The Best Man - Page 26

“You realize you’d be trading arguably the best weather months in Phoenix for some of the worst ones in New York, right?”

Shrugging, I say, “I’ve always wanted to see New York around the holidays. It’d be nice to experience a white Christmas too.”

“All right.” Maya sips her water and lifts her dark brows. “Let’s do this.”

On our way back to the office, we pass the little bar connected to my original hotel, and I think about the guy from yesterday, the one who hit on me in a Hoboken hook-up bar earlier this year. There was something different about him. A quietude, a lack of sexual aggression perhaps? He kept studying me. And he claimed to have no recollection of ever meeting me before, of ever hitting on me.

My cheeks heat for the next block when I realize that maybe I had the wrong guy.

Maybe he wasn’t the same one from the bar?

By the time we’re back to the office, I snap out of it. It was definitely the same guy.

I could never forget that chiseled jawline or iridescent copper gaze.

But it’s only when I’m sitting down, that I remember the words he said to me as I walked away from him the first night we met: Next time we meet, we won’t be strangers.

I never thought there’d be a next time.

I’m willing to bet he felt the same way.

“It was just a pick up line,” I whisper to myself under my breath as I prepare for our first interview. “And it meant absolutely nothing.”

14

Cainan

“Mr. James?” My assistant says over the loudspeaker Friday morning. “I have Grant Forsythe for you on line three.”

“Thanks.” I swipe the receiver and grunt a hello into the phone.

“You sound like fucking ass. What’s your issue?” he asks.

I’m losing my damn mind. That’s the issue.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I stayed at the hotel bar until close, hoping, praying, waiting, and wishing for that woman to come back— but she never did.

And in a city of almost two million people, there was no way of finding her. Besides, for all I knew, she flew back to wherever she was from.

“Did you get my email?” Grant asks.

I turn to my computer screen, the brightness searing my tired eyes. “Yeah.”

“And?”

“I haven’t had time to go over it yet,” I say.

“Rough week?” He chuckles into the receiver.

“Something like that.”

“All right, cool. I get it. Not every day can be rainbows and sunshine … unless, you know, you live someplace that actually has sunshine most days of the year,” he says. “Anyway, I looked over the boilerplate prenup you sent and I made some notes. I wasn’t sure if there was a way we could address the post-marital assets in a more … subtle way? Like aggressive but not aggressive?”

I double-click on the attachment in his email. His handwriting over my typed contract is almost impossible to decipher, so I zoom in.

“So her dad is this ridiculously-loaded, residential real-estate fat cat,” he says. “Estimates put him at just under half a billion dollars net worth.”

“And you want to make sure you get a piece of that if the marriage falls apart?”

“I mean … let’s say we’re married twenty years, her parents pass, and she gets a fourth of that since she’s got three siblings,” he says. “I want to make sure I don’t walk away empty-handed.”

“And why would you be entitled to any of her parents’ fortune?”

“Because I’m about to double it for them,” he answers without hesitation. “I’ve been talking to her father about switching his long-term finances and capital gains accounts to my company. Once he signs with me, the yearly management fees alone could top seven figures. He could be my one and only account and I’d be sitting pretty. Virtually retired.”

“I see.”

“I’m going to make that wealthy bastard an even wealthier bastard, and I want to make sure everything is allocated in a fair way—without coming off …”

“… without coming off as a self-serving douche?”

“Cain, stop …” he exhales into the phone, dramatic and exhausted. “You know what it’s like to have nothing. To come from nothing. It’s not like I’m trying to steal anything. And for the record, I treat this woman like the freaking queen that she is.”

“Except for the part where you’ve been flying to New York once a week and hooking up with Serena McQuiston …”

“I’m not perfect.” He snorts. “And I told you last time, I’m done with Serena. I’m taking this engaged thing seriously.”

Famous last words …

“You realize there’s a cheating clause in this prenup,” I remind him. It’s standard. I left it in knowing damn well he’d gloss over it because I’d hoped I could bring it up personally. Best friend to best friend, I still don’t think he’s making the right decision, but unfortunately, it’s not my call.

“Can we take that out?”


Tags: Winter Renshaw Romance
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