Page 8 of Bride on the Dotted Line

Cold, clean, and calculated.

“I was expecting you earlier,” Victor says as I push open the door to his study. He’s sitting behind his desk, staring at a stack of papers. “When will you stop with this culture of lateness?”

My father is a short, stout man, but he carries himself like he’s eight feet tall. Even when we’re standing side by side, he finds a way to look down at me. His study looks like the waiting room at a luxury office, sparsely decorated, severe, and large enough for our voices to echo.

“I’ll stop being late when the city finally fixes the construction mess on the road here,” I say. “Do you know how much work it takes to get to this side of town? If I were you, I’d be lining a few pockets.”

He peers at me. “I heard you were also late for the meeting with your new PR manager today. Was it also a lot of work to run across the street?”

Ah, so Sienna e-mailed Alvin after our meeting. The family lawyer is like an ever-leaking faucet of information poised right over my father’s ear.

“I plan to apologize next time I see her.”

“Nearly an hour!” my father continues, pretending he didn’t hear me. “Ms. Hayes is a principled young lady, Nicholas. Observant, as well. She thinks that if it took you an hour to get to your meeting, you were probably drunk out of your mind, drooling on the floor of your penthouse.”

“Really?” I deadpan.

“She said so in her e-mail.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Right.”

I wasn’t even close to drooling on the floor of my penthouse earlier this afternoon. I got caught up in the kitchen working on a new recipe. And fuck me for not being excited about the seventh PR meeting my father has forced me to attend since July, I guess.

Not that it matters. I don’t believe for a second that Sienna would insult me in her e-mail that way. Sienna Hayes might be strangely terrifying, irritatingly pretty, and a hardass, but she’s a professional. My dad’s just concocting a story to try and punish me.

There’s no point in arguing with him.

“Before, Son, you used to respect me. You’d sneak out here and there, go to parties with your little friend Roderick, but at least you were always at the places you were meant to be. Now you just do as you please.”

“I’m an adult, Dad.”

“Explain to me, then, how a grown man like yourself is planning to take over the family business when you’ve done nothing in your life but mess around with women, nightclubs, and drinking.” Victor slaps a hand on his desk, rattling the quill sitting inside his old-fashioned inkwell. “Give me one achievement to make me think that you’re not deliberately trying to ruin this company that I worked my ass off to build.”

I don’t say anything. He’s not wrong about the women, night clubs, and drinking, but I could list off a hundred other things I’ve done. Taking care of Mom when she was sick, finishing my degree, doing my time in the restaurant industry. Even the menu that I’ve been working on for years, tasting, perfecting, wouldn’t impress him at this point.

Because somewhere around the time Roderick poisoned the world against me, my father decided I was good for nothing. Everyone did.

(Well, almost everyone. There’s a phone number currently etched into the skin of my wrist. I pull my cuff down over the numbers as best I can, keeping them from my father’s sight.)

“I still can’t believe you hired an outside company for this,” I tell him. “It’s a waste of money, Dad, and kind of embarrassing.”

Victor spears me with a frown before hoisting himself out of his chair, walking to a cupboard, and pouring himself a tumbler of gin. Outside the study’s giant windows, the sun has set completely, lights glittering around our turquoise-blue swimming pool.

“There is another way, but it’s not a solid consideration yet,” Victor says lowly.

I don’t like the sound of that. I turn to him, folding my arms.

“Yes?”

“Our partners would feel more comfortable doing business with a man who appears sensible and grounded. Your current lifestyle clearly doesn’t represent that, and, as I’ve told you numerous times, there isn’t much time before I retire. We must focus on appearances.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“A marriage, Nicholas.”

The world goes still for a moment. I would think this was a joke, but my father doesn’t make jokes—he buys them.

“Find a fine young woman,” he says. “One who would be good for the media. We can make arrangements. It would be the perfect way to demonstrate your good sense, and when the shareholders arrive for the charity gala at the end of the month, you could introduce them to your new wife.”

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