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Chapter One
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“Ineed to do something... big,” Finley Marsh announced. She uncrossed her legs, jumped up from the vintage sofa in her sunlit bedroom, then paced the luxuriously soft white carpeted floor. “Something extraordinary... unforgettable... huge.”
She wasn’t so distracted, however, that she couldn’t take a moment to admire her new shoes, only for the millionth time. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but the pair of red stilettos with its sharp blade-thin heel and tiny diamond anklet band, which she had unboxed six months after purchasing them, were just too pretty to stop ogling, and no one could disagree with her.
Six months ago, when she had thought her life was going great.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t.
“You’re probably going to be getting married soon, Fin. Isn’t that big enough?” Amanda Williamson said before she slurped up the toppings from a slice of pizza, then took a moment to admire Finley’s shoes yet again. “And gosh, those shoes!”
“I know, right?” Finley smiled broadly at her best friend, wriggling her foot around. “But that’s the precise reason I need to do something big. Now. For me.” She pointed to herself. “Because I might be getting married. Something like bungee jumping. Or extreme kayaking. Or dye my hair... hmm... smaragdine. Get a tattoo. Pierce my nipples. Just something...”
“Right.” Amanda nodded with understanding, then wiped her mouth with a napkin before she gulped down some soda.
Finley couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact that she could be getting married soon if she agreed. Although the odds of her saying yes were greater than her saying no. She owed her father that much.
She supposed had she been a regular bride, she would be nearing bridezilla mode by now, or be suffering from a severe case of jitters.
But not her.
Because hers was not going to be a conventional marriage.
Sure, her potential groom was a man she truly liked a lot. They had grown up together, gone to school together, and taken family holidays together, and she could honestly say she couldn’t see her future without him in it. There was only one problem: they were far too platonic for anything other than friendship. So they had come to a mutual decision regarding their marriage if Finley was to say yes, of course. That kind of love between a man and woman, with the butterflies, and thrills, and everything else she read in romance novels, was never going to happen between them. It was even toocringeto talk about it with Jeremy in the first place.
All her life, she’d been told she was her father’s daughter to a fault. She had his eyes, hair color, stubbornness, and sharp intellect that helped him make his fortune and the loyalty and wit that helped him make lifelong friends. He married the only woman he would ever love. He thought she loved him back. Maybe she had at one point.
But fifteen years ago, she had left him, leftthemwhen Finley was only eight years old and never returned. There wasn’t even another man, no reason except that her mom, Crystal, just didn’t love her husband anymore and didn’t want to be trapped in a loveless marriage for the rest of her life. She wanted to move on, and so she did, but Finley’s father had stayed in that moment, with that pain ever since. Her mom had been his entire world, and she still was, but she had crushed him the moment she had walked out, and deep down in his heart of hearts, he remained empty and alone despite putting on a good show for everyone around him.
If there were even a slight chance that she had inherited her father’s capacity to love so unequivocally, so eternally, with no certainty of it being returned in the same way, why would she knowingly go and fall in love and then live in terror that the other person could just up and leave whenever it suited them?
No, she had precisely zero plans to fall in love.No, thank you.
That explained why Jeremy Llyod was so perfect for her. She loved him but wasn’t in love with him, and she would never be in love with him either. He understood her stance, and she understood his. They were perfect together, as far as marriages of convenience went for both sides of their families.
Her father was facing complete and utter financial ruin. He had sunk all his money into a series of resort hotels that just never took off. She was talking about billions of dollars. They were on the verge of having to close six of their luxury hotels which would further cripple their already-dwindling wealth by a colossal sum. That, added to the debt they’d had to accumulate trying to stay afloat, had made everything seem worse and near hopeless to rectify on their own.
And she had known nothing about the financial turmoil keeping her father awake at night because he hid it so well from her. She couldn’t get over how distraught she had been and angry she was with herself for not having seen what he’d been going through. The company was the only thing that gave her father purpose. It kept his mind off his broken heart, even fifteen years later. Without it, she shuddered to think of the dark spiral that would consume him.
On the other hand, the Lloyd family’s fortunes were booming, but thepatriarchwas fed up with his son andscion’sreckless spending, not to mention chasing after anything in a skirt with a pulse, having zero interest in the family business, drinking, gambling, carousing and generally being an embarrassment to the Lloyd name.
She always laughed herself silly when Jeremy mimicked his father and said all of the above in a stiff high, society voice. But after exhausting every other incentive to bring his son in line, Jeremy’s father, Mr. Lloyd, had put forth a proposition to the Marshes.
A wife was just the thing to keep his wayward son at home. Jeremy needed the responsibility of marriage and children, which necessitated acquiring a young, beautiful woman of good name and fair social standing. That was exactly how Mr. Llyod had sold the idea to them...of good name and fair social standing.
The bottom line, Jeremy had to settle down and grow up, or his father was going to take his trust fund away.
Meanwhile, the Marshes needed a fortune to help them out of a dire financial situation temporarily until her father could get back on his feet again. And they had a potential bride on hand who fit all of Mr. Lloyd’s criteria, with the added bonus of anexisting amicable relationshipwith the groom-to-be already. Finley was that potential bride.
It had been a no-brainer. But her father had initially outright rejected the idea until he soon realized it was their only option. He had insisted that she take a few weeks to decide because he was all too aware of Jeremy’s wild party life, and he was putting his daughter’s happiness before his business. All Finley wanted was for her father to have Marsh Hotels so he wouldn’t sink below the surface forever.
Only Finley knew the reason for Jeremy’s reckless lifestyle and obscene spending habits. His heart would forever belong to a girl who had married someone else instead. If he couldn’t have the love of his life, he planned to have every other girl on the planet on a physical level. He was probably halfway through already.
Jeremy had left the decision entirely up to her after repeatedly telling her she didn’t have to do something she didn’t want to do. No pressure. She had just over two weeks left in which to give her answer now.
Since they weren’t going to be sleeping with each other, they decided it was going to be a highly discreet open marriage, well, for Jeremy, at least since Finley planned to die a virgin.
