Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
It’s only later that second night—after we walk back to our bungalow, after Anna wraps her legs around me and I take my time feeling every inch of her, after I hold her boneless, sweaty body in my arms while she comes down—that we finally, truly talk.
Pushing up onto her elbow, she looks down at me. “Liam?”
“Mmm?” I reach up to stroke her jaw with my thumb.
“What are we really doing here?”
“What do you mean?” My voice comes out gravelly, my throat accustomed for the past several hours only to the hoarse, unfiltered noises she drags out of me.
“What’s the loophole in the trust?”
I smile, pushing the mess of hair out of her face. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”
She curls up on her side facing me and reaches beneath her head, adjusting her pillow under her cheek. “I figure we’re past the point of pretending to be surface-level bros.”
This makes me laugh. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She stares at me, brown eyes luminous in the moonlight streaming across the bed. Anna traces a finger down my throat, bringing her hand to rest over my heart.
I lift it, kissing her palm, before putting it back where it was. “We leave soon.”
“I know.”
“And if it’s okay, I’d like to keep seeing you.”
She laughs. “I know you didn’t mean to, but that’s almost word for word what Richard Gere says in Pretty Woman before everything goes to shit.”
“I think there are some important differences here you may be overlooking.”
Anna squints at me. “Are we sure?”
Laughing, I reach around her back, pulling her flush to me. “I want to keep this going, whatever it is.”
“So maybe you fly to LA and take me on a date sometime.”
I lean in, resting my lips against hers, swallowing down the absurd, impulsive thought that wants to shove its way out of my throat: Come live with me. Instead, I say, “Anytime you want me.”
She pulls back, ruthlessly biting her smiling bottom lip. “Okay.”
And that easily, something ancient inside me settles.
With a deep breath, I reach forward, running my thumb over her lip, freeing it. “You know I was close to my grandfather.”
She nods. “He was your favorite.”
“Right. But he was also… a little unorthodox.”
“Another word only rich people use.”
I roll to my back, tucking a hand behind my head, and stare up at the ceiling, mentally sifting through what I can tell her. “Family was very important to him.”
“Yeah. You mentioned that to me the first day you came over—sounds like there’s a lot more buried in there.”
I laugh quietly. “Yeah.”
She reaches forward, tracing my Adam’s apple with her fingertip. “Like what?”
“The thing about legal trusts is you can put whatever you want in them. Any stipulation.” She waits for me to say more, dragging her hand down to rest over my sternum. I set my own hand on top of hers.
“I was only fifteen when Grandpa died. We were all at the reading of the will, but you can imagine in a situation like that, especially for kids, a lot of the details sort of go over your head. The reading took hours. I understood, basically, that he was leaving us each a very large sum of money. I understood that it was contingent on us being married. At the time, it didn’t seem so weird that he would want that. Kids sort of take those adult directives as law.”
“I can see that,” she says quietly.
“About three years ago, pretty soon after I moved out of our apartment, I created a foundation. The annual deposits from the trust go directly to this fund.”
“Like a charity?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“So—wait—you’re not keeping your inheritance money?”
“No, like you said, I have a job.” I grin at her, continuing, “With the approach of our five-year anniversary and in anticipation of the full balance of the trust coming into my name, I asked my attorney to clarify a few details about the inheritance. Whether there were any limits on its application, stuff like that.”
“You mean,” she cuts in, “like rules about how you can spend it?”
“Exactly.” I shift, rolling to my side to face her. “You know most of the important details, like how the trust stipulates a marriage to trigger the inheritance, and if there’s a divorce before the fifth anniversary, we forfeit the remaining balance.”
Anna huffs out a laugh. “It’s so wild.”
“Well, what I didn’t know, and what I’m guessing none of my siblings know, is that if the estate attorney—in this case, the firm that represents the money held in my grandfather’s trust—finds evidence of artifice or fraud—”
Her eyes widen. “Like marrying someone to get student housing?”
I nod. “Yes. If they find evidence of fraud in the five-year window, the clause makes the fulfillment of the trust null and void.”
“Even though we’re legally married? You’d lose everything?”
“I’d lose everything, yes, but there’s more.” I trace the line of her collarbones from one shoulder to the other. “I can’t say whether it was my grandfather’s intention, because of course he’s gone, and the attorney who drew up the documents has also passed away. But it appears that my grandfather wanted to find a way to bind the siblings together, to inspire us to support and confide in each other. He was always encouraging me to be kinder to Alex, to come from a place of understanding and empathy. In hindsight, I realize that he knew how much of a wedge our father drove between us, but he could never have anticipated how little any of us, as adults, actually disclose to each other at all.”