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He tilts his head. “It’s a little bit funny. You, the guy who never leaves the house, cheating on his wife.”

“I know.” I drag a hand down my face. “I ran into Grandfather again yesterday. He’s determined to break us up before my birthday. He doesn’t want Emory being able to touch the shares of Prince Bourbon.”

“And with you presenting such a united front, he’ll never be able to accomplish it, by golly.”

I can’t help the smile that curves my lips. “We’re not doing a very good job of getting along, are we?”

“Not really, no. I mean, it’s laughable that you’re claiming to be in love.”

“We need to be seen in public. Prove to people that the relationship is real. Go to a party.” I drum my fingers on the wheel.

“You know I hate that stuff.” Big events make me anxious, which makes the stutter worse, and then all I focus on is not stuttering, which makes me seem like a jerk, which makes the anxiety worse.

It’s a vicious and self-fulfilling cycle.

Tristan leans against the rail. “I think you should start small. Invite her to meet Mateo when he’s here for polo. I’ll bring a friend.”

“Good idea.”

“I know.” He gives me a smug look that says of course it’s a good idea, because I thought of it. “What did she say to you to get you to storm off like that on Monday?”

I’m so not telling him what I admitted to Emory. It’s just more fuel for his bet with Sienna and his insane belief that there was something between us as teenagers. “You know how I told you she bribed the mayor?”

“Yeah.” His mouth lifts as he starts coiling one of the lines. “I approve.”

“You do?”

“Hell yeah, I do. That’s efficient. How come we don’t do that?”

I send him a look. “We don’t do that because we’re not Hunters.”

“Maybe we should take a page or two from their book.”

“Tris.”

“Oh, right. That damn sense of right and wrong you have. Inconvenient.”

I glare at him.

He grins as he works. “You practically have a code of honor. Just like Dad. You don’t lie. You can’t stand cheaters. You’re impossibly hard on everyone around you, but especially on yourself. So what did she do?”

I choose to ignore his character study and focus on turning us so we can catch the wind. It’s tricky here, with the way the wind cuts across the water and then dies as it hits the harbor.

“She didn’t bribe him,” I finally say.

“She didn’t?”

“No. She let me think she did. But Monday, I finally got the truth out of her. She made a donation to the high school.”

“Huh. A donation? Her?”

“My thoughts exactly. That seems unlike her. Or unlike what I thought of her. She’s not a donating-to-the-high-school kind of woman.

She runs a gambling empire that I suspect is a front for something worse.

Her interests seem to include being outrageous, fighting petty court battles, and shopping for shoes.

It just doesn’t make sense. Maybe she’s lying. ”

But I don’t think she’s lying. In fact, I think that moment on the mat was one of the first times Emory Hunter has told me the truth. And that, more than anything, is what I keep coming back to. Well, that and the feel of her body under mine as she arched against me.

Tristan draws up short before he barks a laugh. “It’s driving you crazy.”

“It’s not.”

“It totally is,” he crows. “She doesn’t fit in the box you’ve made for her. Princes good, Hunters bad. We’re righteous, and she’s evil.” He cackles.

“I’m pretty sure she is, in fact, evil,” I say dryly.

“Maybe so, but people can be more than one thing.” Tristan shakes his head. “I know you were raised to hate her, Aiden, but I’ve always found her kind of cool.”

“Cool.”

“Sure. She’s really smart and she’s good at what she does. She’s ruthless. You could use someone ruthless.”

“Or she’s a really good liar and she’s hiding her real motives and she’s going to screw me out of this land.”

What else has she been hiding? I don’t admit to Tristan that I want to know. I find my wife endlessly, impossibly fascinating, just like I did as a teenager. I wanted to pin her with my hips yesterday and bite her shoulder, and—

“So call the mayor, then,” Tristan says.

“What?” I startle.

He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “If you want to know if she was telling the truth, just call the mayor.”

When we’re back at the dock later, Tristan heads up to shower and go to work while I hose down the boat and ignore the phone that feels like it’s burning a hole in my pocket. I shouldn’t be curious about her. I shouldn’t want her. I definitely shouldn’t want to know her.

This isn’t that. I need to know if she can be trusted.

Should have thought of that before you made this deal. I sigh and call the mayor’s office.

When I’m put through to him, he makes me wait a nice long time on hold. I watch the dog snuffle at the water and bound up the stairs and back down again.

“Christian Halpern.”

I clear my throat. “Christian, it’s Aiden Prince.”

“You’re not getting divorced,” he says quickly. “It’s been blessedly quiet here since you mended that feud. I will sue you to keep you married, so help me—”

“It’s not that,” I interject before he can really get going. “The money my, uh, wife , gave you at the wedding. What’s that for?”

“It’s been spent, Prince. You’re not getting it back.”

“That’s okay. I just want to make sure it’s going where it’s needed most. What are you planning for it?”

He barks a humorless laugh. “If I could triple it, I would. It’s going to the school. For laptops.”

“Laptops? How many?”

“Not enough,” he says shortly. “We’re a feeder school for most of the schools in the area. We have at least a hundred kids each year who need laptops and can’t afford them. And now with kids learning remotely on every sick day and snow day? Hell, this buys me a year. It doesn’t buy me more.”

I draw in a short, sharp breath, unable to get my lungs to inflate all the way. I went to Hart’s Hill Prep, like all the heirs, like Emory. But she’s giving the public high school money for laptops ? It doesn’t make sense, but I do know that it sits uncomfortably within me.

“Is that all, Prince?”

I clear my throat. “Has she done this before?”

“A few times,” he says warily, like I’m going to stop her from donating. “She’s pretty involved for someone who didn’t go there.”

Pretty involved.

We hang up, and I turn his words over in my head as I get ready for work that day. Still no recipe, but I do have a newfound knowledge—Emory isn’t all that she appears.