Page 84 of The Rancher Married the Wrong Sister
A pause. He must be on speaker phone.
“Jessica Arthurs knew exactly what she was doing when she signed that contract,” comes the response. A man’s voice, professional but grim. “She researched the penalty clauses extensively before agreeing to the terms. There’s a paper trail of her consultations with three different lawyers.”
My blood turns to ice. I creep closer to the window, straining to hear.
“She knew the penalty would fall on her sister if she defaulted,” the voice continues. “The shared inheritance, the house. She knew Wednesday would lose everything.”
The book pouch slips from my numb fingers.
“And the other matter?” Gavine’s voice is carefully controlled.
“Wednesday doesn’t even know she’s adopted, does she? The records were sealed when she was an infant, but Jessica would have had access through the family lawyer. She’s known for years.”
Adopted?
I grab the windowsill to keep from falling, my heart hammering so hard I can barely hear the rest of the conversation. But Gavine’s next words cut through the rushing in my ears like a blade.
“Jessica turned that contract into a weapon. She knew exactly who would pay the price.”
The pieces click together with sickening clarity. The matchmaking contract wasn’t just a business deal. It was a trap Jessica designed knowing I would be the one caught in it.
And I never saw it coming.
Because apparently, I never really knew my sister at all.
Or myself.
GAVINE STARED AT THEquarterly reports spread across his father’s old campaign desk, but the numbers blurred together like meaningless scratches on paper. He’d been trying to focus for the past hour, and failing spectacularly.
His mind kept drifting to Jessica. To how easily she’d fooled him.
The woman he’d thought he wanted—wild, reckless, sparkling with dangerous energy—had been nothing more than an elaborate performance. Every laugh, every stolen kiss, every breathless declaration of how much she needed his strength, his protection...all of it calculated. Rehearsed.
She’d played him like a master violinist, and he’d danced to every note.
The realization still burned in his chest like acid. Gavine Launcelot, the man who could read a hostile takeover from three moves away, had been completely blind to the con happening right in front of him. Jessica had researched him as thoroughly as any business acquisition, identified his weaknesses, and exploited them with surgical precision.
She’d known exactly what kind of woman would appeal to him. The kind who seemed to need rescuing. The kind who made him feel powerful, necessary, in control.
What she hadn’t counted on was leaving behind a sister who was everything Jessica pretended to be.
Wednesday’s genuine kindness disconcerted him in ways he couldn’t name. When she’d asked about using his mother’s sewing room, her voice had been so soft, so careful, like she was afraid of overstepping invisible boundaries. There’d been no calculation in her violet eyes, no hidden agenda. Just honest uncertainty and a need to create something beautiful.
It was...unsettling.
Jessica would have simply taken what she wanted and justified it later. Wednesday asked permission to use a room that had been gathering dust for thirty-four years.
The staff had noticed too. He’d caught fragments of their whispered conversations in hallways, their confusion evident.
They’d all expected Jessica.
Sophisticated, commanding, impossible to ignore.
Instead they got Wednesday, who thanked them for every small courtesy and somehow managed to make the enormous house feel less like a fortress and more like a home.
Gavine rubbed his temples, trying to dispel the growing headache. None of this mattered. Wednesday was a temporary complication, a means to an end. Once Jessica realized her game was up, she’d come back for her sister, and everything would return to—
The memory hit him without warning.
