Perfect Strangers

Chapter 1

one

. . .

Normal people might see tying the knot as the ultimate endgame in the evolution of a relationship, but Evander Westin wasn’t normal. Hell, depending on who you asked, he barely qualified as a person.

The product of an upbringing that taught him everything was transactional, Evan saw getting married as the means to a different sort of end.

Instead of two souls pledging to love and honor until death, this would be two soulless husks pinky-swearing to behave in public while reaping the advantages of lucrative family connections.

A business partnership with benefits—and an airtight prenup.

He’d had no business courting Lucy Greene. She was brilliant and beautiful, and from an old money Connecticut family who considered someone of his breeding a necessary evil in business, but not something you’d willingly allow into the bloodline.

Winning her over had been a total coup. The look on his father’s face the first—and only—time they’d attended the annual charity auction together was a triumph burned into memory. One of very few memories with his father he could file under positive.

His family dynamic was… complicated. If he wanted to be generous, he might go with unhealthy, but openly hostile was more in line with the truth.

He’d happily take a rusty spike to the balls to avoid being trapped in a relationship even remotely resembling the household where he’d grown up.

Of course, he was also a man with a grudge, and some consequences were worth suffering if it meant crossing something off his revenge list.

That was precisely why he now stood in the premier suite of one of Boston’s most luxe hotels, wearing a meticulously tailored Desmond Merrion tuxedo. This was his penultimate moment. Today, he would check another accomplishment off his list’s top five: Marry Up.

Well, he would have checked it off—if the bride had fucking shown up.

“Damn, buddy. Tough break.”

Evan looked up from the short and perfunctory letter in his hand and shrugged.

Owen, his best man, was the only person to show any hint of sympathy.

His fiancée—now ex-fiancée—hadn’t even apologized for leaving him high and dry while a crowd of aspiring oligarchs drank Dom Pérignon in the Grand Ballroom several floors below.

Instead, the matter-of-fact statement in the tight, precise script she reserved for quick case notes had informed him they were over, reconciliation wasn’t on the table, and she hoped he would take this opportunity to reassess his priorities in life.

A short, barking laugh slipped free as he ripped the note into confetti.

He’d already done that, hadn’t he? On his twenty-second birthday, when his father had cheerfully and smugly cut him off, he’d made a list of everything the bastard said would be impossible without his support.

Then, he’d set out to achieve each one, so that he could rub it in the prick’s face.

He’d been on such a roll, too. Shit.

“Corey and Leo are going to love this,” he said, dusting the glass-topped coffee table with the fragments of thick stationery. He pulled the bow tie from around his neck and tossed it over his shoulder, not caring where it landed.

The waning evening light cast the harbor in a blaze of fiery orange and pink that rippled across the sailboat-dotted water. It glinted off the decanter of Macallan 18 in Owen’s hand as he joined Evan in front of the wall of windows and poured them each three very thick fingers.

“Oh yeah, you’re screwed. They have some decorum, though. Enough to give you a day or two before making your life miserable.”

Evan savored the expensive amber liquid, a wry grin curling one corner of his mouth upward.

“Decorum? Are we talking about the same people?”

The firm’s founding partners were masters of optical illusion.

In court, they appeared as staunch professionals.

Sharks in bloodied water, they cut through opponents with terrifying skill and precision.

They’d rightfully earned their reputation as one of the best firms to hire if you were a corporation out to screw someone over.

Outside of court, they were the embodiment of off-color jokes and frat house hazing.

Mad Magazine, if run by a twelve-year-old hopped up on PCP-laced gummy worms.

“Ah, they’re not that bad.” Owen’s grin made Evan snort into his glass.

They were pricks, and everyone knew it, including them.

Evan tossed back his drink in two swallows, letting the burn blacken the edges of the words lodged in his throat. Those he’d planned to say at the altar, and a new, more colorful diatribe that he’d save for an opportunity to give Lucy’s parting words the rebuttal they deserved.

I hope someday you’re able to move on from the hollow materialism you’ve hitched your self-worth to.

Of all the self-righteous bullshit. Had she forgotten it was her own obsession with success that had brought them together in the first place?

“I told you that things felt weird after the whole partner thing.”

Evan’s jaw spasmed, and he held out his glass in a silent demand for a refill. “Really? You’re busting out the I told you so while I’m still wearing the fucking tux?”

The smile broadened. Owen was also a prick and knew it. “Sorry, but the way she left the firm? Then she goes and joins a nonprofit? Fucking crazy.”

The way she’d left had been classic Lucy.

Quietly stewing while packing her office, and then the moment one foot was out the door, she’d unleashed a verbal beatdown for the ages.

She’d raged at the misogyny and how they ran the firm like a “boys’ club.

” She’d called Corey on his narcissism and informed Leo that his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s lawyer would eat him for breakfast.

It galled Evan to defend her, but she’d had every right to be pissed, and she’d shown more balls than all of them combined in saying so.

“We had the same tenure, and her book of business is impressive as hell. You know as well as I do why they passed her over.”

“Nonprofit, Evan. Nonprofit.”

Evan’s quick snort fogged his glass. “Yeah, yeah.”

Owen took a sip of his own drink, and gazed out the window with narrowed eyes. “Say what you will about her mortally wounded feminism, but I’m telling you, she had this planned long before this went down. You should’ve run.”

Evan cracked the knuckles of his free hand, curling the fingers into a fist at his side. “Really not appreciating the 20/20 hindsight, my friend.”

Had Lucy been acting a little strangely?

Looking back, yes, she had, but the problem with blind ambition was the actual blindness part.

Making partner by forty-five had been number one on his “Fuck You” list, so receiving the offer early had been one hell of a high.

So good, he’d ignored the now obvious signs that things in his personal relationship were falling to shit.

He’d expected Lucy to be jealous, and he knew that it came with anger, but when you were on top of the world, you didn’t immediately notice the pool of piranhas at your feet.

Sharing the spotlight didn’t bother him, because he still got to stand in it.

Lucy preferred casting a long shadow, and he was the idiot for thinking her anger would blow over.

“You’ve always said she was smarter than you. Guess this proves it.”

Evan inhaled deeply and held it for a count of ten before answering.

“Have I ever told you how much I love the word defenestrated?”

It didn’t matter that Owen was right. He should have run, fast and far, instead of pushing forward with his planned Christmas proposal like Lucy hadn’t moved her things into the guest room, and their conversations hadn’t become short, curt, and infrequent.

He’d told himself it would blow over, and she’d cemented the belief with a teary-eyed acceptance of the ring he’d put on her finger to the polite applause of her socialite friends.

A storybook grand gesture, fueled by an overweening, alpha-male ego that believes slapping your name on something fixes it.

Her words.

“She said yes,” he muttered, draining the glass and placing it none-too-gently onto the bar as he shed the tux piece by piece, en route to his everyday clothes still strewn across the bed. “Why the fuck did she say yes?”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? Or the half-million-dollar question, in this case, since that was what her father had shelled out for the occasion.

There was no question Lucy was capable of a villain-origin level of spite, but throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars just to make him look like an ass went above and beyond.

Weeks of gaslighting, ending with him standing with his dick in his hand as hundreds of guests awaited some sort of announcement about the ceremony delay.

It would be impressive if his reputation weren’t circling the drain.

The kicker was, she could have just told him she didn’t want to spend the rest of her days as Mrs. Evander Westin, old guard socialite cum nouveau, and he’d have walked away.

Might have also suggested she get therapy, but he wouldn’t have stopped her from running off with some nameless artist from Somerville, if that was even the real story.

It was a tidbit that tidily explained her newfound altruism, but one Owen and the partners would have to learn about on their own.

His ego had suffered enough battering for one day.

Kicking off his perfectly buffed leather shoes, he stripped to his boxer briefs without a care for the tuxedo’s delicate tailoring and pulled his jeans on with a rough tug. His poker face was slipping, and he needed to get the fuck out of here before it completely fell apart.

Corey and Leo were the firm’s attack dogs, and he was their assassin.

He kept his cool no matter the situation, and by the time opposing counsel figured out his angle, it was too late.

He could bottle anything for however long he needed to, then take it out in the boxing ring during his and Owen’s weekly rounds.

Owen should count his lucky stars that they’d already gone a few the previous morning. Lucy was one of the few people who could stretch his restraint to a breaking point, and right about then, he could go for pummeling the crap out of something.

He hunched over, pressing his palms into the mattress, and took controlled breaths until he stopped seeing red. By the time he’d finished dressing, he was back in control.

“Well, I’m sure you guys will have plenty of sick burns for me when I get back,” he drawled, exiting the bedroom with the bundled tux tossed over his shoulder. “You have a few weeks to perfect them.”

Owen paused with a newly filled glass pressed to his lips. “You’re not seriously thinking about still going on the trip?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“It’s… a honeymoon?”

“Then I’ll bring my laptop, since I’m so happily married to my job.”

He pulled the glass out of Owen’s hand and drained it before handing it back.

By that point, the announcement had almost certainly gone out to the attending guests, and though he hadn’t received confirmation of whether his family had bothered to show up, picturing the glee on his father’s face made his stomach turn. It was time for a hasty exit.

As if reading his mind, Owen chuckled and raised the empty glass. “Don’t worry about the crowd. We’ll take care of it. Here’s to you meeting some leggy blonde that you can bring to the charity banquet in December, because you know Lucy will be there to milk the donors.”

“Blonde, huh?”

“Yeah, I think it’s time you tried a new flavor.”

Evan shook his head, his first genuine smile of the day breaking through. “Yeah, maybe, but since this is a honeymoon destination, it’s safe to assume my chances of hooking up aren’t good.”

Owen’s mouth curled into the smarmiest smirk he owned, of which his collection was substantial. “If anyone can score on someone else’s vacation, it’s you, buddy. Not a doubt in my mind.”