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Rhys

D espite what my brothers—and most of New York City—think about me, I don’t swipe right that often.

When I do, I put a lot of effort into making sure everyone’s on the same page. I explain my one-night-and-only-one-night intentions up front. I make sure her friends know where she is and that she feels safe. I always, always use condoms.

I’m a divorce lawyer, after all. I know the consequence of rash decisions. And I spent my childhood with men who used, left, and screwed over women—which left me wanting never to be those men.

Still, occasionally things don’t go as planned.

Tonight is one of those nights.

We’re in the hallway outside my apartment when Kirsten—a tall, willowy brunette with curves for miles, blue eyes, and full lips—says, “How do you feel about role-playing?”

I try to hide my grimace. I’ve never role-played, but I did once take an improv class, and it was a total nightmare. I’m at home in front of a courtroom and a judge, but when I have to pretend to be someone else, my brain freezes.

“Not my thing,” I tell her.

She runs a fingertip down the placket of my shirt, pausing to caress each button. “Could you make an exception for me?” she purrs, finger reaching my waist and sliding across the top of my belt buckle.

“Uh…okay?”

I’ll admit it—this is a dick answer, as in my dick answered while my brain was temporarily offline.

“You can be the high school quarterback,” she murmurs. “And I’ll be the nerdy girl who didn’t get chosen for the cheerleading team.”

Okay. I can do this. Right? This is what she needs, and a good one-night stand is all about giving a woman what she needs.

“Your name is Randall Westbrook,” she tells me, fingers still playing with the buckle. “And mine is Kristen Patton.”

“But that’s basically your real name.”

She pouts. “No, my real name is Kirsten Payton.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Alarm bells go off in my head. Years of lawyerly instincts. My gut knows the truth. Something—or someone—is off.

She tilts her head. “You pretend you don’t know I exist, but you’ve been watching me for years.

Since we were both freshmen. Wanting me.

Wanting to cross all the clique boundaries that keep us apart.

” She clasps her free hand to her chest. “That time in PE when you made fun of me, you were trying to make a connection with me.”

Remarkably specific. Are the hallway walls closing in on us?

“Let’s say I’m in the library, searching for a book.

You’re going to have to make the first move, Randall,” she whispers.

“I’m too scared. You’ve never shown me the slightest sign that you care about my existence.

” She turns her body to face the wall, running her fingertips over it in a way I think she means to be seductive.

The alarm bells have become air raid sirens. “Uh, Kirs—Kris—ack, sorry.”

“Kristen,” she prompts.

“Kristen,” I repeat, and then, unable to stop myself, “It seems like maybe high school was a hard time for you?”

“Shh,” she says. “Say, ‘You think I don’t see you, Kristen, but I do.’”

I wince. “I don’t want to bring up any buried trauma for you.”

“Rhys,” she whines. “Say it.”

“You actually want this? You want me to pretend to be some guy who didn’t appreciate you in high school?”

“I really, really want this,” she whispers huskily.

“You, uh, think I don’t see you, but I, uh—I do.”

Her fingers caress the wall. “Me? Randall, are you talking to me?”

She gives me an innocent look over her shoulder.

“Yes, you. I see you all the time when you’re”—my mind goes blank—“you know, answering questions in class. And I don’t think you’re a nerd?—”

“No, he likes me because I’m a nerd,” she corrects.

“You know,” I attempt, “I think maybe role-play isn’t my?—”

“You’re doing amazing,” she tells me and, turning to me, wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me.

With a sense of profound relief— I’ve passed the test; we’re on to the night’s real agenda —I kiss her back, and yes .

Now we’re on track, kissing, groping, stumbling toward my apartment.

I fumble in my pocket and find my key card, opening the door, guiding her inside, turning her around to press her against the door, my front to her back.

“Say, ‘You dirty little bookworm,’” she prompts.

No, no, no. Every cell in my body rebels. I open my mouth, and all that comes out is a slow hiss of sad air. Other parts of me—besides my lungs—deflate as well.

“Say, ‘You dirty little bookworm,’” she murmurs again, like the problem is that I didn’t hear the first time. Or didn’t understand.

But the real problem is that Randall Westbrook clearly never had the slightest interest in Kirsten Payton. And yet, more than a decade later, she still fantasizes about him rocking her world.

It’s tragic, actually.

Why do women persist in having such romantic, optimistic, self-destructive ideas about love when it’s abundantly clear that the world is full of men who will tear them to shreds?

I’m standing there, pressing her to the wall, my mouth open and wordless, when a warbly baritone comes from behind me:

“Rhys Hott. You can’t stay cynical about love forever.”

Kirsten and I shriek like little kids who’ve been jump-scared.

Raking a hand through my hair, I glare at the intruder in my living room. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

The short, balding man in his late sixties gets to his feet, waving a single sheet of cream-colored paper.

“I’m serving you with the letter from your grandfather’s will.

Nice place, by the way,” he says, scanning our surroundings—the mission-style furnishings, the William Morris–influenced textiles, the Arts and Crafts–era paintings and handcrafts. Heavy, dark, comforting.

Normally comforting. Currently full of invaders.

“Who is he?” Kirsten demands.

I sigh heavily. “ He is Arthur Weggers, my grandfather’s attorney and the executor of his will. He lives in Rush Creek, Oregon, where I grew up.”

“Why is he here?”

Weggers puffs up his chest. “I’m here to read Rhys a letter from his grandfather.”

“My dead grandfather,” I clarify, since that part isn’t always obvious.

“There’s this thing—” I close my eyes, because where do you even start with this?

“My grandfather is making me and all my brothers—I have four—jump through arbitrary hoops in order to keep the land we grew up on and save our sister’s business, and it’s Weggers’s job to make sure we all do the things we’re supposed to. ” I glare at him.

“Wait,” Kirsten says. “What do you have to do?”

“I don’t know yet.” I turn to Weggers. “What do I have to do?”

“Do you want her here while I read the letter?”

I’ve been handed a brilliant exit from at least one of my night’s problems. “I think I would prefer for the reading to be private,” I tell Kirsten.

“Ohhh-kay,” she says. “We could, you know, meet up later? Or tomorrow night?” She pins me with a hopeful, wide-eyed gaze.

“I don’t think so,” I say, and then, because none of this is her fault and because precision is important in life as in the law, “It was nice hanging out with you tonight, but like we discussed, it was a one-time thing.”

I press my hand into her back and usher her to the exit, glaring over my shoulder at Weggers as I do. I maneuver her outside my apartment and tell her, “I wish you all the best.” Then I shut the door tightly and lean against it.

“How’s the hookup life working out for you?” Weggers asks.

When I look up, he’s smirking. “Screw you.”

He snickers.

The real miracle of the last fifteen months is that none of us has offed Weggers in his sleep.

“Why are you here?” I demand.

“You know the answer to that.”

“Why didn’t you summon me to Rush Creek?”

“Would you have come?”

I consider. “No.”

“That’s why I’m here. I learned from chasing your brother Preston all over creation that it’s not worth my effort. So I came straight to you.”

“How’d you get into my apartment?”

“Your doorperson was very happy to let me up.”

Shit. That’s what I get for turning down her generous offer to share her break in the maintenance room, no strings attached.

Since then, she has laser-eyed every woman I bring home—only a few, but unfortunately always on her shift—and she hasn’t stopped trying to convince me to change my mind.

Look, she informed me one evening, I pay attention.

They’re upstairs with you for an average of two hours and forty-seven minutes, and they leave here looking dehydrated and glowing.

Do you have any idea what percentage of men in Manhattan can get a woman off?

Lower than the chance of being killed by a meteorite. For the love of God, Rhys, just once.

I (gently) told that she was, literally, too close to home…but apparently that didn’t save me from her vengeful impulses.

I point at Weggers. “It’s illegal for a process server to misrepresent?—”

“Save your breath,” he says, waving his hand again.

“I told her the truth. I told her I was your grandfather’s lawyer and that I was here to share your grandfather’s legacy with you.

I asked if I could wait in your apartment, and I showed her proof of my identity, evidence of my lawyer-client relationship to your grandfather, and a copy of the letter, which she read.

She approved of it, by the way,” he adds.

“Said she thought your granddad’s plan for you would have a positive effect on your attitude toward commitment. ”

“Who cares what my doorperson thinks about my attitude toward— No, you know what? I don’t want to hear your answer to that. I don’t want to hear anything?—”

“Too late!” he crows, eyes dancing. “I already read the first sentence of your letter! ‘Rhys Hott. You can’t stay cynical about love forever.’”

I sigh. “I’m not cynical. I’m realistic.” Marriages succeed at the same rate as coins come up heads. Hardly odds to bet your life on.

Weggers peers through his reading glasses at the letter and carries on:

Let’s see if we can turn around your grim view of love by exposing you to a rosier view of romance.

At the time of the reading of this letter, your sister is in charge of some number of weddings.

A subset of these will take place within the following two months. These will become your responsibi ? —

“He did fucking not!”

“I wish your brothers were here!” Weggers chortles, almost dancing with delight.

I bury my face in my hands. I’m so fucking glad they’re not here. They’d have way too good a time with this.

Eventually, I’ll have to confront them. But now is not yet.

“Do you want me to keep reading?”

I snatch the paper out of his hand and read the rest to myself.

You will live in Rush Creek during your tenure and take over the planning of these weddings. All of them must actually culminate with the planned ceremony.

“Technically that was my idea,” Weggers crows. “About how they had to actually happen . To make sure you didn’t infect the couples with your cynical views. Brilliant, right?”

“I don’t have cynical views!”

I’m aware I’ve lost the calm that’s the hallmark of my lawyerly success. I never lose my cool in court. I definitely never sound like a whiny teenager.

My fucking grandfather.

“You’re a divorce attorney,” Weggers points out.

“You make it sound like I’m breaking up marriages willy nilly because it’s fun for me,” I say. “When in fact, I’m only helping people end marriages that are already disasters for them.”

It’s why I’m a divorce lawyer. To keep women like my mother and my aunt from getting destroyed by powerful men.

I’m good at it, too. I’ve only failed once.

“We believe what we want to believe,” Weggers tells me primly.

“You know this would never hold up in court.”

He gives me a sage look. Or, more exactly, a look that he thinks is sage. In reality, it’s more constipated. “And you know you would never take this to court.”

“Just because I haven’t yet…”

The smirk is back. “If you’re determined to be the first Hott brother who can’t get the job done and lets Blue Mining get its hands on the family land…”

Frustration coils in my belly—not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right. None of us have obeyed the will because we actually believe it’s legally airtight. We’ve done it because it’s a form of atonement. A way to show Hanna that we’re sorry—for not being there for her for so many years.

And Weggers, the fucker, knows it.

“What if the people decide they don’t want to be married? You can’t force two people who have nothing to do with this situation to get married if that’s not what they want.”

Weggers sniffs. “In the unlikely event that any of the couples decides they don’t want to be married, and I can ascertain for sure that your actions had no bearing on the outcome, I’ll take that under advisement.”

I know it’s the best I’m going to do, unless I want—as Weggers says—to be that Hott brother.

Even knowing I’ve lost, I make one more stab at escape: “I can’t drop all my responsibilities in New York. I have court dates scheduled.”

“And those are more important than helping your sister out of a fix?” he asks.

We both know it’s not a real question. My shoulders slump.

He holds out a hand and, mutely, obediently, I return the Asshole Granddad letter to him.

“If I were you,” he says, folding and pocketing the letter, the smirk returning, “I’d start postponing some of those court dates.”