Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
And this was the only path to my second chance. I’d destroyed my credit by getting overextended when the restaurant started to fail, and now there wasn’t a single financial institution that would give me a loan.
Nobody wanted to work with me, either. After exhausting all my west coast contacts looking for a partner or investor, I’d spent most of November going around to every contact I’d made in New York when I worked there in my twenties. But I had the stink of failure and desperation on me, so no wonder I’d come up empty-handed.
Thinking about this stuff was depressing, and by the time I reached my neighborhood, I was in a sour mood. The fact that my street looked like a holiday postcard just made me crankier.
I’d grown up on this block, but the atmosphere was changing. The older people were downsizing, and tech money was moving in. One of my new neighbors had decided to go all out with the holiday decorations this year, and most of the block had followed suit.
Not me, though. My house was the only dark one on this side of the street. All the others were brightly lit and tastefully decorated. The money might be new, but this was still Nob Hill, with its stately single-family homes and timeless architecture. Nobody was hanging an inflatable Santa off the roof.
I paused on the sidewalk and looked up at my beautiful indigo blue Edwardian. My dad had bought it when I was ten, right after he and my mom got a divorce. I’d come to live with him, and I’d been happy here. We both were.
When he died four years ago and left me the house, it had been totally paid off. But I’d taken out high-interest first and second mortgages on it in my desperate attempt to keep the restaurant afloat. I’d liquidated all its assets after the restaurant failed, so I had enough in the bank to make the huge payments on those mortgages for the next year, but that was about it.
So yeah, I really needed my inheritance—not just to build another restaurant and secure my future, but to secure my past. My dad meant the world to me. He’d been my best friend, and this house was his pride and joy. Putting it at risk with those loans had been stupid and irresponsible, an act of desperation.
Was some quirky little guy in a farting unicorn sweatshirt the answer to my problems? I’d obviously have to do some digging and find out who the hell he was, but if it turned out he was trustworthy, could we really pull off a fake marriage?
It wouldn’t be impossible to convince my grandfather I’d fallen for a man. It wasn’t like we’d ever talked about my love life, such as it was, and I’d never been serious enough about anyone to bring them home to meet my family.
If I’d actually been bisexual, I would have told my dad, but I probably wouldn’t have told my grandfather—not because I assumed he’d disapprove. I’d just never thought who I slept with was any of his business.
A shiver pulled me back to the present, and I hurried inside. The only sound that greeted me was the single, quiet chirp of the alarm. I entered the security code on the panel and turned on some lights on my way upstairs to my bedroom.
After I changed out of my soggy clothes and into a T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants, I fell onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. It would feel weird to share this house with a stranger. That was true whether it was Embry, or if things had gone a hell of a lot better with Theresa.
Man, I’d totally blown that. The whole fake marriage thing had seemed like something to bring up in person, not in the handful of messages we’d exchanged beforehand on the dating app. But clearly, springing it on her had been the wrong approach.
Was there a right approach, though, when it came to something like this?
She was actually the fifth woman who’d shot me down. The closer I got to my deadline, the more desperate I became, and the sooner I blurted it out. No wonder my “dates” kept getting shorter and shorter. That had been my first drink in the face, though. Thankfully, it was only water, and not a scalding pumpkin spice latte.
Embry had called marrying him a loophole, and the more I thought about that, the more I liked it. He was right, the agreement my grandfather’s lawyer had drawn up failed to specify that I had to marry a woman. Marrying a man instead felt like a small act of rebellion, my way of saying my grandfather might have won the war, but I’d surrendered on my terms.