Chapter 17
CHARLIE
Things need to get messier before they can get better.
I try to believe this wisdom as I stare around my disordered living space. There are cardboard boxes and random piles of belongings and packing material skewed everywhere.
So much for being able to pack up my life quickly.
But I haven’t relocated like this in a while. I’m not moving across town or to a place a couple of hours away. My possessions need to cross an ocean.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table.
I swipe it up, and an excited sweat breaks out over my body when I read the name on the screen.
Luna.
“Hey!” My greeting comes out more enthusiastically than necessary. But I’m bottled up after the days I’ve gone without speaking to her. Without seeing her.
Last time was at that café in the French Quarter. When she proposed.
“Charlie. Hi. It’s Luna.” Her voice sounds stiff, and I wonder if it’s our connection. More likely, she’s calling to back out of this whole thing.
My hopes waver on a cliff edge.
“Yeah. I have your number saved. How’s it going?”
“Good as it can be. I’m calling because I talked to the lawyer again. The executor of my grandmother’s will. I made sure I had all the requirements she’d set forth for me to receive my inheritance. Thought it would be good for me to lay everything on the table before you make any kind of decision.”
“Yeah. Of course.” I carefully place a handful of books in a moving box. “Definitely want all the facts before I decide.”
“Here it goes. Also, I warn you, my grandmother was a smart, tricky woman. She left me no loopholes to jump through as far as I can tell.”
“Okay. Lay it on me.”
“First off, the marriage, obviously. But the wording is that I need to be married by the time I turn thirty, and the inheritance will be paid out to me in monthly installments for a year as long as I remain married during that time.”
Married to Luna for a year. Not looking like a bad deal yet.
“And like I said, we can come up with a percentage of each payment you think is fair for you to receive. Or a lump sum at the end.”
I wonder if I blacked out for part of the original discussion because I do not remember any talk of me getting paid. The idea has me itchy. I don’t want to take Luna’s money.
“Don’t you need all of it for your brother?”
“If we stay together for the full year, there should be fifty thousand that won’t go to my uncle.”
“I don’t want your money, Luna.”
A longer pause.
“Sorry to have bothered you then. I’ll find another way.”
Panic ups my voice a few notches. “Wait! That’s not what I’m saying.”
The line is silent for a beat.
“Then what are you saying?”
“That you don’t need to pay me to help you out. I’ll do it with no money required.”
I wish Luna and I were talking face-to-face so I could get a better read on what these stretches of silence mean.
“You don’t know all the stipulations. You have to want something.”
Yeah, more time with you. The vibrant, badass woman I haven’t been able to stop thinking of since that damn yacht party.
“Why don’t you just tell me what the rest of the rules are?”
A sigh. “Okay. We need to live together during our marriage. Now, this is the big one. And the only reason I brought this all up was because you’d said you wanted to move back to the States.
I figure you can move in with me in Nashville and take the year we’re married to decide what you want to do next in your career.
” She huffs out a noise that sounds close enough to a laugh to ease my nerves. “I’ll be your sugar mama.”
Unfortunately, I was drinking tea during that last comment. Luckily, I was facing away from my books when I did a spit take, spraying some towels instead.
“My what?” I choke out.
“Your sugar mama. Like sugar daddy, but I’m the one supporting you financially.”
I’m busy wiping spit and Earl Grey off my chin as I work through her words. “You’re planning on supporting me? And paying me? How do you get any money out of this deal?”
“Creative budgeting.”
That sounds like a lot more work than it’s worth. Especially because I don’t want a paycheck from this arrangement.
“Fine.” I give in, but only for the moment. “What’s the rest?”
“We have to do a hobby together from a list she prepared and provide video evidence of us doing the activity the length of our marriage.”
I settle on my couch. “A hobby? Why a hobby?”
“My guess is, her goal was for me to stay married, even after the first year is up. I think this is her way of instituting bonding time. She and my grandfather took art classes together, apparently.”
“What’s on the list?”
“Let’s see.” There’s the sound of shuffling papers over the line. “Art classes are number one. Cooking classes. Dancing lessons. Couples yoga. Tai chi …” Luna rattles off a few more leisurely activities. “We have until my birthday to decide.”
“I’m good with any of those.”
Once again, a pause comes, long and heavy. I realize then that Luna pauses like this in person, too, but her gaze is so piercing that the conversation doesn’t seem to end when her mouth shuts.
“You’re making this too easy.”
“Am I supposed to make it hard?”
“I guess not. But I called, fully expecting to have to give you the hard sell and still get turned down. I’m not sure what’s appealing about this deal to you.”
You are, I want to say.
And it’s true. Side perks are having someone finally push me to leave the job I’m not passionate about anymore while also giving me a living option closer to my parents.
But the true draw is Luna herself.
I know this entire thing—the engagement, the marriage, living together—is all a ruse to get the inheritance.
But I can’t help hoping that maybe her grandmother was onto something.
That this could be a real chance to figure out if Luna and I are compatible.
Show her that I’m someone she could fall for.
“I like adventure. This is just one more wild life choice I get to make. And you’re not asking for eternity. Besides”—I let my voice sink a note deeper—“I’ve always been on the lookout for a sugar mama.”
That earns me a snort, and I can picture the cute way her nose wrinkles when she suppresses a laugh.
“Fine. It’s an adventure.” Luna’s voice gets serious then. “If I don’t claim this inheritance, then it goes to another beneficiary. We could probably trick the executor on a few of these things, but I don’t want to risk it. I’d rather whoever I do this with stick to the guidelines.”
“Do you know who the other inheritor would be?”
“Yes. And let’s just say, he’ll do anything he can to get this money. Luckily, he doesn’t know about it.”
I wonder who he could be. Not Dash. She already told me her younger brother gets the same payout when he’s thirty. I doubt it’s Leo or else Luna would want the money to go directly to her twin.
I let the question go, not secure enough in my position to ask her. Which is strange because if we go through with this plan, Luna will be my wife.
“Like I said, none of the rules you listed off seem hard to follow. If you’re down, then so am I.”
Again, Luna hits me with silence. Waiting for her to get her thoughts in order, I wander around my kitchen, making note of the items I’m particularly attached to.
The mug Paige got me with a picture of us screaming on a roller-coaster drop always makes me laugh.
I set it in the middle of the counter to be bubble-wrapped when I get off the phone.
“You mean it, don’t you?” Luna’s bafflement rings clear, even an ocean away. “You’ll marry me?”
“I will. How soon can I start shipping boxes to your place? I’ll put in my two weeks’ notice tomorrow, but I’ll probably need three to get everything squared away here—”
“Charlie,” she cuts me off.
“Yeah.”
“You’re … thank you.”
I grin, staring out my window at the street below, starting my slow goodbye to my life in Europe. “We’re in this together now.”
“I guess we are.”
“Now we’ve just got one more question to answer.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you going to be Luna Keller? Or should I be Charlie Lamont?”