HUGE HOUSE HATES: AN ENEMIES TO LOVERS REVERSE HAREM ROMANCE (HUGE Series)

The morning after the party, my head is banging, and it takes two bottles of water, some painkillers, and two plain bagels to set me on the path to feeling slightly human again.

I bump into Cora on my way out of the front door, and her face is the picture of rage.

She stomps down the driveway, her black boots clomping loud enough to feel it in my already throbbing temples. Her old car splutters to life and leaves an acrid balloon of black smoke in its wake as she speeds off to wherever she needs to get to in a hurry.

Weird that she’s living under the same roof, but I know nothing about her. Weird but not of my doing. I was all set to get to know her and make her feel comfortable. I understood the awkwardness of the situation, not only because we’re effectively strangers but also because of the history between our families.

Dad thinks we don’t know, but we have ears, and he’s not the most discreet of people. He was telling Uncle Morris that Cora is the daughter of Dom Horton, the man who owned a business Dad managed to squash over a decade ago.

I totally get why Cora is walking around like she has a poisoned cucumber stuffed up her butt. If I was forced to live with a family who’d destroyed my dad’s business, I wouldn’t exactly be desperate to get to know them. But we’re not guilty of the actions of our father after our mom died. We were kids and teens when he was conducting his dastardly corporate moves, too engrossed in our own grief-stricken lives, homework, and extracurricular sports to even notice.

Cora never gave us a chance to tell her that we didn’t approve of our dad’s way of operating. He might be a shark when it comes to the world, but my brothers and I definitely aren’t. Mom managed to leave her mark on us before she passed away, and it’s a mark that Randolph Carlton can’t erase.

I’m less bothered about Cora’s abrupt and rude snubbing of us than Danny, Tobias, and River. We might be brothers, but we don’t all have the same way of going about things. Still, I get where they’re coming from. This is our house, and fuck anyone who wants to walk in and treat us like shit under our own roof.

I’m more of a live-and-let-live kind of person. If Cora doesn’t want to hang out with us, then I’d be more inclined just to let her get on with it. I don’t need to force anyone to be my friend, and I like people who are upfront more than people who lie to cover their true feelings.

What you see is what you get with Cora.

Scowling face, check. Narrowed eyes, check. Flared nostrils, check. Hands-on hips, check. Pissed-off angry woman, definite check!

But I won’t go against my brothers for someone I don’t even know and doesn’t want to know me. Blood is thicker than water. That’s one thing that Randolph has managed to impart during our upbringing. My brothers and I are tight. We may have the odd disagreement, but nothing ever comes between us for more than half an hour.

“Hey, Mark!” a voice yells as I climb into my BMW. Looking up, I find Tobias standing in the doorway, wearing only his underwear.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t forget we’re meeting at Dougie’s later.”

The thought of more alcohol makes my stomach roil, but it’s Tobias’s birthday, so there’s no getting out of it.

“I’ll be there,” I say. “And put on some pants. What the fuck will the neighbors say?”

My younger brother grins, revealing his almost perfect white teeth. A little chip on the corner of his front tooth gives him a rough edge that I know he loves but would make Mom turn in her grave. It’s the result of one too many scuffles, but that’s Toby. There’s no changing him.

As he disappears back inside, I close the door quietly and rub my temple before running the belt across me. The car purrs to life, and I slide it into drive and begin the journey to the office that I could probably do with my eyes closed.

The office is heaving by the time I arrive. Daliah, my PA, places a cup of coffee on my desk before I’ve even had the chance to shrug off my jacket. “I thought you might need this,” she says, giving me a pitying look. She was at the party last night but, unlike me, only had one drink and left at a respectable hour. I think, after fending off the third linebacker, she’d had enough. I’m not going to hold it against her.

“I do need it,” I whisper. “You are an ethereal being sent from the skies.”

“An angel?” She cocks an eyebrow.

“Definitely.”

The first warm mouthful of double-shot Americano is like heaven in my mouth, and I sink into my black leather office chair, contemplating how I’m going to be a productive team member when I feel as though a herd of bison has used my gray matter as a trampoline.

Thankfully, when I click into my calendar, I find that I don’t have a meeting until after lunch. That means I can pretend to bury my head in a spreadsheet and coast until I have to appear to be a competent accountant.

At least, that’s what I plan until my mind wanders.

Who is Cora Horton? What really happened with her father’s business?

The nosy asshole part of me doesn’t want to contemplate finances and equations. It wants to know more about the pretty girl with the attitude of a rottweiler.

So I do what any nosy asshole does in the days of Google. I search for her name and dig around to see what I can find.

It isn’t much. Her social media is set to private, so all that comes up is a few profile-picture updates. And what do I learn? She really likes changing her hair. And her clothing choices all seem to involve clashing prints and colors, combined with interestingly masculine footwear.

I do find a business in her name and follow the trail of links to a basic website showing a few of her pottery creations. The girl’s an artist, like Alden, but on a much smaller scale. Or at least that’s what her website indicates, but her stuff is great.

I’m not the Carlton brother with the eye for great art, though. I’ve always been the math guy. The one who could crunch the numbers.

The disappointing search for information on Cora set aside; I focus on her father’s business. The internet doesn’t seem to forget, even when over a decade has passed. There are articles on its slow crumble and eventual destruction; they even mention my father. As I read over a history that I should have been aware of, a weight settles into my stomach. Randolph is marrying the wife of a man he was instrumental in undermining. My father twisted Cora’s father’s life into something unrecognizable, and over ten years later, he swooped in to pick the last meat off the bones.

This sinking feeling isn’t new. I’m not so deluded to think that my father rose to the pinnacles of success without treading on a few toes, but this doesn’t feel like just that. This feels like he slowly slid a knife in someone’s back and walked away smiling.

I pick up the phone, glancing around to make sure no one is about to approach my desk, and dial Danny’s number. He answers the phone with a groan that rumbles against my temple and sets my head throbbing harder.

“If you’re still in bed, I’m going to…”

“You’re going to what?” Danny asks, a lazy smile in his voice.

“Cry into my keyboard.” I make a snorting sound, but it’s not far from the truth. I need to make a note to myself that midweek drinking is off the cards for me. I’m nowhere near middle-aged, but this hangover makes me feel old.

“I’ve been up for an hour,” Danny says. “I even managed a workout.”

“HOW?” I groan loudly, then glance around again, finding two of my colleagues staring at me with furrowed brows.

“What?”

“Why don’t you have a hangover?” I hiss.

“I don’t know,” Danny continues. I hear gulping as he takes a long, quenching drink. That’s probably why he’s full of the joy of spring, and I feel like winter has come and left nothing of me in its wake. My brother always has a bottle of water in his hand. It’s good for his skin, apparently. “Did you see Cora’s face last night?”

“At what point?”

“She was mad,” he says with a pleased hum.

“She was,” I agree.

“She’s going to be madder when she gets home.”

Bending closer to my desk, I hold the phone tighter to my ear. “What did you do?” In my heart, I already suspect that it will be something awful. Of all of us, Danny is the most easily hurt and the quickest to anger. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to take a moment to calm himself down. He has skin as thin as the onion membrane we used to have to extract in science class so we could look at cells under a microscope.

“She left her laundry in the drier, so I dumped it in the trash. I mean, if she doesn’t exist, then her clothes don’t belong to anyone.”

“You what?”

“Listen, before you get all holier-than-thou, you know Cora needs to learn a lesson. If she thinks she can go through life treating people like shit, she will end up getting burned. She might come across someone who doesn’t put up with her shit in a violent way, and then what?”

“So this is a public service that you’re offering…an education in social skills?”

“Exactly.” Danny sniggers, and I shake my head. He’s not a bad guy. In fact, of all of us, he’s the one who volunteers his time to help a local charity. He’s the one who always remembers birthdays and makes a big fuss of organizing everything during the holidays. He just has a very inflexible way of approaching life. People are either good or bad, and if they’re good, they get his best, and if they’re bad, they end up on the receiving end of his worst.

Cora is firmly in the bad category where she should really be in more of a murky gray in-between section. Yes, she was rude and abrasive, but she has her reasons. With a little patience and time to demonstrate we don’t all exist in the moral cesspit that our father inhabits, she would have come around.

But Danny doesn’t work that way.

“This isn’t going to make things better,” I warn, shaking my sore head and immediately regretting the action.

A rustling noise on the other end of the phone tells me he’s shrugging carelessly. “What does better look like anyway? We never wanted her to move in. We were just being accommodating so that Dad would move away, and we wouldn’t have to deal with his shit up close and personal anymore.”

“You know that Dad did put her father’s company out of business? I did some digging today.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Danny says, gulping some more water. “The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. I’m not my father. Neither are you, or Alden, or Tobe, or River. It happened over a decade ago, and I don’t need history that has nothing to do with me ruining my homelife.”

“I have a feeling your disposal of Cora’s clean clothes is going to do a lot more damage.”.”

“Maybe,” Danny says. “But she’ll learn. I’m a really great teacher.”

All-day, I feel antsy, as though something has slipped under my skin and into my consciousness. I manage to gather my brain cells for the one meeting I have, and then I skulk back to my desk to check off what’s urgent from my workload. The rest will have to wait.

On the journey home, I flick on the radio and listen to some mellow country music, needing the soothing, dulcet tones to steady the inflated-balloon feeling in my chest.

Will Cora be home already? How will she react to what Danny’s done? Will she blame the rest of us? And what will I say if she confronts me?

I might not like what Danny’s doing, but there’s no way I’ll do anything to undermine him, no matter how much my instinct is to run a cool hand and smooth the wrinkles in this situation.

After I park the car in the driveway, I rest my elbows on the wheel and my head in my hands. My hair is longer than usual, and I make a mental note to get it trimmed at the weekend. The sigh that rushes through my parted lips feels like a deep release from the tension coiled in my belly and into my bones.

This friction takes me back to a time when our home was filled with tension and arguments. When Mom was sick, Dad couldn’t find it in himself to respect her wishes and listen to what she wanted. Much like Danny, he had ideas of what was best for Mom and him and the rest of us, and he bulldozed his way over everyone. Back then, I used to hide out in my room so that I didn’t have to listen to any of it.

Is that what it’s going to be like now?

Already, I don’t want to go inside and face the music. Cora, on one axis, wielding a sledgehammer against a gong. Danny, and maybe the rest of my brothers, on the other with axes and hammers pounding a bass drum. There is nothing tuneful about conflict.

But I can’t sit in my car forever.

I need to eat and sleep so that I can reenter the world in the morning as a productive human being.

I trudge up the driveway to the house with heavy steps, already hearing the licking flames of an argument in progress.

As I turn my key in the lock, a high-pitched voice yells, “You asshole!”

There’s a slam of something metal against metal and a rumble of laughter from more than one man.

“Fuck,” I mutter, shoving my keys into my pocket and searching the box for mail as an easy distraction.

“Did you hear something?” Danny asks, his voice singsong with unrepressed pleasure.

“Fuck you!” Cora shouts, her words punctuated with another loud bang.

My hands ball at my sides, the tension is making me want to punch something.

“You know, I think we should have another party tonight,” Tobias says. “We still have a whole load of booze left.”

“Oh, you think you’re so clever, don’t you?” Cora yells. “You think you’re going to make it impossible for me to live here with your stupid games and your stupid parties. Well, you’re not the only ones who can be this petty. You better watch your backs.”

“Did you hear something?” Danny repeats. I get the feeling that I’m going to be hearing that particular phrase a lot.

“Maybe it was the wind,” Toby says. “Or maybe it was my stomach grumbling.”

With another slam, footsteps begin to stamp along the hall. “You touch my laundry again, and you’ll be searching for your dicks in the trash,” Cora yells, her voice getting closer and closer. And then she’s there, in front of me, her face flushed, and her jaw clenched.

Our eyes meet; hers startled and mine wary. I don’t want to get dragged into an argument that I’ve had nothing to do with starting, but it might happen anyway. I’m a Carlton, after all. Guilty by association.

For a moment, we stand face to face, her chest rising and falling and jaw ticking as though she’s close to rupturing a blood vessel or cracking a tooth; she’s so furious. And me? Well, I don’t move or say a word.

Then, as quickly as she appears, she turns and stomps up to the second floor, looking like a petulant child amid the luxury that is my home.

And I’m left with the sinking feeling that this situation will worsen until it erupts like a long-dormant volcano, wiping us all out in the process.