Page 2 of Sincerely, Mr. Braden

Taylor: I’d pay good money to see you typing a text while running.

Me: Siri allows me to multitask. He doesn’t care what time it is.

Taylor: News flash. Siri isn’t real.

Me: Don’t dis my bud Siri. We click.

Taylor: I think I’ve just figured out why you’re still single. Have fun with your fake buddy. I’m only doing real-life things until morning.

Chalking up another successful sparring match with my stubborn assistant, who is quite possibly the only person who can keep up with me, I push myself harder, running faster as it starts to rain, and the city blurs around me.

Chapter Two

Taylor

My phone chimes with an email as I climb out of my car in front of my father’s house Thursday afternoon. My pulse quickens when I see my client Seth Braden’s name on the screen.

I used to work for a few high-powered clients, but two years ago, my workload from Seth became too cumbersome to manage alongside the others. I didn’t mind letting my other clients go, as it allowed me a little free time to work on my hobby, doing graphic design for authors, creating stickers, bookmarks, and other swag. Seth was always my favorite client anyway, which is a funny thing to say since we’ve never met in person or spoken on the phone. For safety reasons, I use a male persona for business, Taylor Mitchell, LLC, and limit all communications to email and text. A dual-SIM phone allows work calls to go directly to my professional voicemail, while also allowing texts to be sent from that number. Luckily, I have a unisex name, and I use my father’s middle name as my professional surname. The company is registered through an agent in Delaware, and I live in Port Hudson, New York, giving me complete anonymity.

Seth is absolutely brilliant, and he never fails to be upbeat and appreciative, even when we butt heads. For a billionaire who has been named Forbes’s Most Eligible Bachelor twice, he comes across as laid-back and approachable, unlike some other wealthy clients I’ve worked for. All of which is why working with Seth doesn’t feel like work and why I look forward to his emails.

Except right now, as I read the subject of the notification on my screen—Pack sunscreen. Not your laptop—and reluctantly open the email.

T, have a great time this weekend. The fridge and bar are stocked. Feel free to use the Jet Ski or the boat. If you need a captain, Missick can hook you up. I’ll stay out of your hair until Tuesday. Promise.

Missick is the caretaker for Seth’s property, and that promise to leave me be is a lie. Seth’s brain is always cooking up new ideas, which land in my inbox at all hours of the day and night. Did I mention my favorite client is also generous to a fault? He’s given me a bonus of an all-expense-paid vacation to the Caribbean. I’m supposed to leave tomorrow. Most people would be thrilled with four days in paradise, and I need this vacation more than I care to admit, but I can’t imagine leaving my father for that long without something going wrong.

My father, Frank Nunnally, has always seemed bigger than life. He looks like he was carved from wind and work, all scruff and steel, with terminally messy graying brown hair and a hardened heart that bears the wounds of a man abandoned by his wife for an old flame and left to raise two young daughters on his own, and still his dark eyes dare the world to tell him no. But the man who has never missed a day of work or a risky adventure was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis six years ago, and he fights it with the same stubborn vehemence he fights everything else he doesn’t have the time or patience for.

As if his sheer determination and willpower can outpace a disease.

He hasn’t had that many flare-ups compared to some, but there have been enough to remind me that every time he stumbles or drops something or has trouble reading a label, it could be more than just bad luck. That’s why I can’t imagine getting on a plane tomorrow.

I zip off a quick email thanking Seth and then grab my father’s groceries from the trunk.

With my arms full of enough food to feed an army, or one scatterbrained father who can plan fifteen projects a week but never remember milk, I manage to hook my fingertips around the last bag and close the trunk without catching the bags in it. I swear, if caretaking were a sport, I’d have a freaking gold medal, and I’m probably the only twenty-eight-year-old with permanent frown lines to prove it.

Squinting against the late-afternoon sun, I head up his driveway, stopping cold at a smattered trail of crimson too thin to be paint leading from the yard into the garage. My stomach pitches. Dad, what have you done now?

I hurry into the garage and find my father standing at the workbench pressing a bloody rag to his forearm while trying to tug a piece of duct tape from the roll with his teeth. I drop the groceries and rush over to him. “Dad, what happened?”

“It’s nothing. Damn gutter got me,” he grumbles, and hands me the duct tape. “Tear off a piece, will ya?”

A familiar dread tightens in my gut. Were his fingers numb? Did his foot slip off the ladder? Is he wearing himself out again? I don’t ask any of those questions, because I know he’ll clam up.

“No, I will not tear off a piece.” I drop the roll of duct tape—his answer for everything from a broken Barbie to a cracked window—onto the workbench. “Why were you messing with the gutter? I told you the repairman was coming tomorrow.”

“And I told you I can do it myself.”

He goes for the tape, and I shove it farther away, earning a snarl.

“You’re unbelievable. Let me see your arm.” I reach for the blood-soaked rag, and he wrenches his arm away.

“It’s just a scratch. I’ll tape it up, and it’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t. That’ll lead to an infection. Look how much blood there is. You probably need stitches,” I say firmly, and grab his wrist tight enough he can’t pull away.

“Don’t make a federal case out of it,” he warns as I unwrap his arm.