Forget her. You have work to do.
The Sebastian Peery collaboration needs a new campaign for their spring collection that’s going to be sold exclusively through Hae Min Department Stores in Korea. Lucie wants romantic, sweet and luxurious. So far, the campaign hasromanticandsweetdown, but I’m not feeling theluxurious, despite all the sparkling diamonds. Cherry blossoms are a nice touch, sincethey symbolize spring in Korea, but there needs to be more oomph—a visceral appeal. I make some notes for the team.
“Your ten o’clock is here,” comes Madison’s voice through the intercom.
“Bring him in, please.”
A moment later, my door opens. Bryce is in a three-piece suit, of course—every male Huxley wears a three-piece suit when they’re working—with perfectly polished, strait-laced shoes. Presentation is half the battle. He inherited the best features from his parents—midnight-black eyebrows that slant slightly above keen, dark eyes, and straight, dark hair that rarely looks messy even when he doesn’t do anything to it, even though he prefers to style it so it lies slicked back. His skin is always golden, and he never burns. Mom often complains it isn’t fair because she and Uncle Prescott turn scarlet with only ten minutes of sun.
“Anything to drink, sir?” Madison asks, her gaze briefly on Bryce, then shifting to me.
“Iced Americano,” Bryce says.
“Nothing for me.”
She nods and disappears, closing the door behind her.
“The prenup you asked for,” Bryce says, handing me a thick document before taking a seat. “Jeremiah isn’t happy about my handling it.”
“Thank you, but you could’ve couriered it,” I say, ignoring the part about my mother. She’s not getting anywhere near mypersonallegal affairs again. “I’m not paying your hourly rate for the delivery.”
He snorts. “That isn’t why I’m here. Have you talked to Grace since the dinner?”
“About what?” My voice is too casual.
“About the wedding. And the terms in the document.” Bryce jerks his chin at the prenup.
“No. She already knows we have to get married, especially with a baby on the way. And nothing in the contract should come as a shock to her.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “She’s going to fight. You specified you were not giving her a penny, that if she wants to spend money, she needs to earn it herself.”
“I’m not an ATM.”
“Yes, but she’s going to be yourwife.”
“Precisely. And that’s more than she deserves after she fucked me over.” Bryce is the only one on the Huxley side who knows the humiliating truth behind Grace’s and my engagement. You don’t hide things from your lawyer if you want good advice, and I want the absolute best out of Bryce.
“And the mother of your child,” he adds, like that makes a difference.
“I’ll arrange for the baby. But that doesn’t mean she gets to use my money for herself.”
Bryce looks at me. “Do you honestly think she’ll just hand the baby over?”
“You mean the meal ticket?”
Even after I quietly divorce her after a few years, the child will always be between us, and she’ll do everything in her power to use it to squeeze what she can out of me. I doubt she’ll downsize her spending after burning twenty-five thousand bucks a month for years. But in order for her to use the baby to get me to cough up the cash, she needs to be around to groom it into a tool of manipulation. And I know how far some women can go.
I was an unwitting participant in the toxic drama between Uncle Prescott’s ex-wife Zoe when she became upset that she couldn’t bend him to her selfish whims during their divorce proceedings. That psycho decided to abduct their children, probably trying to use them to get more alimony or something.I’m not going to let anything like that involve the baby. “If she doesn’t agree to it, I’ll fight her to the death. What’s the baby going to learn if it grows up with a mother like her?”
The only thing my father did right with us is that he never tried to raise us himself. If he had, we would’ve turned into Ted Laskers—self-centered, irresponsible, inappropriate megalomaniacs. Grace as a mother would produce the same outcome.
Madison enters the office with coffee for Bryce, then pauses and looks at me for a beat before leaving. He takes a sip, then scrunches his face. “Nasty stuff.”
“So why are you drinking it?”
“Because you don’t have decent green tea.”
“I told you last time you came by that I got matcha from Japan.”
