Chapter One
Starling
I’m going to do it. I’ve made up my mind, and I’m going to do it. Yes, I am. It’s time. All I need now are reinforcements—the skimpy kind.
Done with pacing my bedroom while making my decision, I look for my phone, which is nowhere to be found, as usual. After turning my room upside down, with every decorative cushion I own—and there are many—scattered everywhere, my jeans start to vibrate. Of course.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and hit the green button.
“How did you know I was going to call you?” I ask my best friend, Raya Jain, as her beautiful face pops up on my screen.
“I’m psychic?” she replies, slipping a chocolate ball into her mouth.
“Then you’ll know I’m doingit.”
“Yes, you are indeed. Wait, what? It? As init,it? Why do I get the feeling you’re not talking about doing it with your future fiancé? Which means you forgot you’re getting engaged tomorrow, didn’t you, Starling Anne Williams?”
No. Who’d forget something like that, especially since my family only sprang the news on me a meager twenty-four hours ago? It hasn’t even sunk in yet.
But yes, I’m getting engaged tomorrow on Christmas Day no less, because my family loves nothing better than a double celebration. And, if I’m not engaged by the time I turn twenty-five—in three days—poof! There goes my trust fund, my sisters' trust funds, and all my parents’ money too.
It’s a whole thing. We, the Williams, are descendants of the great Hector Roland Williams, my great-great-grandfather.
Ol’ Hector started out poor, getting a job as a bellboy at some rundown hotel where the vermin were also guests, only to work himself up to become the owner of a string of luxury hotels around the world.
So yes, I come from a family of millionaires and socialites. And as with all three of my sisters before me, being the youngest, an arranged marriage is practically the only way a Williams daughter can get hitched because of those clauses and stipulations, which, if ignored, mean we lose everything.
Getting us married is an Olympic sport for my parents. They take this very seriously.
While my great-great-grandfather accrued absurd amounts of money, my great-great-grandmother declared herself a psychic matchmaker—a trait that clearly activates as soon as someone in the Williams family becomes a grandmother.
I guess it worked out that Mia, Heather, and Emerald all happened to fall in love with their arranged grooms even before they were married.
Me? Not so much. Jake Hestwood, the guy my gran, a terror in her own right, thinks is right for me, is just… okay, I guess. I’ve met him a few times in social settings and never once thought, now there’s a man I want to marry. He had no idea our lives weregoing to be locked in some arranged marriage contract either. But here we are.
Sure, he’s good-looking, funny, smart, attentive, has the best manners, and likes horses just like I do. In the grand scheme of things, I could totally marry him and be happy.
But there’s something missing. A spark, a bolt of electricity that singes me right down to my soul. I want the kind of chemistry I read about in romance novels, where they tear each other’s clothes off and make the stars in the sky blush with embarrassment as they do unthinkable things to each other. Since I’m never going to have that, I need to improvise.
“Jake and I have no fiery attraction; we agree on that wholeheartedly,” I remind my best friend.
After my parents dropped the marriage bomb on me, they arranged for Jake and me to meet for lunch—an icebreaker over sea bass. It was pretty awkward for both of us, but we said we’d give it our best since our family statuses were at risk.
“I don’t want to jump his bone—” I continue.
“I think it’s jump his bones,” Raya says around another chocolate ball.
“Really? That makes zero sense. Why would I want to jump his bones? Is that like a skeletal kink or something?”
“What even is a skeletal kink?” Raya laughs.
“Who knows? Everything is a kink if you bend it hard enough, I guess. But it should be bone, because isn’t the word ‘boner’ for guys?”
“You’re right; I can’t argue with your logic. It should be bone,” she adds, nodding.
“See? Anyway, I don’t want to jump anything of Jake’s, and I know he doesn’t want to jump me at all. But I do want to know what it feels like to be so mindlessly attracted to someone that you just want to sit on his… and be fed happiness through his penis.
“I only have this one chance to do it since Jake and I are going to be loyal to each other for the duration of our marriage. This is my one last opportunity, and it’s happening tonight.”
