Chapter 1
WILLOW
“No fucking way.”
“Is that…” Jamie’s voice trails off as he stands beside me, two glasses of champagne in hand.
“That’s him alright,” I manage.
“I thought he said he wasn’t coming,” Jamie mutters.
“That is what he said.”
I leave Jamie behind and walk over to my fiancé, Terrence Madison.
He’s wearing one of his best suits, a dark grey ensemble meant to bring out the rust in his hair and the blue in his eyes.
His mother, Sheila, is beside him, talking and laughing with a vaporous blonde, both of them draped in an elegant emerald green, like they’re besties, in matching outfits.
My problem is that the blonde clings to my fiancé’s arm with too much ease.
And as soon as they see me coming, their humor fades.
They’re not surprised, though. Terrence knew I had an invite to this event.
The Future Artists of America Foundation, chaired by William James Morgan, Terrence’s stepfather, sent me a personalized invitation after a team-building weekend I organized for one of Mr. Morgan’s finance firms. I’d invited Terrence to join me, and he’d turned me down.
“Hey, Terrence,” I say with as much calm as I can muster.
This place is packed with some of New York’s richest and most influential people. Potential clients not just for the wedding planning side of my business, but also for all the other corporate packages Jamie and I put together over the past year. I can’t afford to make a scene.
“Hey, Willow,” Terrence replies with a casual smile, but I still catch the strain in his voice. He knows what’s coming. “Glad to see you here.”
I gawk at him, my jaw almost dropping before my gaze shifts to Sheila, his gorgeous and equally redheaded mother. The blonde beside her raises an eyebrow at me, as if asking whose idea it was to let the cockroach into the room.
“Glad to see me here? Are you kidding me, Terrence? I asked you to come with me, and you said you were unavailable. Clearly, you’re very much available,” I hiss. “What the hell is this?”
“Willow, take the hint already,” Sheila cuts in.
I give her a hard look, the kind of look I never imagined I had in me. This woman usually intimidates me. She’s mean, intense, and judgmental. She’s been a nightmare since Terrence proposed.
“I’m not following,” I say, choosing to focus on Terrence. “You need to explain it to me like I’m five.”
“Willow, I said I was unavailable to join you at this charity event,” he says. “Not that I was unavailable to come to this charity event.”
“Seriously?”
I should’ve broken it off weeks ago. I knew I’d made the wrong choice when I said yes. But my whole life, I’d been told I needed to settle for less because no high-value man would want a girl like me: a curvy, middle-class New Yorker without a family pedigree, and that I had to lower my standards.
Then Terrence Madison came along with his Hamptons family and Manhattan connections, and he seemed to be nuts about me. I fell hard for the guy, only to soon realize that most of his fortune was built upon his association with his stepfather and stepbrothers, not from his own hard work.
“It’s the truth,” Terrence says with a shrug. The more he speaks, the more I wonder what I found attractive about him to begin with. “We might as well face it, Willow. This isn’t going to work, and we both know it.”
“You proposed to me, remember?” I flash him my ring, as if to remind him.
“It was a lapse in judgment,” he replies and nods at the blonde on his arm. “Katrina is a much more suitable choice for me.”
“A more suitable choice? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’re too fat for him,” Katrina cuts in. “It might sting a bit, but we might as well be honest about this.”
“I’m too fat!” I gasp, staring at her in sheer disbelief before I look at Terrence again. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It is what it is,” he says and shrugs again.
I notice heads turning, eyes widening, brows furrowing, as the unexpected drama unfolds. I’m being humiliated in public, and every instinct I have screams at me to just punch this bastard’s lights out and call it a day.
“Terrence is a Morgan,” Sheila adds. “He’s New York royalty by my marriage to his stepfather. He needs a woman who can represent him in public, not some downtown girl who has absolutely nothing to her name.”
“I run my own business, which I built from the ground up,” I snap. “Forgive me if I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth like the rest of you. Ironically enough, it’s what Terrence said he liked most about me.”
“For a hot minute, yeah.” He chuckles dryly. “Then I snapped back to reality. It just wasn’t meant to be, Willow. You should just move on.”
“I would’ve gladly avoided this entire nonsense, if you’d been man enough to break it off with me, instead of proposing.” I raise my voice.
“You’re making a scene,” Sheila comes closer.
I take a step back, my heart racing with rage, shame, indignation, and pure, red-hot fury. It feels like a nightmare I cannot wake up from.
“I’m making a scene?” I repeat, my voice barely audible. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Take the loss, Willow. You’re a smart, capable, independent woman. You said so yourself,” she replies. “You’ll find someone eventually. But my son is not your man, darling. He deserves so much better, and Katrina… why, she’s exactly whom he was born to be with.”
“Sheila, you’re too kind,” Katrina says with a giggle.
They’re besties already, while I spent an entire six months with an engagement ring on my finger, trying to win my future mother-in-law’s approval. Jamie was right. I never should’ve said yes.
“You’re not the kind of woman I can build a legacy with,” Terrence sneers.
“Then she’ll build one with us,” Cole’s growl cuts through the air like a sharp, stainless-steel blade.
Cole Morgan has entered the chat, flanked by his older brothers, Asher and Toby. All three stand tall and ridiculously handsome in their sleek, black tuxes, with their salt-and-pepper hair and blue and green eyes. Their frames are so large, they take up half my field of vision.
“Cole?” I manage, as if coming out of a haze.
I’ve only met them a few times during my relationship with Terrence, but I’ve never had a chance to get to know them, as my interactions with them were few and far between.
“What are you doing, Terrence?” Cole steps closer, his arm quick to snake around my waist. I’m surprised by the move, but I don’t move away.
I can’t.
The man has the kind of magnetic pull that keeps me firmly grounded, my curves soft against his hard body. There’s a palpable shift in the atmosphere, and my only choice is to go along with it. The Morgan brothers might actually save my honor tonight.
“It’s none of your business,” Terrence replies, holding his precious girlfriend closer, as well. One look at her, and I can tell she’s starting to wonder if she picked the wrong guy to get with.
“It is, if you’re so gleefully eager to besmirch my family honor,” Cole says. “It’s my understanding that you are still engaged to Willow. You’re not anymore?”
“No, and you’ve already met Katrina,” Terrence replies, raising his chin in defiance.
“I did, an hour ago,” Cole says. “And from what I’m hearing, you didn’t tell Willow about it.”
“My personal life is—”
“Is my business. It’s our business, Terrence. Your mother might’ve married our father, but that doesn’t make you a Morgan. You have to earn the title,” Cole snaps. “And this stunt you just pulled is embarrassing for you and you alone.”
Asher steps in. “You know what, Terrence? You already know I never liked you, but I’ll admit, I do appreciate you for not ruining Willow’s life by marrying her.”
“She was always too good for you,” Toby adds with a wry smile.
Suddenly, I’m flanked by all three Morgan brothers. As I take a deep breath, mixed scents of tobacco, sea salt, and Moroccan rose oil fill my lungs. The Morgan genes run deep, and it only goes to prove how fundamentally different they are from Terrence.
“We’ll be more than happy to show Willow what it’s like to be with a real Morgan,” Cole says.
“What?” I ask, a little dumbfounded as I look up at him.
His gaze locks onto mine, and for a moment, my heart just…
stops. I’ve never seen him so determined, so imposing, so intense.
Cole Morgan and his brothers always take up space, they always draw focus, and they always stand out.
But tonight, I feel like I’m the most precious creature in their presence.
I feel like they just saved me.
“Well, given that Terrence wasn’t man enough to appropriately end your engagement, how about you let us be your dates tonight?” Asher asks.
Unlike Cole and Toby, Asher’s eyes are a midnight blue, and the more I look into that night sky, the harder it is to walk away. The silver specks in his wavy hair and his carefully trimmed beard give him a particular kind of distinction that makes my fingertips tingle.
I’d heard about their polyamorous lifestyle but convinced myself they were just rumors.
“Why settle for this guy when you can get the real Morgan experience in triplicate?” Toby chuckles and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear.
His touch alone is enough to ignite tiny fires down my spine as I respond with a shy, soft smile.
“It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard tonight.”
I can’t believe I just said that.
And neither can Sheila, judging by the coarse gasp that just escaped her skinny, slightly wrinkling throat. “What are you doing, Willow?”
“I dare say it’s none of your business, Sheila,” I casually reply.
This is madness. Getting dumped by William Morgan’s stepson, only to let myself get carried away by his three biological sons feels like something out of a scandalous Reddit thread. But I’m doing it. I’m so angry, so humiliated… it’s the only exit that makes sense.
Because I’ll be damned if I’ll let Terrence or his mother make me feel like I’m not good enough.
“That is a wise choice,” Cole tells me. “Why don’t we stop by the bar first?”
“Jamie’s got champagne for me,” I reply.