“So your options are…?” Griffin says, always pragmatic.
Just thinking about them makes my head throb. “An idiot—”
He grunts. He hates dumb people because he has to deal with them every semester when they swarm his office to argue their grades.
“—and a spender.”
Nicholas cocks an eyebrow. “A spender?”
“Burns through twenty-five thousand a month,” I say, recalling what Ares told me. “And the Webbers don’t even talk about this one publicly, so there’s gotta be a lot more wrong than just some frivolous spending habits.”
“Like what?”
I shrug. “No idea. But Andreas agreed to throw in a million bucksifshe’s the bride.” Bryce mentioned that the other daughter being an option at all is probably Andreas’s doing. For some reason, the old man seems to like her better than Vivienne. Probably because nobody can be as annoying and lacking in common sense as that disgrace of a human being. Or…my cousinis totally wrong about Andreas’s motives, and what he really wants is to offload a seriously flawed grandchild.
Ontome.
“Wow,” Seb says.
“Maybe she has an extra nose.” Noah scratches his own in contemplation. “Or a scar on her forehead. I mean, not a lightning-shaped one—that’d be cool. Wait, I know!” He snaps his fingers. “A face tattoo!”
Griffin’s mouth twists. “Be serious.”
“The money’s probably to make up for the twenty-five K.” Emmett steeples his fingers. “You put the million into a decent investment vehicle, it’ll pay for her monthly allowance. Plus there’ll be some left over to cover taxes.”
“Uh-huh. And will it be enough to cover my pain and suffering?” I mutter.
“Well… Given how you are…” Grant shrugs. “Probably not.”
“Too bad Alaric isn’t a girl. He’s so sensible,” Noah says.
He’s a Webber. A Harvard-educated lawyer, naturally. And… “He’s large and tall, so even if he were a girl, he wouldn’t be my type. I like my women small, pretty and with soft curves. Flowing, dark hair. Sweet tempered but a little feisty.”
Seb looks at Griffin. “Sounds like he needs a Labrador retriever.”
“Hunt around for the right woman,” Nicholas advises. “How hard can it be?”
“You met yours at a high school graduation. I’m a little long in the tooth for that,” I say dryly.
He rolls his eyes. “How about a fake engagement? You can’t marry a Webber if you’re engaged to somebody else.”
“To whom?” None of my exes would be able to pull it off because nobody would believe I cared about them enough to go back to them, much less want to marry one. I wonder briefly about Grace, but the sad fact is that I may never find her again.
“How about Madison?” Grant says. “She’s capable.”
I make a face. “She’s myassistant.”
“So?” Noah points a piece of bacon at me. “She has feelings for you. She’ll do a good job for a chance to cling to you in public.”
I stare at him. “What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t noticed? She’s been giving you that ‘oh please…fuck me, boss’”—he does a breathless falsetto for maximum impact—“look for years now.”
I scoff. “She has not.”
“My eyes don’t lie. She’s like that every time I stop by your office to drop off some photos.” Noah sounds exceptionally convinced. The camera lens client wanted to use Noah’s shots because he’s one of the best wildlife photographers. For the multi-year campaign, he even did shots of scenery other than cheetahs.
“I saw how overly attentive she was when Lucie and I visited your office to discuss the ad campaign for our collaboration project,” Seb says. “She’s on your wavelength. Knows what you want without you having to say it.”
