by Tia Siren
“That’s because there isn’t a loophole,” Toby said. He shook his head. “Look, man, I’m trying to tell you that this is your best bet. It is. If you want that inheritance money, and your dad’s business, you have to do what the will is telling you to do.”
“I hate it when you’re right.” Luke sat back in the leather chair to take another long drink. He needed something to calm him down. “You’re positive that this is going to work?”
Toby nodded. “Positive. If it doesn’t work, you won’t have to cut me a check out of that inheritance of yours.”
“I’d do it anyway,” Luke said. “You’ve been my friend since I was fifteen, man. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I appreciate that sort of sentiment coming from you.”
“So, Shannon.” He directed his attention to the busty blonde clothed in a gold sequin dress sitting alongside her brother, calm and quiet while they talked. I wish bro code didn't prevent you from banging your friend’s younger sister. He had a feeling that Shannon knew her way around a man’s body. Clearing those thoughts out, Luke leaned forward in his seat to look at her. “I guess I’m stuck with this Paige Scott, then, if we all want to get paid here by the end of the month. I have thirty days to get her to fall in love with me, accept a proposal, and possibly get married while convincing the old lawyer. Any suggestions?”
Shannon gazed up thoughtfully at the ceiling. “For starters, I picked Paige because she isn’t from money. She’s got some humble roots that would look good. From what I’ve heard, she spends most of her nights locked up in her apartment. This was the first time in two months that she went out into the city.”
“She likes to paint too, right?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Talented painter, and I mean that seriously. It’ll be interesting to see what she does in four years.”
None of it interested him. It was things he could work off though.
“I’m pretty sure Paige is a virgin too,” Shannon added. “I know her family is strictly Christian. I remember seeing her parents the weekend before classes started.”
A virgin. Luke rubbed a hand across his jaw in contemplation. He had never slept with a virgin before. It was the one thing that he had personally steered clear of, because he knew there were certain emotions attached to it. He was an asshole, but not that big of one.
It was tempting, though, the more he thought about it. If Peter knew that Paige was a virgin who had possibly vowed to stay that way until marriage, he’d be impressed. That was something his father would’ve liked to hear. Not to mention, it gave him a bit of a thrill thinking about being a first to someone.
Paige Scott would work for a lot of reasons.
“That seemed to arouse your interest even more,” Toby said with a grin. “Do we have a deal that Shannon has picked someone out for you?”
“I’m in on this,” Luke said, nodding. “The only problem is that I’m pretty sure she hates my guts now.”
He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Maybe he had been a bit forward, but there was something different about Paige that drew him in. He craved a woman like her in a lot of ways. She was attractive, filled with goals, and couldn’t have cared less about the line of Turners he came from.
“I’ll work on that,” Shannon said, flipping her hair up. “I’ll go outside to see if she’s waiting for a cab, or at least call to make sure she did get back to the apartments okay.”
She stood up from the table. Luke watched as a few heads turned to watch Shannon stride confidently across the room to make an exit through the front door.
“Your sister should be a publicist too,” he said, looking back over at Toby, who narrowed his eyes at him in warning. “I’m just saying. She’s damn good at what she does. Maybe even better than you.”
Toby leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his flat stomach. “I’ve tried telling her that a few times. I think she has this idea that if she graduates doing what our parents wanted her to do, they’ll take more of an interest in our lives.”
“And people think rich kids have it easy,” Luke said darkly. He reached up to rub at the scars along the side of his neck. “No one ever guessed that my father liked to extinguish cigarettes on the side of my neck because I was being a shit to him. No, my father had money, so therefore I had money too. Everything was sunshine and daisies according to some people.”
“The price of the rich and famous, bro. That’s our price. We were the punching bags of our parents’ misery from it all.”
“No shit.”
They fell into silence while the music continued to play in the background. Shannon didn’t reappear, but Toby didn’t seem too concerned about it. He knew Shannon knew New York City better than anyone else.
“So, you’re honestly going to be okay with this arrangement then?” Toby asked.
“I don’t have a choice in the matter,” Luke replied, sipping more slowly at his drink. He still had to navigate his way home and get up early for a few meetings. Even if he wasn’t yet in charge of Turner Oil, he ran it like he was in charge. Business never slept. “I love this business. I’ll never want to do anything else besides oil. I’d be lost out there trying to find something else I’m good at.”
“You’ll get the business,” Toby said confidently. “We just have to put on a good show for Peter in thirty days is all.”
Luke dragged an exhausted hand along his face. Thirty fucking days is not enough time to fall in love. He had a creeping suspicion that his father had planned it that way for a reason.
“I don’t know if it’s even possible to do all of this in thirty days,” he said, exasperated at the thought. “I’m not a go-on-a-date type of man. You know that, but now I have to play a chivalrous gent to a woman who already has formed an unpleasant opinion of me.”
“That’s where you can hook her, bud. Apologize to her. Make it up by explaining that you had too much to drink and you’re grieving the loss of your father, so it’s been hard for you. Play that emotional card.”
“How though?” He narrowed his eyes at Toby. “When have you ever seen me be emotional? I didn’t even shed a damn tear when I buried my father.”
“Yeah,” Toby said, bouncing his legs anxiously, “but you did disappear for about a week with no phone or any way to reach you. That says a lot in my opinion. Where did you even go without telling me?”
“Alaska.” At the shocked glance Toby gave him, he continued. “I went to Alaska because it was the only place I felt I could get away from all of it. Including my father’s ghost. I swear, he’s trying to haunt me from behind the grave.”
“I wouldn’t do it,” he said dryly. “What did you do up in Alaska? Find some local native woman to bang?”
“I didn’t fuck anyone while I was up there, since you’re so curious about it. I looked at a few places to set up for drilling. I talked to people who mine up there for gold too.”
“Are you planning to branch out into gold?”
“I’m thinking about it. If I get this inheritance in thirty days, I am investing in a mine up there that needs an extra boost in the money department.”
Toby sat back with an impressed whistle. “You’re good. I don’t see how your father thinks you’d do horrible things to the company. You’re smart. You get how the world of business works.”
“I don’t even care anymore,” Luke replied. Bitterness swelled up in him at the thought of his father. He had gone to Alaska to deal with his emotions privately, but also to look into expanding in the future. It had provided him the much-needed distraction from having to bury his father along with years of watching him decompose from the inside out. His mother’s death had been what had started all of Roderick’s violent and alcohol-fueled cycles. Before that, it’d been years since he had drank, but the day they buried Luke’s mother in the ground was the day Roderick had gone back to the bottle. Nothing could fix it, or convince him to do otherwise.
It hadn’t been a surprise to get that
phone call from the hospital in the middle of the night when one of the staff members had found Roderick passed out on the floor. There wasn’t one person Luke knew in the oil business who drank themselves until they were rich and happy, but his father had tried like hell to do it.
The only reason Turner Oil had stayed afloat was because of Luke’s decisions. He had poured in the hard work to keep it going when his father had been too drunk to recognize what decisions he needed to make.
And now, his father seemed to think a marriage would keep him from doing what he wanted to do.
If he had to play the gent in order to win over Paige Scott’s trust, he’d do it, and maybe he’d get something more out of it. He wasn’t going to complain if Paige ended up in his bed by the end of the thirty days. If she did, he’d have his money by then, and none of it would have mattered.
It was just business. That was all this arrangement would be. Just business until the end of the longest thirty days of Luke’s life.
Chapter Three
Paige
“So, he’s a billionaire, and he wanted you to come back to his apartment? And you said no?”
Paige sighed in aggravation at the question. She looked up from her sketchpad to meet Jessica’s bewildered gaze.
“Yes,” she said shortly. “I told you. I’m not that type of girl. I don’t just jump into some man’s bed because he has tons of money.”
“It’s Luke Turner though,” Jessica said, shaking her head in dismay. “Have you even Googled him since Friday night?”
“I made it a point not to.”
“His father was an oil tycoon for years. The Turner family is famous for their business in oil. Luke is rumored to be taking over his father’s business soon.”
“And your point in all of this?”
“That he’s wealthy and in a way, famous. He was voted as one of the most eligible bachelors in the United States.”
“That explains his cocky attitude,” Paige said wryly. “He’s had women flocking to him for a while.”
“Come on, Paige. You’re telling me that you never once wondered Friday night what it would be like to be in this man’s bed?”
Jessica sighed dreamily as she turned her computer around to show Paige a picture of Luke posing for a magazine. He was dressed in a sharp gray suit with a white button-up shirt underneath. His long blond hair was smoothed back, as it had been Friday night. Those cerulean eyes could cut through her even on the Internet.
“No,” she said. “I try not to think about things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because of personal reasons that I don’t want to talk about. That’s why.”
Hurt flashed in Jessica’s eyes at Paige’s sharp tone. She slowly turned her computer back around without looking up.
Guilt shot through Paige. Stop being such a bitch. “I’m sorry, Jess. I didn’t mean it rudely. It’s just—” She ran a hand through her hair with a sigh. “It’s a long and shitty story is all.”
“I get it,” Jessica said. “I’m also your friend too. I mean, I’d like to think that you trust me.”
“Of course I do. I just don’t know if I’m ready yet to tell you what happened.”
“You can te—”
The ringing of Paige’s phone cut Jessica off. Paige shot her an apologetic look before rummaging through her satchel for it. Like clockwork, it was her parents calling to check on her after the weekend.
“I better take this,” she said. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”
“Okay,” Jessica said. She grabbed her textbook. “You have to promise to tell me about it, though, when you get back.”
Paige didn’t respond. She didn’t know how to respond besides with what she actually wanted to say. You see, Jessica, it’s not that complicated. There was a girl at my high school who got jealous that her football star of a boyfriend had an interest me. So, to get even, she forced him into a bet to see if he could get me to lose my virginity. The real fucking kicker? It was in the back seat of his Jeep with the rest of our class secretly watching until the police car showed up.
That bitter memory played in the back of Paige’s mind as she stepped out of the study office they were in to go down to the marble lobby. Her mother’s cheerful voice echoed in her ear, and the stairway, when she answered.
“Hello, my darling daughter,” Marie Scott said cheerfully. “How was your weekend?”
Paige grimaced, but there was no way in hell she planned to tell her mother what had happened over the weekend. Both her parents were strict Christians, and she’d grown up with values of courtship—not dark, set-up dates with a billionaire who had obviously slept with many women.
“It was fine,” she said. “We didn’t do much though. We just did our usual thing of studying and watching movies.”
“You and Jessica?”
“Yes.” She entered the marble lobby where it was a bit noisier and found an empty couch to sit on. Students always congregated throughout the lobby, while the serious studiers, like Jessica and herself, went upstairs to the quietness. “How was your weekend, Mom?”
“Oh, boring as usual,” Marie replied airily. “I have no one to speak to or do things with since you left. You know how your father is.” She sighed into the phone. “He refuses to do anything that doesn’t involve the farm.”
“Daddy’s a hard worker. That farm is his entire life.”
“Trust me, I knew that when I married him almost twenty years ago. How is the city?”
Paige glanced over her shoulder at the crowded sidewalk. “Busy as usual, Mom. Nothing ever changes about the city. It stays the same.”
“I don’t know how you put up with it. I still can’t get over that noise and constant flow of people in a rush.”
“You get used to it,” Paige said. “I don’t go anywhere besides classes with Jessica. We don’t wander around much.”
“That’s a good thing, honey. I worry about you in that city all by yourself,” Marie said. “At least I know you aren’t hanging around those senior girls I saw when we were there. They look a bit, ahem, too experienced when it comes to the city life.”
She swallowed while thickly thinking about Shannon and all her glamor. “Yeah, I suppose.” Her phone beeped to signal an incoming call. “Mom, I’ve got another phone call. I’ll call you guys next weekend, okay?”
“All right, baby. I love you.”
“I love you too.” She frowned down at the unknown number before answering it tentatively. “Hello?”
“Hello. This is—”
“Toby,” Paige said, instantly recognizing his voice. “Shannon’s half-brother. What do you want?”
“Luke asked me to get ahold of you on his behalf to see if there is a time that you two can get together. He wants to offer his apologies for behaving the way he did Friday night.”
“If he wants to apologize,” Paige said, scoffing, “then he can call me himself. How did you even get my phone number?”
“Shannon,” Toby said bluntly. “Don’t be mad at my sister. We just thought that the two of you would make a good couple.”
“Good couple?” she repeated dubiously. That same creeping suspicion came back. “How did you two even come to that conclusion? Your sister doesn’t know me besides from that ‘about me’ paper I had to submit. I’ve only talked to you, for, what? One minute?”
“And counting,” Toby added sarcastically. “Is there a time we could work things out here? Luke’s a good friend of mine, and I work for him, but he really does have an interest in getting to know you.”
“If he were that interested, I’d be talking to him, not you.”
Paige hung up with an aggravated sigh. What the hell are their problems? She couldn’t wrap her mind around why they seemed so adamant about pushing her at Luke. It didn’t feel right at all. You didn’t pursue people through other people, which in her opinion indicated that Luke Turner had something to hide.
She just didn’t know what it was,
and she didn’t care to know either. Finding a boyfriend in New York City was not on her priority list. It wasn’t even at the bottom end of it.
“Paige?”
She looked up at the sound of someone calling her name to see that it was Kyle Duncan, a fellow freshman in her math class. He was rushing toward her with a smile.
“I’m glad I found you here,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d like to get some coffee with me.”
Paige slipped her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. She hesitated in replying, because Kyle looked so eager and hopeful. He had invited her to hang out numerous times, even to study with him, but she always turned him down. He was a sweet guy, just a bit pushy at times. He didn’t understand her lack of interest in dating, or relationships.
“I’m upstairs studying with Jessica,” she said as kindly as possible. His face fell. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I promise we will hang out when it isn’t so busy and chaotic with homework.”
“I understand,” he said, but the disappointment didn’t fade from his eyes. “Well, I’ll let you ladies get back to studying then. I guess you can call or text me when you have a moment to yourself.”
“I will. I’ll see you in class tomorrow morning, okay?”
He nodded.
Climbing the stairs again, she let out a strangled breath. In a matter of three days, she had been asked out by two very different men. Except, her interest in one of them felt more like a fairy-tale type of interest despite how much of an ass he had been to her Friday night. Luke was a suave, silver-tongued businessman who knew what he wanted. He looked a Greek god too. That much Paige knew from his sleeked-back, blond locks of hair, the shadow of a beard on his strong jaw, and eyes that could melt any woman if he wanted them to.
Except, he was a billionaire who got his way at all times. She couldn’t stand that type of mentality.
Jessica looked up from her computer when she opened the study door. “That was a quick phone call. The quickest I’ve seen with your mom.”
