Chapter 1

ONE

There was nothing more settling to Robert Hawthorne than the rich softness of a fresh lump of clay. The way it smelled of the earth and creativity, the way its moisture leeched into his hands as he wedged it, the way it shifted and moved, solid and liquid at once, waiting to be formed and whispering of its potential, soothed Robbie in a way nothing else could.

He needed the soothing. The past winter had been unsettling in too many ways, and the spring was starting out with more question marks than answers. It was early in the year, early in the morning as well, but the family's situation was so filled with uncertainty that he'd brought himself down to the pottery studio long before classes began for the day so he could work out some of the tension that had bunched his back muscles and tightened his jaw as he'd tried to sleep.

Trying not to think, he gathered up his wedged balls of clay and moved to his favorite wheel along the line that the students used for the classes he taught. He arranged everything the way he liked it, then sat, turned the wheel on, and fitted a bat in place. With his eyes closed, he took a deep, clearing breath.

Nothing else mattered in that moment. Not the family's financial worries, not the still-sore wound of his sister Raina's tragic death the year before, and not Keith breaking up with him because vanilla just wasn't what he wanted anymore. Robbie put those things mentally to the side, took one last breath, then opened his eyes.

He reached for one of his balls of clay, slammed it onto the center of the bat, wet his hands and the clay, and started the wheel turning. Once he had the clay centered, everything would fall into place.

Nothing in the world gave Robbie the thrill that creating beauty out of the most basic materials of the earth gave him. As the electric hum of the potting wheel buzzed in his ears and his muscles worked and flexed to form the lump in front of him, his thoughts seemed to fall into place as well.

The family could get through their financial rough patch. He'd gained enough fame for his ceramics in the last few years that galleries and private collectors were beginning to notice him. He'd been combating his relative lack of ambition, compared to the rest of his family, by talking with the big ceramics competition television show that wanted him as a guest judge.

He could do something, even if it wasn't as splashy as what everyone else expected of him. He didn't want to stop teaching classes that community members could attend and afford, but he could offer a special master class at a higher price. He could teach fewer classes and spend more time making items to sell. He could do something .

The problem was that he wasn't the only one in the family gaining attention. Rhys had sold a painting for over five thousand pounds before Christmas. Ryan's glassblowing had caught the attention of some very important people of late. And thanks to Raina's husband, Nate, the old blacksmith's shop on the estate was gaining attention for its authenticity, and Nate had been approached by everyone from industrialists to historians to demonstrate his forging techniques. Nate wasn't technically a Hawthorne, but even with Raina gone, the family still considered him and the kids part of the fold.

The clay on Robbie's wheel was starting to actually look like something. He'd pulled it up twice, and now he worked on shaping the simple cylinder into one of his signature vases. He knew the movements necessary to make the shape like he knew his own heartbeat. His hands were connected straight to his heart, and the clay curved and bowed like it was dancing for him. They were connected through the miracle of creation, and with just a few?—

"Oy! Robbie. Dad wants us all in the meeting room in five minutes."

Robbie flinched just enough to throw the soft clay off, and within seconds, the potential vase spun out and collapsed.

Robbie sighed as he pulled his foot off the pedal powering the wheel and stared at the once-again formless clay. Sometimes the ceramics gods were on your side and sometimes they definitely weren't.

"What does Dad want this early in the day?" he asked as he reached for a tool to scrape the mess of clay off the bat.

He turned to glance questioningly at his brother Nally, short for Ronald. Nally was the youngest of their large brood, but at twenty, he was just as much an expert in his field of musical composition as the rest of them were at their chosen arts.

Nally had been a child genius. One or two articles had even touted him as the next Mozart. But like Robbie, instead of flying off to attend some royal institute and reach for fame, he'd stayed home at Hawthorne House and taught classes at the arts center. The difference was that Nally was young and could consider working for the family as some sort of gap year. Robbie didn't have that excuse.

Nally shrugged, like only someone fresh out of their teens could, and said, "I don't know, but he told me to get your arse up there sooner rather than later."

Robbie smiled. He loved his brother. He loved his entire family. They were close, which was a blessing and a miracle in this day and age. It was the reason why they'd all set up house in the various apartments in the other wing of the grand estate house from the school instead of flying the nest to make their fortunes somewhere else.

"Help me clean up?" Robbie asked as he stood, working the clay from his failed vase back into a ball.

Nally rushed to help Robbie wrap his clay so it wouldn't dry out and to quickly clean the studio. Well, as much as it could be cleaned in five minutes so that it wouldn't look like there had been a clay explosion when students arrived for the first class of the day in about an hour.

Once that was done and Robbie had cleaned himself up enough to be presentable for his family, which didn't require much more than removing his apron and washing his hands, they were his family, after all, he and Nally headed out of the studio.

"Do you know if it's good news or bad news?" Robbie asked as they walked through the hallowed halls of Hawthorne House. Those halls had once been the home of twelve previous Earls of Felcourt and their families, not to mention serving time as a hospital after one war and a boarding school after another. Now, the halls were part of a humble community arts center, albeit a popular and beloved one in the area.

"You never can tell with Dad," Nally said. "He doesn't like to upset us."

Robbie hummed. "And he does like to meddle."

Nally laughed. "Tell me about it. Hopefully this isn't another one of those meetings where he rants at us because he wants more grandchildren."

Robbie laughed and shook his head. "He does realize most of us are gay, doesn't he?"

Nally blushed and snorted. "He says that's not an excuse these days."

Robbie grunted and shrugged one shoulder. That was true. In fact, he and Keith had been talking about getting married and either adopting or searching for a surrogate just a few months before it all blew up.

The beginnings of a smile that being around Nally always gave Robbie vanished. Everything had looked like it was finally falling into place in his life, and then Keith had yanked the carpet out from under him. He'd gone from feeling settled and having a clearly defined future to being alone, not good enough, not ambitious enough.

He just wasn't enough, period.

He'd been telling the rest of the family he was fine and he'd moved on, but there was a cavern inside him that Keith had caused, and nothing he'd been doing for the past several months had come close to filling it up.

"So does anyone know what this meeting is about?" Robbie asked as he and Nally made it to the long meeting room that had once been part of the ballroom before the house's insides had been rebuilt and rearranged to make it into a school in the nineteen-forties.

As far as Robbie could see, the entire family and then some was already present. Someone had bought donuts, which were laid out on the long table. The table had graced the family's formal dining room for generations before being moved to the new meeting room and given its far more pedestrian purpose.

Robbie had always liked to imagine the great and glorious people who had once sat around that very table. Hawthorne House was known to have hosted the likes of Samuel Pepys, William Pitt the Younger, Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria, and in a particularly wild rumor that Robbie wasn't certain he believed, the ninth earl had entertained Oscar Wilde and a large party of his aesthete friends one summer.

The family joke was that the ghosts of that party had turned half the member of the Hawthorne family gay ever since, but Robbie had his suspicions about all those previous earls. Judging by their portraits, the ones from the eighteenth century in particular were definitely dandies.

"It has to be the finances," Rebecca sighed from where she was already seated at one end of the table, two donuts on a plate in front of her. "Dad has been looking over my shoulder in the office for the past week, asking me if anything can be done."

"Can anything be done?" Rhys asked from off to the side, where more than one kettle had been plugged in so they could all have tea. Just like Robbie was certain he had smudges of clay on his shirt and jeans, Rhys had flecks of paint on his clothes already, proving he'd been up early working as well.

"Something can always be done," Nally said, ever the optimist, as he and Robbie descended on the remaining donuts.

"He's called the rest of us in, too," Nate pointed out, sipping his tea near the window that looked out into the vast back garden. "So it has to be something business related and not family."

"Aww, Nate. You're family, too," Rebecca said, smiling sadly at him.

Robbie felt terrible for Rebecca. She and Raina had been the only girls in a sea of boys, and now she was on her own in the estrogen department. It was almost enough to make Robbie wish he was into women so he could marry one to keep Rebecca company. Almost.

"It's been almost a year since we lost Raina," he pointed out softly. "Maybe Dad wants to do something to mark the occasion?"

He glanced warily to Nate.

Nate shrugged with a gesture that felt poignant and hopeless to Robbie. "I'd be up for it," he said. "The kids might like something."

Before any sort of discussion about what could be done to remember Raina could begin, everyone's attention was pulled toward the meeting room door as their father, Robert Hawthorne the third, the thirteenth Earl of Felcourt marched into the room, saying, "Alright, kiddos, we've got a problem on our hands."

Robbie's stomach instantly tightened, making him wish he hadn't inhaled one of the donuts straight out of the box. His dad was usually brimming with life and quirkiness. He was a typical, artistic eccentric who had been born in the austere fifties, came of age at the end of the expansive sixties, and run amok all through the wicked seventies.

Robbie's mum, who was twelve years younger than Dad, was the love of Dad's life, but they'd enjoyed an open relationship, and both had had lovers of both sexes all through Robbie's childhood. Both had been renown artists in their own rights as well. Mum was currently in Africa studying tribal art, and Dad, well, he was dealing with other things.

"Sit down, all of you, sit," he said, motioning to everyone to find a place at the table. He headed straight for the donuts himself, taking the last cruller and biting into it before going on with his mouth full. "I'll be brief and honest," he said, dropping crumbs into his monumentally long, but surprisingly well-groomed beard, which was decidedly full for someone in his seventies. "We're up against it, and unless we make magic along with our art, we're fucked. And not in the good way."

Nally snorted. Rhys rolled his eyes. Rebecca shook her head. Robbie just smirked and waited for his dad to get more to the point.

"Hawthorne Community Arts Center has always had a hard time keeping its head above water," Dad went on. "We've managed to do fairly well for an estate that hasn't opened its doors to let foreign tourists waltz in and poke their noses in our drawers and cupboards. The school brings in a fair amount of money, and the events that take place on the grounds have just about helped us to break even."

"Has something happened?" Rebecca asked. "Is that why you keep asking to look at the books?"

Dad winced, which wasn't like him at all. "Something has happened," he admitted. "Or rather, something might be about to happen."

Robbie frowned and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He didn't like the troubled look on his dad's face. Dad was wild and hip. He was embarrassing and fun. He had never done well with "things happening".

"What are we dealing with?" Rhys asked. "And how much money do we need to fix it?"

"That's precisely the problem," Dad said. "We don't need money, we're being offered money."

The room went silent as everyone stared and blinked at Dad.

"Explain?" Robbie half asked, half demanded.

Dad sighed and finally took his seat at the head of the table. Robbie had a flash of what the other, more serious earls, their ancestors, would have looked like sitting in that same spot.

"We've had an offer to buy the place," Dad said shortly, looking around the table and meeting everyone's eyes.

"To buy the place?" Rhys repeated after a long silence. "To buy Hawthorne Hall?"

"Yes," Dad answered.

"Do people actually go around purchasing ancient estates?" Nate asked, as flabbergasted as the rest of the family.

"Why would anyone want to do that?" Nally asked. "Everyone I went to school with whose family owns an estate like this has to scramble to keep the place afloat."

Nally didn't like to admit it too loudly, but he'd gone to Eton. He hated thinking he was that posh, but he definitely knew what he was talking about when it came to other crusty, old, titled families.

Dad cleared his throat, which instantly focused everyone on him again.

"We've received an offer to purchase the estate in its entirety from Willoughby Entertainment Group," he said.

Another silence followed. Robbie didn't know what that meant, but instinct told him it wasn't good.

"Oh my God," Nally said a few seconds later. He'd already pulled out his mobile and searched for Willoughby Entertainment Group. "They're the company that owns Splashton Park and a bunch of other amusement parks across the UK and Ireland."

That tiny bit of information sent gasps rolling down the table.

"Does Willoughby Entertainment Group want to purchase Hawthorne House and turn it into a theme park ?" Robbie asked, horrified.

"Alton Towers was built on the site of a former ancestral estate," Rebecca pointed out, her eyes wide and her voice tight and disbelieving.

"It's my understanding that Willoughby Entertainment wants to give Alton Towers a run for their money here in the south," Dad said, more serious than Robbie had ever seen him. "Their initial offer is for just over two hundred million pounds."

Rhys had gotten up to make another tea and dropped his spoon at the figure. Rebecca gripped the table like she'd gone dizzy. The rest of them had similar reactions of extreme shock.

"You aren't planning on accepting the offer, are you?" Robbie asked, his voice hoarse and thin.

"You know I don't want to," Dad said. "Hawthorne House and the Hawthorne Community Arts Center means more to me, to all of us, than all the money in the world. It's important to the community. It has a long history, one that should not end here."

"But," Robbie said, sensing there was definitely a but.

Dad rubbed a hand over his face and pulled it down his beard. "But we're walking a tight line financially right now," he said. "Keeping things together has been a challenge in the best of times. Accepting the money, which you would all share in, even you, Nate, and starting over isn't something we should discount out of hand."

"Hawthorne House has been in the family since the sixteen hundreds," Nally argued. "Our roots are here. Our identity is here."

Robbie smiled despite the tension of the moment. Leave it to the baby of the family to be the one most interested in tradition and history. Then again, he had attended Eton.

"We can't make a decision like this without everyone in the family present," Rebecca pointed out. "Mum is in Africa, Rafe is in America until August, and Ryan is doing Fashion Week in Milan. And that's not even taking the cousins into account."

"We can't make any decisions without consulting the entire family," Robbie agreed.

"Of course, of course," Dad said, raising his hands as they all started to get restless. "I didn't call you all here this morning to make a decision. I called you here to explain the problem, and to introduce the solution I hope I might have found. Mr. Tillman?" he called out, looking toward the door.

All of them turned to the door in time to see a smartly dressed man who looked to be in his mid-twenties stride into the room, carrying a briefcase.

Robbie sucked in a breath. The aura that the man, Mr. Tillman, brought into the room with him was as powerful as a blast of air conditioning in a heat wave. There was something about him that arrested Robbie right away. Maybe it was the way his suit fit his slightly short frame so perfectly. Maybe it was the man's dark, sleek good looks. Or maybe it was the spiked hair and lip ring set slightly off-center on his lower lip that threw the image of a conservative businessman completely out the window.

It wasn't any of those things, Robbie realized as Mr. Tillman walked around the table to take the seat across from him, on his father's left-hand side. It was the ferocity in the young man's startlingly blue eyes that had the hair on the back of Robbie's neck standing up. Mr. Tillman was angry and bullish, and he'd only just entered the room.

"This it Mr. Toby Tillman," Dad introduced the incongruous man. "He works for Johnson, Johnson, and Inez. He's an efficiency expert and an assessor."

"What kind of assessor?" Robbie asked, narrowing his eyes slightly at the man in suspicion.

Mr. Tillman's eyes widened a fraction before narrowing as he's met Robbie's. "A business assessor," he answered in a working-class accent. "I'm here to tell you all the things you're doing wrong so you can keep this rotting relic afloat."

Robbie drew in a breath, his skin prickling and his heart pounding. And, ironically, his cock filling. The reaction was ridiculous, because despite how sexy Mr. Toby Tillman was with his conservative suit, spiked hair, and lip ring, Robbie instantly hated him.