The Marriage Clause (The Kauffman Billionaire #1)

Chapter One

ARIA

Two sugars or one.

That’s the question currently destroying my life.

Not rent.

Not whether my car will pass inspection.

Not even the fact that my father called me "the pretty lady" twice this month before remembering my name.

No. The thing that has me showing up at 6:47 a.m. before anyone else in the office has even considered work is Everett Kauffman’s coffee preferences.

Which is why I’m standing in the executive kitchen on the fourth floor of the Hawkeyes Hockey arena, staring at the sugar bowl like the fate of the morning depends on how sweet he takes his liquid caffeine.

Six months. I’ve been making this man coffee for six months. Every single morning, I ask how he takes it, and every single morning, he waves me off mid-conference call like his coffee preferences are sensitive intel, and I failed the background check.

So I keep guessing.

One sugar, no cream. Grimace. Two sugars, a splash of almond milk. Grimace. Black with half a sugar—which, by the way, is a psychotic way to drink coffee. Grimace.

He grimaces at everything I bring him. And then he drinks it anyway, which is somehow worse, because it means I’m not even failing dramatically enough to get a real reaction out of the man. I’m just slightly wrong. Every day, in a way that he tolerates.

And by tolerates, I mean that he doesn’t tolerate me well, and he’s made those feelings known.

I’m redundant, is the word he used.

It follows me every night into my dreams. I hear it every morning in the bathroom mirror while I brush my teeth before work.

I’m redundant because he already has an assistant—Jeremy. A male assistant who was his father’s assistant’s intern before Conrad Kauffman’s untimely death. And now he’s Everett’s assistant. Jeremy was given the great honor after Conrad left his assistant enough money in the will to retire.

Phil Carlton—the previous owner of the Hawkeyes hockey team, the man who actually had a pulse and social skills—would never have called me redundant.

I spent two and a half years as his assistant with never a bad day.

He absolutely would have told me his coffee preferences on day one, and he would’ve done it with a smile.

He would’ve said "good morning" like a human being instead of staring through me like I’m a piece of office furniture he didn’t remember ordering.

But Phil sold the team, and the man who replaced him is a six-foot-two wall of expensive suits and emotional unavailability, and if I don’t figure out his coffee order soon, I’m going to lose my mind. Or my job. Possibly both, and I genuinely cannot afford either.

Because here’s the thing about this job that Everett Kauffman doesn’t know—and that I will never, ever tell him, because I have exactly one shred of pride left and I’m gripping it with both hands:

Phil bumped my salary.

Quietly. Without asking. Without me telling him that my father’s care facility costs more than my entire existence.

Somehow Phil found out about Brookhaven, about the accident, about the fact that insurance covers a place where my dad sits in a hallway staring at walls instead of the place where he’s actually getting better.

The place with memory doctors who are making progress, physical therapists who now have my father out of a wheelchair, walking on his own again.

Phil just fixed it. Adjusted my paycheck so I could keep Dad where he needs to be.

Everett inherited the team. He inherited the roster, the arena, the marketing department, and me.

But he doesn’t know about the arrangement.

He doesn’t know that my salary is inflated because of the personal needs that Phil saw fit to provide for me, even though the pay structure would never be offered at any other corporation, even one of this size.

Everett has no idea that every cup of coffee I bring him is a small act of professional survival disguised as hospitality.

Which is why the sugar situation is reaching critical mass.

If I get fired, my father goes back to the place where good days didn’t exist. Where he couldn’t walk to the bathroom with a wheelchair or a walker. Where no one figured out how to reach him.

One sugar or two.

I go with one and a half—splitting the difference on the second sugar. Add a splash of cream because yesterday he drank the cream version slightly faster than the black version, which is forensic analysis that should probably concern me, but doesn’t because I am past the point of shame.

The mug is warm in my hands, the office is still quiet—that particular hush of a building right before the entire place begins to buzz with life.

I got here thirty minutes early, as usual.

Beat the rest of the staff, finished the marketing packets, reorganized the filing cabinet he’ll never notice I reorganized, and pre-drafted two emails he hasn’t asked for yet.

Anything to prove I’m useful. Anything to make myself un-fire-able.

I’m heading for his office to drop off his coffee on the warmer, knowing that he’s like clockwork too and will be here in at least two minutes, when I hear a voice.

It’s low. Not raised—Everett Kauffman doesn’t raise his voice, and the quieter he gets, the more dangerous the conversation is.

Right now, he’s practically whispering. Which means someone is about to have a very bad day.

"You wasted your time coming down here. I’m not having this conversation with you. I have real work to get back to."

I freeze outside his door, coffee in hand, and his door is cracked open. Just enough to hear. Not enough that he’ll see me.

"I’m just saying, big brother, you don’t sound like a man excited to pick out floral arrangements."

The second voice is warmer. Smoother. Amused in a way Everett hasn’t been since I’ve known him.

"I don’t need reminders, Levi," he snaps. "I know the deadline."

Levi. As in Levi Kauffman. The second-oldest brother and CEO of the Kauffman Casino and Hotel Division.

The one who was a world-famous poker player before Conrad Kauffman passed and left his fortune to his eight children.

I’ve seen Levi in the news enough—confident, polished, someone who wears charm like a custom suit.

I should leave. I should leave. This is not my conversation, not my business, and I’m one bad cup of coffee away from unemployment. But apparently, I have the impulse control of a goldfish, because my feet are not moving, and my ears are very much tracking the conversation.

Levi chuckles. "Do you? Because you don’t look like a man eager to walk down the aisle."

"What do I have to be eager about? If marriage weren’t a clause in the trust, I wouldn’t be considering it."

My hand tightens on the mug. My heart stutters.

Marriage? A clause in the trust?

"Required is a nice way of saying we’re being held hostage," Levi says. "It’s not just you. If any of us breaks the clause, excluding Everly, we all lose our inheritance."

I clap my free hand over my mouth to muffle back the gasp trying to slip past my lips. The coffee sloshes at my quick movement.

Everything? But why is Everly excluded and her brothers aren’t?

"At least our father wasn’t a big enough dick to force her into marriage."

I don’t know much about their father, except that every one of his children, besides his youngest daughter, Everly, was conceived using surrogates.

Conrad Kauffman was known around Seattle for his quirks—a recluse who threw galas, a billionaire who handpicked the mothers of his children like he was casting for a film.

When word got out after his passing that he had seven other children he hadn’t raised, it only confirmed what Seattle already suspected.

The man was odd. His legacy is even more odd.

"So what are you going to do?" Levi asks.

Everett blows out a breath. "I don’t know. Christian’s been on my ass about it every day for the last few months."

Christian Kauffman—heir number seven in the family tree, just above Everly who’s the baby of the family at twenty-seven years old. Christian is the brother who controls the Kauffman legal department.

"That’s because he’s had to be," Levi continues. "You have three more weeks until you turn thirty-five, and if you aren’t married by midnight on your birthday, we’re all screwed."

Weeks. He has weeks.

"I know what’s at stake. Don’t forget this will be your problem next."

"Only if you don’t screw it up first."

"I can’t conjure a wife out of thin air, Levi."

"What about Sienna?"

Everett scoffs so hard it almost sounds like he choked on something. "Why would I marry Sienna?"

"Because she’s available, she understands the trust, and Kauffman Enterprises is one of her biggest clients. If we all lose our inheritance, she loses half her firm’s yearly income."

Sienna. I’ve seen the social media posts—her at billionaire events, photographed next to Everett like she’s been photoshopped into his life. But she’s never come by the arena, and I’ve never heard her name leave his mouth until now.

"She could end up wanting more than a casual marriage that ends after the required year is up," Everett says. "She’s finding me business acquisitions that no one else can. I can’t screw that up in case she gets attached to the ring and the last name. It’s better to keep things between us professional. "

"Professional?" Levi scoffs. "You’re still sleeping with her, aren’t you?"

"It’s been over four months since the last time. Besides, it was always casual. Besides, she’s moved on."

"Maybe we should ask Sienna if being your plus-one to every gala for four years was her idea of casual. I’d bet half my inheritance that she’ll drop anything and anyone to be Mrs. Everett Kauffman."

"That’s my point. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have real concerns to worry about. See your way out."

My ears perk at a new sound. Footsteps from inside Everett’s office. Heading for the door.

I should run. Every functioning brain cell I have is screaming at me to run.