Chapter 1: Rex MY LEAST FAVORITE person was over for Sunday dinner. Just about every Sunday, my parents hosted dinner at their lavish Mercer Island mansion. Often, it was only my parents, my siblings, and me, but sometimes they invited friends. That Sunday, they invited the Albrechts. Paul Albrecht was my father’s best fri end. His daughter, Anya, was the one honored with the title of my least favorite person. I st epped out onto the veranda to enjoy a drink away from the din of our two families chatting and laughing. I wanted to be alone. So, when Anya followed me outside, all I could do was toss the drink back and brace myself. “Hi, Anya,” I said, glancing at her as she came to stand beside me next to the balustrade. “Hi there,” she said as she leaned against my arm in an irritatingly familiar way. She hadn’t always been my least favorite person. We’d known each other since birth. We’d been born only a few months apart. I’d considered her my friend throughout our younger years, when we spent our time playing hide and seek or daring each other to stea l a glass of champagne at our parents’ events. As we grew older, we became less in sync. I buckled down, worked hard, toed the line. She became a globetrotting party girl. I got my MBA and took on the business world. She landed on tabloid covers for nip slips in Ibiza. Anya expected everything to be handed to her on a golden platter, because it usually was. I had grown up the same way she had, with every luxury, and yet I did not relate to her sense of entitlement at all. We simply had nothing in common. I sidest epped away from her — enough that we would no longer be in contact, but not so far that she would notice. At least, that was my hope. But of course she noticed. She noticed everything. All the time. “Why are you like that, with me, of all people?” I shrugged and didn’t answer her question. Because what was I supposed to say? She sighed and scooted closer again, but didn’t lean on me. “Why are you out here?” I asked. “I was going to, you know, like, engage in some friendly conversation first,” she said, and then I heard the sharpness in her tone that was always there, lurking under her shiny yet phony
exterior. Anya was an attractive woman. Tall, red hair, vivid blue eyes, and a dazzling smile, but that was about all she had going for her. Looks certainly weren’t everything. “Does anything between us require a front like that? How about you just tell me what you want?” She let out a little exasperated growl. “Fine.” She glanced back at the door to the house. Our families were still inside, laughing and talking. “My parents told me yesterday that they’re holding my inheritance hostage.” I couldn’t hold back a snort. “Well, that’s familiar.” “Yes, I know. They got the idea from your parents, and I am not amused.” My parents loved telling their friends about their grand plan — about how each of their five children would receive conditions to get their inheritances when they turned thirty. Other heirs were just heirs by the nature of their birth. We had to earn it. We had to prove ourselves. They would come up with our conditions based on what we were doing with our lives. I had turned thirty a few weeks ago. My conditions had followed shortly after. “I’m sorry,” I said, because the fact was that Anya had never worked a day in her life and her inheritance was her survival plan. “I’m sure you are.” “What did they ask you to do?” She took a sip of her wine and tapped her foot hard on the boards beneath us. “They asked me to get married within the next year.” I had planned to laugh at whatever she said, because I’d always enjoyed a bit of Anya schadenfreude, but I wasn’t laughing at that. In fact, I was so quiet that I gave myself away. “What is it?” she asked. “What did your parents ask of you? I have my suspicions.” “My parents asked me to be the CEO of my father’s first company,” I said, my voice flat as I considered not sharing the second part. I didn’t want to tell her. I did not want to collude with her in any way, shape, or form, but the words left my mouth as I was still processing what exactly was going on. “And to get married within the next year.” “I knew it,” she hissed.
I looked at her then. Her eyes were fixed on me. I could see the blue of her irises in the light coming from inside. “They’re trying to push us together.” “Well, good luck to them.” “Look, we’re in the same boat.” “What does that mean?” “It means maybe we should think about it.” I shook my head. “No, let’s not.” “What’s the big deal? We get married. We have a big party. We could make an agreement to get divorced after a year or whenever the inheritances pass into our names. Why not?” “So many reasons,” I said. “Name one.” “We don’t actually like each other.” “Who cares? I’m not saying let’s fall in love. I’m saying let’s get married to deal with this situation. It wouldn’t be real. It’s not like you’re with anyone. I’m not with anyone. It’s the easiest path through a difficult and annoying situation.” “It’s hardly the easiest path.” I was sure, if I ever agreed to marry Anya, that actually divorcing her would be impossible. She’d realize that two inheritances were better than one and would find a way to get me into a legal stranglehold. “What else are you going to do? You’re seriously going to find someone else, fall in love or something, and get married all within a year?” I shrugged. “Sure.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes at me. “You couldn’t find someone to date that quickly if you tried, and you know it. No one even likes you! I’m your best bet at scoring your inheritance. Just say yes, and let’s get all of this out of the way.” “Talking to you is always so much fun,” I said, burned but not surprised by her claim that no one liked me. My family liked me, but she was right. I did not have the kind of personality to go out and woo someone into marrying me. When my parents had doled out my inheritance
conditions, they’d insisted they were doing it out of love, because they wanted me to make the time to find someone to love. I’d mostly concluded that I would not be getting my inheritance, and that this was their way of donating their vast fortune to some charity rather than gifting it to their children. Anya’s mother poked her head out of the door. Anya startled. Perhaps she had forgotten we weren’t alone. “Anya, dear, we’re leaving. Would you like to ride home with us?” “Yes, please,” she said. Then she turned and tossed her long hair over her shoulder for dramatic effect — because she was always one for drama. That was yet another thing I did not like about her. “Think about it,” she said to me, and then gave me a wicked s mile. “And let me know when you realize that my idea is the best way to handle this.” I watched her go inside. I watched as her family and my family said goodbye to each other. No one seemed to notice I wasn’t there, which was fine by me. I lurked outside, not wanting to delve into the fray that was the Albrecht and Claremont families toget her, especially not after such a loaded moment. Both sets of parents were out for marriage. I didn’t go back inside until I was sure everyone had filtered out, left, or gone back to their rooms. I st epped into the dining room quietly, hoping to avoid seeing anyone as I made my way to the garage to leave. The rest of my siblings lived at the mansion with our parents, but I lived in downtown Seattle at my own place. I should have known I could not es cape. My parents were waiting in the foyer to ambush me. “Darling,” my mother said, gliding toward me. “We were looking for you. I thought you’d gone home. It was so good to see you and Anya together again. You looked like you were having a lovely conversation on the veranda.” I fought off the urge to laugh. “I’m not sure lovely is the right word for it.” “It seems it had been a while since you’d seen each other. Perhaps we should invite the Albrechts again next week.” I felt my face pulling into a brittle smile against my will. What in the fresh hell was this? Were they seriously going to push me toward that woman? Of course they were. My mother loved Anya almost as much as she loved her own children. She fell for Anya’s phony sweetness and outward desire to be with me because my mother wanted to believe it was true.
It was all an act. Anya fawned over money, and my family had money. She had her own inheritance, but it didn’t matter. The more the merrier. “I’m quite happy to see Anya as little as possible,” I said, trying to sound polite. “Oh, you don’t mean that,” my mother said. “Anya is a dear.” I wanted to offer a counterargument to that statement, but caught sight of my father’s scowl. “Rex, may I remind you that you have one year to meet the conditions we’ve given you. If you think you can do better than Anya, then by all means,” my father said, making eye contact with me, “do.” My parents — my father in particular — thought my personality was not ideal. Too serious. No sense of humor. Too selective. These were all things I’d heard in various forms from them over the years. They were sure that if they didn’t shove me into marriage wit h Anya that I would end up alone for the rest of my life. It never occurred to them that alone for the rest of my life was not a bad deal. If I had to choose between being alone and being married to Anya, I’d choose being alone. “Oh, Rex, don’t listen to him. You can’t possibly find someone better than Anya. I’ve known both of you since you were born. You were made for each other! We only want you to be happy, and we know you’d be happy with her, if only you’d give her a chance.” “I don’t need your help to decide who I want to spend my time with,” I said. My mother looked between my father’s scowl and me. She placed a hand on my arm, trying to release the tension there with her touch. It didn’t work. “Darling, please consider it. We don’t have to invite the Albrechts next week. Maybe just Anya.” Her hopeful eyes got me, staring up at me and begging me not to fight with my father. My mother spoke far more than my father, but she often spoke to ke ep things light. When they had first broken the news of my inheritance conditions to me, those same hope ful eyes were all that k ept me from telling my father to shove my inheritance right up his ass. I let out a huff of air. “We’ll see, Mom,” I said. I stooped to kiss her cheek. “Thank you, as always, for a lovely dinner. I’m going to head home for now. We’ll talk again soon.” She smiled at me while my father scowled. Nothing new. As I drove to my penthouse in the city, I thought through this new problem placed in front of me. Anya’s parents had pushed her into a corner where she thought her best way out was to marry me. My parents were attempting to push me into that same corner.
There had to be another way. I had an entire year to find someone else to marry, or maybe even to figure out a way to get my parents off my back without marriage in volved at all. Maybe they would back down. Maybe they would not truly withhold my inheritanc e if I didn’t marry. Anya would not be willing to take chances with her inheritance, but I debated whether I was. I had a career. I had served as CFO at Claremont Global, my father’s hotel empire, for years before I’d left to make my own way as a consultan t. Which, of course, was not good enough for him. Nothing ever was. He wanted me in a leadership role, not consulting, bolstering other people in leadership positions. It didn’t matter that I’d found myself in helping others succeed. What mattered was that I was his oldest son. I should be a leader of an international company. So he’d pushed me into a position at Quinn Financial, the first company he’d ever started. Within the next week, I would start as CEO there and fulfill that half of my inheritance condition. I could potentially give up my inheritance and have a successful life, but I wasn’t sure my relationship with my father would remain the same. For my mother’s sake, and my entire family’s sake, I didn’t want to damage any family ties. At least being asked to run a flailing company paled in comparison to being asked to get married. There had to be another way. I just had to figure out what it was.