running your setups for three years, and they've never once needed to cheat."
I stared at him.
Nobody had ever said my setups out loud.
Not even Crews.
"Why are you up here alone?" I asked.
"Watching a clock."
"It's eleven forty-one."
"I know."
I could hear the jazz trio across the hall start up again.
Like nothing had happened.
Like I'd never been there.
I shut his door behind me.
"I want to do something he'll never get over," I said.
Sutton didn't pretend he didn't understand.
"And you picked me."
"You're the only Tillery he's scared of."
"I'm thirty-eight," he said. "I'm his uncle. And I'm a long way out of practice. Take one minute and think about it."
I looked at the watch in his hand.
I watched the second hand go all the way around.
Then I crossed the room and kissed him.
He went still for one heartbeat.
Then his hand came up into my hair and he kissed me back.
The glass was cold against my bare shoulders.
He was warm everywhere else.
I pushed his jacket off and it hit the carpet.
I got two buttons of his shirt open, then three, and put my mouth on his collarbone.
He made a low sound I felt in my knees.
"Emmy," he said into my neck. "You sure?"
"Unzip me."
He did it slowly, the whole way down, his knuckles dragging along my spine.
My dress slid off my shoulders and caught at my hips.
He looked at me in the city light.
Then he bent his head and kissed the top of my breast, then lower, and I grabbed his belt to stay standing.
"Tell me what you want," he said.
So I told him.
All of it, in plain words, with Charlotte glittering behind me.
His laugh was rough and surprised.
He lifted me against the window and my legs went around his waist.
Behind us, the door opened.
Light from the hall fell across the carpet.
"Emmy? Mama says you have to sign the..."
Crews stopped in the doorway.
Brinley was on his arm.
Behind them were half the party, drinks in hand, phones already up.
My dress was at my waist and my legs were around his uncle.
Crews's face went white, then red.
"Uncle Sutton?"
The watch in Sutton's hand beeped.
Midnight.
He didn't put me down.
He didn't even turn around.
"Shut my door, nephew," he said. "My nine years just ran out."
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