Chapter 2
Duke adjusted his tie, smoothed a hand down the front of his suit coat, and stared out the window of Slipper Magazine’s office suite.
It was a different perspective from that outside his office, but it looked close to the same. Sunny skies, busy sidewalks with manicured hedges, and tall, swaying palms.
LA was beautiful no matter how he looked at it. Even if the city had turned against him.
“Would you stop pacing?” Perry asked from his seat at the oblong table.
Duke slipped his hand into his pocket and thumbed the small, smooth stone within.
Some called it a worry stone, but Duke liked what his father called it best—a calming stone.
“I’m not pacing,” he said, eyes stuck on the view.
“Do you really think a magazine interview is the answer? Why not just take one of the TV interviews?” They had some big names asking to interview him, after all.
“If you’re going to make me repeat myself,” his public rep said, “then I’ll say it again.”
A playback of the exhaustive conversation shot to Duke’s mind.
“No, don’t. I remember.” He’d heard enough about how the station would likely take ten or fifteen minutes tops, stretch it into an hour-long segment, and play misleading, out-of-context tidbits to lure viewers into watching.
In the end, the program could paint him with whatever persona they’d like to portray.
Duke’s phone buzzed from his other pocket. He was quick to retrieve it and give the screen a glance; he had some important deals to close that afternoon. But the message wasn’t from the office.
Grandma Lo: Guess who Stanford’s Alumni Gala is featuring for their scholarship fundraiser this year?
Duke: Who?
Grandma Lo: Your father.
A smile crossed his lips. A spot of warmth stirred in his chest. Dad.
If only he and Grandpa were there to enjoy the tribute.
It’d been seven years since the private plane crash that took them both.
An ache settled into his chest as he pictured the two men, accompanied by his brother, Winston, watching from their place in the heavens.
Duke tapped out a text in return: That’s awesome!
Grandma Lo: And they’d like you and Sylvia Sampson to announce the award together on a live feed. She’s back in town, you know. And her engagement just fell through.
Oh, great. Duke knew where Grandma was taking this and he wasn’t interested.
Another text popped in. It’d be great if the two of you went together. She mentioned that you took her to the Starry Night Prom at Stanford ten years ago.
No, it wouldn’t be great. That prom marked one of the dumbest decisions Duke had ever made, losing him a woman he still hadn’t gotten over.
Duke shook his head. For all he knew, his grandma had been the one to arrange for him and Sylvia to introduce as a duo.
The Sampsons had a big name, after all. She was probably trying to help him repair the damage done to the Benton family’s image.
An image he’d tarnished with the whole marriage swap thing.
Duke: I’ll keep her in mind.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket after hitting send. His refusal to commit wouldn’t surprise her. Lorraine knew how picky he was, which probably added to her concern that Duke would turn into a chronic bachelor, especially now that the rest of his siblings were married.
Funny that James, the youngest of the pack since Winston died, had set things into motion, like the first domino to drop.
He fell for and married his private chef, Camila.
Months later Betzy followed, saying I do to her childhood friend, Sawyer.
Then came Duke’s twin, Zander, at the start of the year. Of course, that one was different. That wedding marked the moment Duke dodged his duty of stepping up to the altar to marry a perfect stranger on live TV. Which began his plummet in the popularity rankings.
He’d gone from being the most adored Benton to the least. Even his very own fans turned against him.
The thought led him back to the matter at hand, causing him to huff out an irritated breath. “I make one tiny mistake and everyone’s mad at me.”
Perry chuckled under his breath. “One tiny mistake?” he squeaked. “Which part was the mistake? The part where you signed up for Married at First Meet, knowing you weren’t going to follow through with it if you got picked?
“Or was it the moment you decided—after the social experiment selected you out of thirty-plus thousand candidates—to not even show up to the wedding?
“Wait, I know the mistake you’re talking about,” his public relations rep continued.
“It must be the moment you allowed your identical twin to step into your place, marry a woman handpicked for you, and fall in love with her while all of America watched. That’s the one tiny mistake you’re talking about, right? ”
Duke rubbed his thumb over the divot in his pocket stone, back and forth. “You know what? You’re fired.”
Perry chuckled under his breath. “That’s what you always say. But trust me—you should be thanking me. Everyone wants to get interviewed by Verit?.”
“Do you think that’s her real name or just some pen name?” Duke wandered to the other side of the greenroom to a small bar. A crystal jar with a spout held ice water with lemon slices. A row of upside down glasses stood nearby. He poured himself some water as Perry replied.
“Verit? is truth in Italian. The woman says she’s a truth seeker—she prides herself on it.”
Duke furrowed his brow as he brought the glass to his lips. He paused before taking a sip. “The truth, huh?” A question came to mind, but rather than speak it aloud, Duke swallowed it down instead.
What if the truth about Duke Benton wasn’t all that interesting? The thought pricked at a deep fear of his. One he worked to keep far from reach. The same fear that threatened to roar its ugly head the more his public image tanked.
Shards of anxiety shot through him as he indulged that fear. The fear of being irrelevant, unimportant, invisible.
His phone let out another buzz. Duke tugged it from his pocket, anxious for an escape from the thoughts in his head. It was Grandma again, but this time she was calling, not texting.
“I’ll be right back.” Quickly, Duke strode out of the room and headed straight for the stairwell. “Hello?”
“She’s in town, you know,” Grandma said on the other end of the line. “She got in yesterday and came straight to the boutique to cancel the order on her dress. You should hear what that guy did to her. Awful.”
Chances were she’d done a lot worse to him, but Duke didn’t say so. Instead, he took the stairs like it was part of his workout routine, grateful to blow off the steam boiling beneath the surface. “You’re talking about Sylvia Sampson?”
“Yes, Sylvia, who else?” she said. “She asked about you. Said it would do her a lot of good to be seen with you on her arm right now, after what happened to her. And I think it’d boost your image as well.”
Duke rounded the landing and headed down the next flight. “It’d help my image to take Sylvia…”
“The Sampsons hold a lot of clout in LA. And they don’t come much prettier than her.”
Duke rounded the final landing before gripping the banister and heading back up. “She’s not really my type, Grandma. In fact, she’s kind of a brat.”
“It’s one night,” Grandma urged. “You’ll be announcing together already. Why not make it a date?”
“Because I don’t want to give her the wrong idea, that’s why.”
“She only wants it for her image,” Grandma specified. “She’s fresh off a breakup, for crying out loud.”
Man, she wasn’t going to let up, was she? “Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s my sweet grandson. Mark the last weekend of June for the gala, will you? That’s about two months from now.”
Duke had reached the seventeenth floor—Slipper Magazine’s floor—but rather than go back to the greenroom, he headed up to the rooftop instead. Something was getting under his skin. Something beyond the obvious irritations vying for his attention.
“You know who Verit? is?” he asked.
“Is that who’s interviewing you for your feature with Slipper?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
When she left it there, Duke prodded. “Wow, what? Is that good or bad?”
“No, it’s good. It’s really good actually. She’s just…well, I’d say honest at all costs. She should help people see you clearly, and that’s wonderful because you are an incredible guy.”
An incredible guy, huh? Duke didn’t feel incredible. He felt irrelevant. Each of his siblings seemed to be in newlywed bliss and the public was eating it up with a spoon. Gushing over every lame thing the couples did together.
Oh, looks like James is still treating his culinary princess like a queen, beside some picture of the two out for dinner. Or Betzy and Sawyer caught test-driving a new million-dollar machine. Will the two get a matching pair—His and Hers?
Why did anyone care? But they did. They cared more than they did about what he was doing.
“Duke?” came Grandma’s voice through the line. “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. But I should probably get back to the meeting. It’s about to start.”
“Okay. Good luck. Oh, and tell Verit? I’m a fan, will you? I’ve got a good feeling about this.”
“Will do,” Duke said before disconnecting the line. Grandma had a good feeling about it, did she? He sucked in a breath as he looked over the landscape. At least one of them did.