Her mouth tightens the way it has every time I’ve mentioned my father so far, but a spark lights in her gaze. “You don’t like the man?”
I snort. “Not likeis an understatement.Hateis a better word.”
Strangely, it’s this, more than the documents and the pictures and our childhood stories, that relieves a slight hint of the tension in her shoulders.
She nods. “I believe you. But I will still double-check. How long are you here for?”
Dash and I share a silent communication before I answer. “We can stay for a couple of days.”
Tsai Shu-fen rises from her chair. “Come back tomorrow. I will make dinner. A meal from home.”
The single sentence clenches around my heart.
“Could I—” I swallow a blockage in my throat. “Could we come early enough to help you cook?”
The woman tilts her head. Then I earn my first smile.
CHAPTER 2
LUNA
ONE YEAR LATER
“Ineed to get married? Are you fucking with me?”
The lawyer coughs as if my profanity choked him. “No. You do not need to.”
“But that’s what you just said.”
“Not exactly.” He traces his finger over the legal documents in front of him. “No one can force you to get married just by writing it in their will.” Daniel Carmichael’s voice has an element of condescension, and I hazard he dislikes me almost as much as I loathe the words coming out of his mouth. “What your grandmother has done is set aside an inheritance for you that you can only claim if you are married by the age of thirty. There are other stipulations, but that is the main one. If you do not meet it, you simply do not get the money.”
Dash snorts in his seat next to me, and I fight the urge to glare at him.
“Whatever. I’m not hard up for cash.”
Sure, the three hundred thousand the man just quoted me would be amazing to have stowed away in my savings. Get a nice interest rate, and no need to worry about my retirement. But I have a steady stream of well-paying clients providing me a comfortable life in Nashville. I don’t need the money. Not enough to marry someone in the next five months before my thirtieth birthday.
“We can skip the stipulations and move on to the next section.”
“Well, before reading anything else, I must inform you of one more thing Tsai Shu-fen made mandatory.”
Gritting back a sigh of impatience, I still can’t keep the bite from my voice. “Just read it already.”
The lawyer frowns, then continues, “If the beneficiary, Luna Lamont, does not fulfill the requirements set forth to gain her inheritance, the money will pass on to Bill Lamont.”
Blood, fueled by denial, roars through my ears.
“What?” Dash asks the single word screaming in my mind.
Mr. Carmichael, with his slicked-back hair and perfectly tailored suit oozing superiority, rereads the section slowly. But I heard him the first time.
“That’s a mistake. Our grandmother hated our dad! She thought the man was a demon who stole his daughter away.”
Which he sort of was.
“I’m merely conveying the contents of the will. There’s no further explanation. I can, however, inform you I acted as witness when Tsai Shu-fen last updated this document, and she was of sound mind and body.”
Not fucking sound enough if she decided to hand over six figures to my bastard of a father. And certainly not of sound body, seeing as how she passed away four months after signing this document.
