Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
I gave her a hug. “Thanks. You’re the best.”
She squeezed me tight. “You know I love you, right? And I only want the best for you.”
Her words were probably kinder than I deserved. If she’d shown up suddenly married to a stranger, I would have lost my damned mind, and we both knew it.
“I know. Thank you.”
When she pulled back, she shot me a wink. “Don’t love you enough to take the afternoon feed, though. That’s all you. I’ve gotta get back to the cafe.”
I thought about all the work that was left to do on the ranch and groaned. But at least if I was at the barn, I wouldn’t be tempted to assert my marital privileges in the world’s tiniest house.
TEN
SILAS
I’d traveled all over the world in my job, but I’d never taken a call in a place so breathtakingly beautiful. There was a rough-hewn log bench near the riverbank, so I sat down and typed up what I needed before shooting the email to my assistant. I ignored his Out-Of-Office auto-reply and dialed his number.
It took several tries, moving here and there and bending in awkward positions, before I got a call to go through.
“You at the airport?” Kenji asked when he picked up. His voice sounded scratchy, but I’d never known the man to take an actual sick day.
“Not exactly.”
“What the fuck did you do?” he demanded.
“I just sent you an email with some contract language. I need you to forward it to the attorneys and get them to do a statement of intent or whatever it was we did when we bought that beach property—”
“What’s this about? Your divorce?”
“Yeah. I got Way to agree to an uncontested divorce, but we’re filing in Delaware after all. This agreement is kind of a postnup. It says he won’t require any financial disclosures, and no money will change hands. We’ll need to file this before we file the divorce papers.”
Kenji sighed. “I’m reading the document now. I think you need to reconsider some of this—”
“Just forward it to the attorneys, please,” I said, interrupting him before we potentially lost the call. I’d known Kenji was going to give me shit for changing the plan. While I knew it was his job to protect me, I was also very aware that what I was doing was royally stupid, and I didn’t need him detailing all the reasons why. “I don’t need your two cents. I just need the statement of intent so Way can sign it. That’s all.”
“But—”
“Kenji. That’s all.”
He sucked in an audible breath. “So. You’ve got this all figured out, then? Great. Let the record show I was just trying to help.” He took his usual know-it-all tone with me, the one that carried a heavy, unspoken “I told you so” along with a semi-condescending “we’ll see about that.”
In this case, though, I felt confident I knew what I was doing, so I looked forward to proving him wrong. “Noted. But I don’t need your help on this one. Well, on the legal stuff anyway. But I do need your help on a few other things.”
Kenji paused. He really was the world’s most judgmental assistant. If he wasn’t so damn good at his job and such a decent person, he’d be intolerable. “Like?”
“I’m, ah… going to be staying here in Wyoming for a bit.”
“Define a bit.”
I glanced back at the little cottage in the aspen trees. “A couple months. So I’m going to need satellite internet. Also, a decent car that can handle gravel and dirt roads. This rental is for shit. And I don’t need to be so weird about money now that he’s agreed to the postnup. So will you please send me some decent clothes, and be sure to include jeans and stuff for… I don’t know… horse riding?”
Kenji was the king of dramatic pauses and sighs. This pause was particularly telling. “Hold, please, while I conference in the guys.”
“Do not conference in the guys,” I snapped. “I don’t need the guys. I need you to do what I’m asking without making a big deal of it.”
“You, Silas Concannon, want to stay married and play happy horsey husband—pardon, legal spouse—out there on the prairie, and you don’t think that calls for an intervention? Are you still drunk? I swear, you used to be the easiest of the brotherhood. My golden child. Then you fly off to Vegas, and suddenly, you’re worse than Landry, the bane of my existence—”
“Way and I made a deal. If I stay and pretend we’re in a relationship for a few weeks, he won’t ask for anything in the divorce or demand to see a financial disclosure.”
“You have a billion dollars. He has negative dollars. You could give him one million dollars, Silas, and you wouldn’t even feel it. Meanwhile, his life would change for the better. Forever. He has no money to fight you in court, which means he’d be an idiot not to take a settlement offer in the absolute worst-case scenario. There’s no need for you to enter into whatever the hell kind of thing this is.” He took a breath. “Your time is worth more than this. Spending six weeks out there in the middle of nowhere will probably cost you more than it will save you. You get that, right? Why are you really doing this?”