Scenario: Tiernan de Haas doesn't care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she's grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. And when her parents suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But she's always been alone, hasn't she?
Jake Van der Berg, her father's stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan. Sent to live in the mountains of Colorado with Jake and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, Tiernan quickly learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore.
As the men take Tiernan under their wing, she slowly finds her place among them.
Because lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.
One of them has her. The other one wants her. But he's going to keep her.
Genres: Romance novel, Erotic literature, New adult fiction, Coming-of-age story
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Tiernan de Haas doesn't care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she's grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. And when her parents suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But she's always been alone, hasn't she?
Jake Van der Berg, her father's stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan. Sent to live in the mountains of Colorado with Jake and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, Tiernan quickly learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore.
As the men take Tiernan under their wing, she slowly finds her place among them.
Because lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.
One of them has her. The other one wants her. But he's going to keep her.
Genres: Romance novel, Erotic literature, New adult fiction, Coming-of-age story
Growing up, I’ve never cared for Hollywood.
Ironic, I know.
My parents are famous.
My father is a film producer.
He’s known for his blockbuster hits, and my mother is a starlet.
Her beauty graces the cover of magazines all around the world.
But their lives never interested me much.
And I never felt like I was part of it.
It’s not because they didn’t try to include me.
But even if they had, I doubt I would have cared.
That’s not who I am.
I’ve always been happy with a good book and a walk through the gardens.
My parents have always been too busy to worry about me.
There were always parties to attend and important people to impress, so I can’t really blame them.
I think they did the best they could.
And I love them regardless of their flaws.
The people who came to our house were never interested in me anyway.
They would coo and tell me how pretty my dress was or how nice my hair looked curled over my shoulder, but those were just empty comments meant to fill the silence between us.
They didn’t care about any of that stuff, and I didn’t either.
You could see it in their eyes—how quickly they would look away when they realized that I wasn’t going to engage in meaningless conversation about things that didn’t matter.
I was a kid, and no one had any desire to talk about fairy tales and unicorns or anything else that captured my attention.
The gardens were my favorite place in our house in Hollywood.
They were big and sprawling, filled with exotic flowers and even a koi pond.
I loved standing by the edge of the pond and watching the fish swim around in circles.
It was so tranquil there—like nothing else in our house or in my life.
I used to spend hours lost in the beauty of the trees and flowers, but as I got older, I spent more time reading by myself on a bench tucked away near the back of the garden where no one would see me when they visited us on Sundays.
Every now and then someone would come looking for me, but they never searched for too long before giving up and going back inside to join the party, leaving me alone with my book and my thoughts.
I’ve always had a hard time connecting with people.
I’ve never been great at making friends.
And as much as I’ve always wanted to be close to my family, it’s not something that has ever come easily.
I’ve always felt like an outsider in my own life.
That’s part of the reason why I’ve spent so many years trying to connect with my parents through their interests.
When they’re on set filming or working late into the night or attending parties on the other side of the world, they’re never here—not really.
They’re always somewhere else—living a different life than me.
When I was young, I used to think that if only I could find something that we all liked or something that interested me as much as it interested them, then we could finally find common ground.
And then we could be happy together.
I think that’s why I started reading so much—and eventually traveling.
Books are something my parents have always loved.
Like many things in their lives, they only read for the sake of appearances or to impress other people, but they do love them—on some level at least.
Even if they don’t read them very often—certainly not as often as they’d like other people to think they do—they still have more than enough books.
So many books that a library was built in our house just to hold them all.
Every now and then, they would find a book that they thought I might like and give it to me to read.
Sometimes it was interesting, but it was never enough to distract me from what was happening—or rather, what wasn’t happening—around us.
On occasion, my parents took me on trips with them to foreign countries or to other states that we hadn’t already visited together.
But most of the time when they left town, they sent me alone with my mother while my father stayed behind to work.
I think he felt guilty for leaving me alone so often, so he sent me with her in hopes that she would take care of me—and also because she would refuse to let him stay behind anyway.
I think she liked having me around too—sometimes at least.
She loved taking care of me when we were alone together, but most of the time she left me at our hotel with our bodyguard and chauffer so she could go out with her friends or go shopping without having to worry about me holding her back.
At first, I thought it was because she didn’t want me around, but over time, I realized that she just wanted a chance to shine by herself without me distracting from her moment in the spotlight.
She loved having people tell her how pretty she was or how much they liked her movies, and it was harder for her to steal that attention away from me.
She said that she loved having me there with her, but she always seemed so much happier when I wasn’t in the way—when she had a chance to be on her own without having to worry about anyone else’s feelings or needs getting in the way.
It wasn’t that bad though, being left behind by myself with Martin while she went out on her own.
Other kids might have hated being alone so much, but I was used to it after all these years.
Even though I didn’t understand why she had to leave me alone, I did understand.
It was just how things worked around here.
I have been quiet for as long as I can remember; even when I was a baby, my mother told me later, I almost never cried or made a fuss.
So when she had to leave me behind because of work or other responsibilities, she didn’t have to worry about getting any complaints from neighbors about the noise disturbing them.
I think she knew that I would be fine on my own—no matter how old or young I might have been at the time—so she didn’t feel bad about leaving me behind quite so often.
She also had Mr.Fluffy around to keep me company, so it wasn’t like I was totally alone.
The Pomeranian was a beloved companion for both of us, even though he was technically hers, so when she left, she would leave him with me so he could take care of me while she was gone too.
Sometimes, it felt like Mr.Fluffy got more attention and love from her than I did—but then again, maybe that’s not so surprising for a pampered pet in a house like ours.
For whatever reason, my mother never liked showing me any physical affection while she had no problem giving it freely to the dog.
She would hug and kiss him all the time when she thought no one else was watching, but she didn’t do the same with me very often; even when she did, it always felt forced and fake—just like how she acted around me most of the time—so it never meant anything special to me anyway.
I could never understand why she felt that way about me—why she didn’t want me the same way that she wanted Mr.
Ever since I was a baby, my mother had never seemed to want me around very much.
Even though she loved showing off photos of me and talking about me with her friends when they asked—how could she not when they were always so interested in her only daughter?—she always seemed so much happier and more relaxed when they weren’t around than when they were, even though she tried not to let it show most of the time when they were.
I think she only ever acted like she didn’t want me around because she felt like she had to—not because she really wanted me at all.