Finn grinned as he hugged his little sister closer; it seemed he was finding out more and more about her this weekend than he’d ever imagined! He smoothed her wet hair back from where it was plastered against her face and kissed her, slipping his hands around her nakedness to pull her closer as he kissed her even harder. Lara squirmed on his lap as she felt his hardness growing, gently undulating against him as they kissed. Finn broke their kiss to grin at her.
“No, I don’t mind; you liked it, so it’s alright with me. Love you, little girl!” he breathed.
Sylvie watched as Robyn squeezed the water out of her long hair and wrapped a towel around her head like a turban, and paused in toweling her own hair dry to ruffle Evan’s hair, smiling tenderly at him as her eyes caught Robyn’s.
“He’s all your, Bobbi, I’m worn out! I need some rest; our brother definitely knows how to give a girl a busy night! Try not to break her, Ev; we have to look our best tonight!”
With that she pecked him on the lips and turned away, Evan watching the way the damp towel draped around her clung to and highlighted her flanks and sexy rump as she walked away, as elegant and self-assured as a model on a Milan catwalk.
Robyn grinned naughtily, wrapping herself in a beach towel and plumping herself down on her brother’s lap.
“I guess our heads really have changed…” mused Finn, almost talking to himself, prompting Lara to look keenly at him.
“‘Our heads have changed…?’ I like that Finny, it says so much in just a few words. I know I can’t ever go back to the way we were before all … this happened, and I don’t want to; whatever happens, my life goes on from this point as part of yours; it’s our life now. Bully for us!”
Finn realised there was no sound coming from Evan and Robyn, and saw them both smiling at him, Robyn huddled comfortably against her brother. Evan leaned forward, his arm holding his sister tightly against him as he grinned at Finn.
“So it happened for you, did it?” He grinned.
“Your ‘moment of clarity’ finally struck? Don’t worry, the girls and I had the same thing, which is why you’re here, now, with us. You must be wondering why we asked you to join us, why we’d bring you to the heart of our personal, private space. Please, if you have any questions about us, about this place, anything at all, feel free to ask. I promise to answer any question you ask.”
Finn glanced at Lara, saw the tiny nod she gave, so turned back to Evan.
“First off, why all this? Why ‘Sisterfest’? What’s it all for?”
Evan sat up, pulled a robe from a pile on a nearby seat and covered Robyn.
“Good question, Finn, and it deserves a good answer, so here goes: my father was a rich man, some would say a very rich man, but he wasn’t satisfied with what he had, he always wanted more, and he worked at it, speculating in so many diverse markets even I can’t keep it all straight!”
He paused to grin, then carried on.
“The upshot was that he became probably the third or fourth richest man on the planet, but I can almost guarantee you never heard of him; no-one has, because that was also another quirk of his; he hated publicity of any sort. So there you have this man, doggedly, secretly, almost furtively acquiring corporate assets the way other people collect stamps, or beer mats, or Star Wars figures, and when he died, he left it all to the three of us. Every damned penny…”
Evan grinned as he stared unseeing into the distance, before resuming.
“As you can imagine, when we were younger, my sisters and I spent money like water, we had fun, wild, desperate fun, until we too had our ‘moment of clarity’, which is when we finally realised that the only people we truly liked, and needed, and truly, fervently wanted, were each other, and that was the start of ‘us’, the three of us as you see us today.”
Evan paused to take a sip from a glass of champagne handed to him by Robyn from a locker somewhere under the leather chairs.
“We started this whole ‘Sisterfest’ thing almost as a whim, a kind of ‘in-joke’ to see if there were other people like us out there, people who wanted what we wanted from each other, people we might have some sort of connection with, who’d ‘get’ what we were about.”
“It soon became obvious to us that there were an awful lot of people like us, people who wanted to be open about what they were doing, and with whom. Ordinary parties had long ceased to be fun, they just seemed to have no… substance, they were just empty amusements to fill up our days, nothing but clown shows. We thought we might be able to have some real fun, proper, adult fun with people just like us, so we set this whole thing up, and waited to see what would happen. As it happens, it has been an enormous amount of fun, but now, for us, it’s time for the fun to stop, and reality to start.”
“So why are you telling us all this?” asked Lara.
Robyn sat up and huddled against Evan, pulling her robe around her.
“Lara, this, all this you see here, this is just one of the many properties we own in England, but this is not our home; none of them are, not really. The only place we think of as ‘home’ is a long way away, and my sister, my brother, and I want to go home. This is not the life we want anymore; we just want to live quiet, anonymous lives, to just be ordinary people, or as ordinary as we can be with all that money hanging around our necks! I want children, so does my sister, and so does Evan, but we absolutely refuse to bring them up in this circus, this life of excess and self-gratification. This is a fantasy world, where people’s dreams come true, but now it’s time our dream came true.”
She paused to take a sip from Evan’s champagne glass, her throat working, and Finn was surprised to see tears glimmering in the corners of her beautiful eyes. She blinked them away and continued.
“The only way we can be free to be ourselves is to pass it all on to someone we think can make a real difference, who understands what we originally intended, and who can actually enjoy what we started here, the way we used to. We want someone who is dedicated, committed, and not afraid of a challenge, and we think we’ve found them…”
Finn looked blank for a second as he took in what she was saying, his eyes widening as her meaning gradually percolated through his mind.
“Us? You’re talking about Lara and me?”
Evan looked at them gravely, and nodded.
“Exactly. We saw almost from the first moments you were here how you felt about each other; the others out there, none of them seems in the least bit connected to each other except for sex. If you look out there right now, they’re swapping and playing like there’s no tomorrow.”
He paused to grin wryly.
“Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all; that’s why they came here, after all, to be free to do just that, and part of the reason for us encouraging that is to see who’s prepared to do that, and who won’t. You two are different; you only want each other, you refused the bait, you only had eyes for each other, and even a blase cynic like me could see that, hence this conversation. I think you and Lara are perfect to take this from us, and there are benefits, too!”
Robyn slipped off the bed and belted her robe around herself, before fishing out three more champagne flutes and a bottle of champagne from the locker under the chair. She poured three glasses and passed two to Finn and Lara, then raised her own glass in salute.
“This house, this whole complex, is part of the deal; my father was a multi-billionaire, and now we have control of all that money, and the strange thing about money is how it grows; it doesn’t matter how much we spend, the interest alone on all those billions just keeps giving us even more back. This house and complex represents a tiny, tiny fraction of what we have, and we don’t want it anymore, we won’t need it where we’re going, so if you accept our offer, it’s all yours. With the house comes a trust to manage and maintain the place, pay the staff, and of course, pay for ‘Sisterfest’, the whole raison d’etre of this place. There is also a generous, and I do mean generous, salary, stipend, allowance, call it what you wish, but it’s seven figures, each, and will be paid to you off-shore from an account in the Cayman Islands; call it your compensation for taking this thing off our hands!”
She paused to grin mischievously at Finn.
“Finny, please, breathe, you’re going a funny colour!”
Finn could hardly believe his ears; it was the offer of a lifetime, but how do you take it in when you’re offered everything on a silver platter? Lara sat up and wrapped a large beach towel around her nakedness.
“What’s the catch? No-one just hands over something like this without there being some kind of huge price to pay; I once read a story called ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, about what happens when you really get what you wish for, so I get that there’s never something for nothing. There has to be an absolutely huge razor-blade in a ball of candy-floss this big; what are you not telling us?”
Evan smiled and raised his glass in salute at her.
“Well done, basic caution, I like that. There is no catch, Lara. It’s time for Sylvie, Robyn and me to go; we’ve had enough, we want our lives back now, the lives we would have been living if our father hadn’t saddled us with such an impossible amount of money. We want to share with you, we want you to take over from us, and make this whatever you think it should be; if you try it and then decide that there should be no more ‘Sisterfest’, then that’s your decision, but all this, the trust, everything, will remain yours anyway; call it a gift to the special people we’ve been looking for, and you’ll at least know for certain that the time for ‘Sisterfest’ is over. You being here means we have a chance at a real life at last, and that means more to us than any mansions, or money, or luxury yachts, or Hollywood lifestyles.”