If he kept it up much longer he was going to wear a trench in the hardwood. That, more than anything, finally snapped me back to reality. Pacing wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to help anyone.
Action. That’s what we need.
I looked at him, waiting until he caught my gaze before I spoke. “Tell me exactly what Dad said. Not the dramatic interpretation. The actual words.”
“Why?” Jesse waved a hand. “You already know what he said. There was something about opportunity, a bit about legacy, and droning on about the importance of strong alliances. The usual crap.”
I sighed. Unfortunately, that tracked. “Did Sterling really just stumble into this?” I asked, frowning.
“Yeah,” he replied bitterly. “Alex said Sterlinghappenedto run into this old family friend none of us ever knew we had and now, suddenly, I’m being shipped off into an arranged marriage like we live in the eighteenth century.”
“Youdidgo to England with Eugenie that one time,” I said. “Maybe they thought there was still something there.”
Jesse stopped pacing long enough to look wildly offended when he turned back to me. “There definitely fucking isn’t.”
I didn’t doubt that. Jesse and Eugenie together had been, well,volatilewas probably the polite word for it. They’d met in college and immediately locked into one of those relationships that burned so hot and fast that it set off alarms for everyone within a five-mile radius.
They were both party animals. That had been the foundation of their wholething. Parties, trips, dramatic exits, even more dramatic reunions, and public fights followed by very public reconciliations. Just being a spectator had been exhausting.
Drama seemed to follow Eugenie the way chaos followed Jesse. Together, they’d been less of a couple and more of a traveling natural disaster. A long, slow march toward mutually assured destruction.
When he’d invited me to her family’s estate in England one summer, I’d gone mostly out of morbid curiosity—and maybe a little bit of brotherly concern.
Okay, alotof brotherly concern.
Even though I’d only stayed a few days before heading to London, that had been more than enough. I’d hated Eugenie almost immediately.
She was beautiful, sure. Blonde and magnetic in a way that demanded attention no matter what anyone thought of her personality, but she’d also been wild and mean in a way that had made it clear which twin had the lowest IQ.
Not me.
Eventually, I’d pulled Jesse aside and told him that he needed to end things before the two of them wound up in an international prison. He’d laughed in my face, obviously not heeding my advice.
The only thing that had saved that trip from being a total loss for me had been getting to meet Elizabeth. Eliza, as she was affectionately known.
Although getting tomeether had been where it’d ended. It wasn’t like we’d gotten to know each other at all. We’d spent maybe six minutes in the same physical space, and they hadn’t even been consecutive minutes.
Just fragments of time stitched together into something that had stuck in my brain with embarrassing persistence. She was Eugenie’s middle sister. The quiet one.
During those few days I’d spent at their estate, I’d seen her everywhere. Stepping out of dark hallways with an armful ofpapers. Crossing the back lawn with purposeful strides. Leading small groups through the gardens.
She regularly gave tours of their family estate and I’d lingered at the edge of them, just watching the way she moved through the castle like she was part of it. I remembered thinking she didn’t even seem real, more reminiscent of something out of a painting.
She was soft spoken, composed, and entirely at odds with the chaos that seemed to orbit the rest of her family. It had been hard to reconcile her with Eugenie. Harder still to believe they were related at all, but if Eugenie had been the storm, Eliza had been the calm at the center of it.
“…and Dad just kept going on about how this was perfect timing. How the families already knew each other, so this was meant to be?—”
It took me a second to make sense of the fact that I was hearing my own voice out loud, rambling about something I wasn’t even thinking about. Then I realized it was Jesse. He was still here, still talking, and apparently, I’d just missed a whole lot of what he’d been saying.
“Is Eugenie aware of this?” I cut in after blinking myself out of my thoughts. “Have you spoken to her at all?”
Jesse arched an eyebrow at me, looking almost amused for the first time since he’d come storming out of Dad’s office this afternoon. Then he let out a dark chuckle and shook his head. “I don’t know, but Eugenie isn’t the one they want me to marry.”
The words landed like a physical blow, a sharp, unexpected pang of something that felt suspiciously like jealousy twisting in my stomach. I nearly choked again before I set the glass down carefully, my gaze never leaving his.
“Who, then?” I asked. “Which one of the Roderick sisters are you supposed to be marrying?”
CHAPTER 2
