Kate Rain hammered the glass awning outside the St. Regis like it was trying to turn the entire city into an instant swimming pool. I stood just inside the re volving doors, waiting for my Uber and constantly refreshing the app. My phone buzzed in my hand, an email notification sliding across the screen, and I smiled as I immediately clicked it. The familiar tone of the message was warm, funny, and easy, and reading it unwound tension I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying. I skimmed the lines quickly, my thumb hovering over the keyboard as if I might respond right there in the lobby like an emotionally reckless teenager, but I didn’t. Instead, I closed the message and locked my phone just as a familiar presence crossed my peripheral vision. Nate strode past me in another immaculately fitted, bespoke suit, an umbrella tucked under his arm like he honestly planned on simply striding unharmed through a thunderstorm. He took three more st eps before stopping, then turning sharply on his heels like the universe itself had tugged hard on his leash. “What are you doing?” he asked. “I’m waiting for my ride.” His gaze flicked to the rain cascading off the awning. “It’s four blocks.” “It’s pouring,” I said. “I’m not risking my blow-out to prove I can walk in this weather. I have standards and I spent three hours in a salon chair for this. It deserves the necessary respect.” His mouth twitched like he wanted to argue but couldn’t find a foothold. He just nodded. “Alright, then. Well, good luck.” He turned again, heading toward the private garage entrance beneath the building without another word. I glared at his retreating back. Arrogant, infuriating, chronically well-tailored— “Kate?” a voice called. My Uber had screeched to a stop at the curb, the driver leaning across the passenger seat and waving at me like he’d spotted a long-lost cousin. “That’s me,” I said, rushing out and slipping into the car. “I know it’s not great weather for this request, but do you think you could st ep on it?” He grinned at me in the rearview. “It’s the perfect weather for that request. We can always try, right?” As I nodded, the man took off into the traffic, driving like he was auditioning for an action franchise reboot. He weaved through traffic with terrifying confidence and a complete
disregard for traffic laws or my blood pressure. Normally, I would’ve objected. Today, I clutched my coffee, braced my heels against the floorboard, and silently encouraged his reckless ambition. We pulled up to the Westwood building before Nate’s black sedan rolled into the curb lane. Perfect. “Thank you,” I said, smoothing my blazer before tipping him generously and marching through the lobby with the stubborn determination of someone who refused to be locked out on her second day. When I reached Nate’s office, I pushed the door open, slipped inside, and dropped my bag onto the conference table in the corner. If he thought he was going to lock me out of strategy meetings—and I had a feeling he absolutely would’ve if he’d gotten here first—he was delusional. And petty. Mostly petty. Without wasting any time, I pulled out my laptop and opened the file my dad had sent late last night. It was the full financial r eport for Abram Hinds’ company, dense but clean, which was exactly how Abram liked his operations run. Transparent and well structured. Having that kind of knowledge about him was what would make our bid stand out head and shoulders above the rest. I was sure of it. Moments later, footst eps sounded in the hallway, shortly followed by voices growing louder and louder as they got closer. Nate entered first, stopping short when he saw me already seated with my screen glowing, the documents open and notes already written in the comments. Will followed behind him, grinning like he always seemed to be. “Well, this is going to be a damn productive morning. Thanks, Kate. If this is the way you work, we might even get this deal done before the end of the week. Isn’t Katey awesome, Natey?” He loosened his tie as he st epped inside, coming over to me while Nate hung back in the doorway like he was afraid he might get cooties if he moved so much as a muscle. I rolled my eyes, deciding to focus on Will instead. As he sat down, I rotated my laptop slightly toward him, tapping the first highlighted section of the r eport with a fingernail. “I wanted to show you this. Abram is meticulous. If we can structure the bid in this same, straight-forward format, we’ll receive an answer from him much faster. Bury the important stuff under layers of formalese and it’ll take him months to work his way through every sentence.” Nate shut the door behind him with quiet precision, his expression guarded but alert. He finally crossed the room toward the table. He didn’t say a word, but Will was a different creature entirely.
“You color-coded your highlighting?” he asked as soon as his gaze hit my screen. “Who does that?” “Uh, everyone?” I batted my eyelashes at him, not flirting but playing innocent. “Do you have some kind of problem with a little brightness in your day?” He sniffed in an attempt to hide a laugh. “Definitely not. It’s fun and I love fun, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use purple to highlight before. It’s usually just yellow, green, and red. Maybe there’s a dash of blue.” “Which is exactly why I try to use other colors when I’m actually trying to draw someone’s attention,” I said, smiling. Will abandoned his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and undid his top buttons. Then he grabbed his phone and ordered up some coffee before he settled in. Together, we studied the financial r eport, both Will and Nate reviewing it like they were reading a menu rather than several billion dollars’ worth of moving parts. At least Will made it fun. Working with him was actually pretty enjoyable, which felt like it could be a trap, but he was still fast becoming my favorite Westwood. Nate, on the other hand, sat across from us with his posture rigid, his eyes flicking between the screens and us like he was monitoring for suspicious activity. When I turned to another new page of the r eport, Will frowned and pointed at a paragraph hanging in the middle of the screen. “Okay, explain this to me like I’m five.” “You’re not five,” I said. “Emotionally, I’m five.” He flashed me a wide grin. “Just tell me what I’m looking at here.” I angled the laptop between us. “Hinds’ operational revenue is stable. Day to day, they make enough money to ke ep everyone paid and happy.” “See, you’re good at explaining things like I’m five.” He winked at me. “Continue.” “The real value in this company, however, is in his long-term investment vehicles and proprietary tech. My father’s firm structured most of that, which means continuity becomes part of the bid’s leverage. What you’re seeing there is a very summarized breakdown of it.” Nate cleared his throat quietly, and both Will and I glanced up to look at him when he spoke, though it looked like he would rather have a tooth extracted than actually contribute to the conversation. “What that means is that we’ll be looking at competitive yield projections backed by historical performance metrics, not sentiment.” I smiled sweetly. “That too.” Will snorted, covering it with an unconvincing cough. “You, dear brother, are terrible at explaining things like I’m five. What the fuck does that even
mean?” The door opened and Alex strode in, scanning the room with that laser- focused energy that I was sure made people either fall in line or flee. “Give me an update.” As he sat down, I slid the printed r eport across the table. Confidence settled into my spine while I walked him through the summary and what we’d come up with so far. Alex listened without interrupting and I recognized that for what it was—a compliment. Possibly a rare one. “Are you confident Hinds will respond to this structure?” he asked when I finished. “Yes,” I said. “My father will back it up and it includes continued financial management from our side, so this gives him continuity without stagnation. The company ke eps going, its growth potential remains significant, and his retirement is secure. That ticks all the boxes.” Alex nodded slowly, his eyes shifting between Nate and me. “I want a face-to-face meeting with Hinds. Both of you will be there.” “Of course,” I r eplied immediately. “I’ll have my assistant set it up.” After that, he left just as abruptly as he’d arrived and Will leaned back in his chair, sliding his hands behind his head. “Well, that was terrifyingly efficient.” “I try,” I said. “Alex doesn’t just try, though. He succeeds.” Will laughed. “That, he does. He always has.” Nate said nothing, but his gaze lingered on mine for half a second before he stood and gathered his notes, heading from the conference table to his desk. Will peeled off to take another call, tossing me a casual salute on his way out. I turned back to my laptop, riding the quiet high of a strategy that had landed exactly how I’d hoped it would. This might even only take a week. Two at most. I could survive that. Just as I started pulling up new projections, the door shut behind me with a deliberate click. Nate stood in front of it with his arms crossed, the expression on his face making it pretty clear that he’d shut it so he could give me a talking to. I had no clue what could possibly have gotten his panties into such a twist, but it was hilarious he thought he could look at me like that. He wasn’t my fucking father. “If you’re trying to figure out if you’d like to become a bouncer when you’re all grown up, I’d stick with finance. Honestly, you’re just not intimidating enough to ke ep people away from doors they really want to walk through.” That part wasn’t entirely true. He was plenty intimidating, tall and with that face hard enough to resemble a stone gargoyle ferociously guarding a castle or a fort. If gargoyles were hot and had the most intense blue eyes on the planet. But I couldn’t let him know any
of that, so I just stared coolly back at him. “What’s your plan with Will?” he asked pointblank, his voice clipped and harsh. I stared at him for another beat before laughing. “My plan? With Will? I’m not sure I follow.” “You heard me, Kate. What are you doing with him?” I leaned back in my chair, spinning it to face him directly. “I’m going to need you to be wildly more specific.” His jaw flexed, his shoulders tightening. “He’s not someone to mess with.” “Why is he not someone to mess with?” I asked, folding my arms to mirror his defensiveness. “Is he secretly a serial killer or something?” Nate blinked once, hard enough to make him look like he was mentally recalibrating his personal opinion of my sanity, but then he scoffed. “No. He’s not a serial killer, but he is as good as married.” “Okay.” I frowned. “First, I wasn’t flirting with him and I don’t have any plans to either, but even if I was, he hasn’t mentioned a girlfriend. If he’s taken, he should be clear about that. That’s on him, not on me.” Nate gave a short, humorless laugh. “It figures that you’d stubbornly avoid taking any responsibility whatsoever, but it’s not that. He doesn’t have a girlfriend.” “Then what is it?” I tilted my head. “A fiancée he ke eps in your family vault?” “No. We don’t ke ep fiancées in the vault, but we do ke ep our money there. Along with all sorts of priceless heirlooms and knickknacks. Our fiancées are all free to walk around out there in the world somewhere, but they’re chosen for us in order to make sure all the money and the knickknacks get to stay in the vault, and be joined by lots of friends with every new generation.” My jaw suddenly felt decidedly less firmly attached to my body when all I saw looking back at me was complete and total sincerity. “Are you talking about... arranged marriages? Is that what you meant when you said your fiancées are chosen for you?” “Yes.” “You’re joking.” “I’m not. Every last one of us will be married off for the good of the family and to protect what we’ve been building for decades. No one is getting out of it.” “That’s...” I trailed off in a desperate search for the right word, but shit. It took me a few seconds to land on one that actually felt accurate. “That’s archaic.” His expression cooled several degrees. “Seeing as your previously old- money family never put faith in that system and consequently failed at ke eping their wealth, maybe
archaic isn’t the worst thing in the world.” My spine straightened. “Excuse me?” “Three generations of your family name resting in the dirt,” he said evenly. “Your father had to pick up the pieces and build a hedge fund from scratch. That’s never happened to us, so it might be archaic, but it works. The evidence is irrefutable.” My heart thudded against my ribs, heat shooting to my cheeks. “That’s rich. Truly. Nothing says healthy relationship like a legally binding business merger with occasional kissing privileges. Although I’m assuming those are strictly reserved for when procreation is required.” His teeth ground, a knot forming at the back of his jaw. “It ensures stability.” “No, what it ensures is that your family stays stuck in the stone age.” “It’s called tradition.” “I think you spelled suffocation wrong.” His jaw flexed again and he took a st ep closer, close enough that I could see the darker ring around those stupidly striking blue eyes. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Oh, I have every idea,” I retorted. “I just won’t romanticize it.” In the aftermath, silence crackled between us, tight and electric. I tilted my chin when I remembered how we’d gotten onto this topic in the first place. “Wait, is that what this is about?” “What?” “Are you jealous of me talking to Will?” I asked. “Or is it that you’re jealous of him for being a lot more social and easygoing?” His eyebrows shot up and he scoffed. Loudly enough that it was a little offensive, if I was being honest. The idea that he could be jealous of his brother or of me flirting with his brother wasn’t that ridiculous, but he’d made it sound like I’d asked if he wanted to go horseback riding with an alien. “Trust me,,” he said firmly. “I am not jealous. I was simply doing you the service of telling you the truth, because my brother won’t pay you the same courtesy. He’s still harboring the illusion that he’ll be the exc eption to the rule.” “Oh, please. You’ve been sulking like someone canceled your favorite sport ever since you came in here and I started talking to him. Don’t pretend it was a favor.” “I don’t sulk.” “Okay. You brood, then. Very dramatically. So dramatically, in fact, it’s almost like you’re sulking.” “I wasn’t brooding either,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “If I were, it sure as hell wouldn’t be about you.”
“Good, because you’re the last person on earth I’d want to be with.” His answering laugh was harsh, the sound ringing with disbelief. “Trust me, Kate. The feeling is mutual.” “Fantastic.” “Incredible.” I shook my head and finally rose from the chair, taking a st ep closer so I could look him right in the eyes. “You really are exc eptionally arrogant, do you know that?” Those blue eyes clashed with mine. “I might be arrogant, but you’re insufferable.” “At least I’m not emotionally constipated. You, on the other hand, need a laxative for your feelings.” “And you feel so many things so very obviously that you weaponize eye contact.” I scoffed. “I don’t even know what that means. You’re just making stuff up now.” “No. It means you stare at people like you’re deciding whether to ruin their lives or reorganize them chronologically.” “I organize by color,” I snapped, my chest heaving when I realized how close we were now. Too close. So close that the air between us felt like it was crackling like a lightning strike waiting for permission. I could feel the heat rolling off him, see the pulse ticking in his throat, and for one completely traitorous second, I wondered what would happen if— He let out a soft snort. “Oh, yeah. How could I have forgotten? Purple, right? Do you know that’s the color of—” The door flew open and Alex came in without knocking, then stopped dead, his eyes flicking between us. We were standing practically nose to nose, both of us visibly seconds away from committing a felony. “Is this a bad time?” he asked, his voice suspiciously calm given what he’d just walked in on. “I can come back.” “No,” Nate and I said simultaneously. Then we glared at each other for agreeing. Alex raised an eyebrow, but it only a beat before he focused on Nate. “I need you. It’s not Hinds-related.” Nate didn’t move immediately, his gaze still locked on my face, and for a brief, unsettling moment, something flickered in his eyes. Confusion, maybe. Curiosity. Something unguarded enough to make my heart stutter in response. He st epped back and spun away from me before I could even begin to make sense of it. He cleared his throat and nodded at his brother. “Right. Let’s go.”
Alex gave me a quick, almost apologetic smile before he left and Nate followed, neither of them looking back. My heart was thundering like I’d just sprinted ten blocks as I moved back to the table and dropped into the chair, my nails automatically starting to drum against the armrests in a sharp, uneven rhythm. My pulse refused to slow, irritation and something significantly more inconvenient entwining under my skin. I reached for my phone, unlocking it and opening the email from this morning again. The familiar tone of it grounded me almost instantly, soothing the internal havoc Nate Westwood seemed determined to inflict on my nervous system. I reread it slowly, letting the words settle over me like a steadying hand. Finally, as my lips curved into a smile, my breathing evened out and my shoulders lowered. Nate and the Westwoods could take their judgment and their archaic traditions and shove them where the sun didn’t shine. Thankfully, they weren’t the only men in the world or the only family. The rest of us did just fine over here in the twenty-first century and I didn’t even pity them for not being able to join us.