2

"You will need to sign here, and initial and date each of these other pages," my father's lawyer instructed.

"Okay," I agreed, though without picking up the pen to sign. Instead, I started reading through the first page.

"Did you not understand the instructions?" The man's condescending tone was about to get him punched right in his crusty old balls. It didn't matter that he worked for my father. I wasn't an idiot and wouldn't put up with being treated as one.

I glanced up at him as I slid the glasses that I needed for reading down my nose, so that his face didn't appear blurry. "If you think I'll sign anything without reading it through for myself first, then you're the one that doesn't understand simple instructions. I don't trust you. I don't trust this guy," I stated while pointing to my future husband's name in the paperwork, "and I don't trust pretty much anyone else involved in this whole scenario to do what is best for me."

"I assure you that your father has the best of intentions for you, that is why I am here to represent you."

"If my father had the absolute best of intentions for me, he wouldn't be selling his daughter off in order to save his business after his previous business partner screwed him over, now, would he?"

"Ms. Robeson, I assure you that your father is not selling you off. I was told that you were made aware of all the nuances of this arrangement and that you agreed to them."

"Just because I agreed to do this for my father, and the family business, does not mean that I'm not being sold off to save the company, Sir. It just means that I'm willingly allowing myself to be put on the auction block. Let's not pretty up this dirty business, shall we? I don't enjoy telling lies, and I really don't like having them told to me. Now, if you don't mind, I need you to hush that mouth of yours and wait until I'm done reading this book-sized legal document you've presented me with. And let this be a lesson to you, next time you want to add all this legalese to bog a document down and make yourself sound important, someone like me might want to take the time to actually read and understand every single word of it."

I was sure I sounded badass, scary, and maybe a tad bitchy all things considered. Someone looking in from the outside may have been cheering for the fact that I wasn't letting the man push me around. Those people on the outside looking in couldn't see me literally shaking in my boots though. I kept my fingertips pressed down into the document as I read, just to control the shaking in my hands.

As I told the stuffy, stodgy lawyer sitting beside me, I may have agreed to this arrangement, but no matter how scary it was, there was only me, myself, and I to make sure I didn't get bent over and screwed in the worst way when this all came crashing down around us later. The only interaction I managed with Samuel Brighton Tucker in the past month had been the one time when I refused to meet his eyes in my father's office. Since then, every time our parents tried to get us into the same room, one of us would always have a reason for not showing up. Truthfully, it didn't bode well for our sham of a marriage, but then again, I never expected great things out of it anyway.

Last I heard, Sammy-boy was out slutting it up all over Atlanta, the Hollywood Hills, some dodgy beach in California, more beaches in Florida, and even at some wild party in Vancouver. Yes, that meant Canada. I rolled my eyes. How anyone was supposed to think we fell madly in love and decided to get married was beyond me, considering the very public spectacle he was making of himself. That made me stop reading and glance up at the lawyer – whose pretentious name I had already forgotten – because I needed some answers that probably weren't in this ridiculous document.

"How exactly did you propose we explain my fiancé's lack of discretion?"

"Beg pardon, Miss, but I'm unsure what you mean."

I sighed. "He's out fucking half the country and part of Canada, and not being quiet about it. There are pictures floating all over the internet for Christ's sake. How is any of this supposed to be believable?"

"A last hurrah before settling down?" The man offered as more of a question, complete with disbelieving wince.

"A last hurrah? And I'm supposed to be the docile little woman who sits at home okay with that and still agrees to marry the bastard?"

There was another lawyer present too. The one here representing Mr. Tucker – who failed to show up, because he was no doubt still tucked up between the two leggy bombshells who he was seen taking home the previous night. Yes, those pictures were already live on the internet too, including a few that had to be yanked from Instagram for showing too much of what happened once they arrived at his apartment.

I glanced at his lawyer then, waiting for an answer. He too winced as I tapped my pen annoyingly against the prenup that we were supposed to both be signing today. The younger lawyer's fingers flew over the keys of his phone as he failed to answer. At that point, I started to tap my pen against the table, rather than the document that had muffled the noise before. His attention immediately came back over to me. This man was much younger than my father's lawyer, almost too young. If I had to guess, he was probably doing my future husband a favor by being here.

I squinted my eyes his way, realizing why he had seemed so familiar. He had been in some of those pictures from last night. I set the pen aside, along with the ridiculously long document, and stood. "You know what?" I finally asked, drawing the attention of both lawyers. "When your client decides to grow up and take this seriously, I will too."

"What?" The younger man asked, standing as well, with a panicked look on his face.

I grinned at him. "See, the thing is, if I don't go through with this, I lose absolutely nothing. I have an inheritance I can fall back on. It doesn't require me to be married, thankfully. I also have a degree and a career in progress." Okay, the career part might have been a major stretch of the truth, but I had been working on my own dark romance manuscript since I first thought of the idea of writing it myself the month before. I had high hopes that it would be the start of a beautiful career. "My father still has legal actions he can take against his ex-partner as well as insurance and all that jazz. He'll be okay."

"Miss Robeson, you can't," his lawyer started to appeal to me, but I waved him off.

"My brother, sister, and I don't want to inherit the family business, so if Dad needs to sell and retire early, that's an option too. He simply wanted the legacy he created to live on in some way, and I agreed to this farce because I respect my father and didn't want to see his dream stollen away from him before he was ready to let it go. Plus, we both care about his employees and what will happen to them. That was the biggest reason I was here, but honestly, I don't owe them THIS kind of headache."

"He'll get over it though." I glanced down again at the exceedingly long prenuptial agreement, the signing of which had been my purpose for being here today. "Your client," I explained to the too-young attorney, "needs this to happen more than anyone else and yet, he's treating it like a veritable party, and doing everything possible to make the union everyone proposed to me seem highly unbelievable. If he can't be bothered to take this seriously, when he has everything to lose, then why should I bother when I personally have absolutely nothing on the line?"

"Your father," the guy started, but I ignored him.

"My father's mess is not mine to clean up, as I just stated. I will feel awful for him and his employees, but I will not help everyone else obtain their goals while I'm made an absolute fool of."

The door to the office opened and in came Mr. Tucker and his father, along with my own. "You are absolutely right, Mina. I apologize for the disrespect my son has shown you, when as you said, you do not have to do this for him or anyone else."

"Mina," my father called out before coming directly to my side and wrapping his arms around me. "I'm so sorry, baby girl. We'll call this off now," he told me. While he meant for it to be for my ears only, the others clearly heard him.

"Now, let's not be hasty," the older Mr. Tucker managed to get out before the door shut and chairs shuffled, where he and his son were obviously taking their seats. I turned to look at them, and for once, I actually took in the man who was meant to become my husband too. He looked like shit.

"You look like the shit someone accidentally stepped in, tried, and then failed to scrape from the bottom of their shoe," I told him.

"No need to sugarcoat anything," he mumbled.

"Why should I?" It was only then that he glanced up at me. I thought, for a moment, that I saw shame there in his features, but I was probably wrong considering he ruined it by opening his mouth.

"You should be thankful someone like me even agreed to marry you," he hissed as he gave me a once over that was meant to show me that I was lacking. I was a tiny girl and didn't possess the amazing curves my sister had. When I say tiny, I meant it. I was barely five feet tall with no truly definable curves because I stayed active and also because genetics were a bitch. Whatever. I knew I wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and yeah, it hurt to know the man I found so physically attractive – even if his personality was repulsive – thought I wasn't much to look at.

"Hey, Tuck, that's way out of fucking line," the young lawyer – I don't think he ever introduced himself to me, so I didn't know his name – managed to say to his buddy. He turned back to me and mouthed, "Sorry," but I didn't need his pity. Fuck him too.

I turned my attention back to Samuel-the player-Tucker. "I don't need to be thankful that some walking petri dish finds me undesirable," I fired back. "As I already made clear to both supposed lawyers present, this isn't something I have to do. I'm perfectly fine being a lonely, spinster, cat lady who leads a double life as a crazy-cool author of dark fantasy, mommy porn. I do not need you or your approval, and quite frankly, said approval, coming from you, would be worthless. When everyone, and I do mean everyone who doesn't want to use you for your supposed wealth, thinks you're a piece of shit human, why would I care to be seen on your arm?"

His jaw might as well have been parked on the table. I wasn't sure what part of my little speech shocked him more, but I knew what caused the sparkle in his friend's eyes. "You write porn?"

I rolled my eyes at him and then noted my father's embarrassed red hue. "Sorry Dad, I know that was a bit over the top, and honestly, I tried to do this thing for you and the business." I glanced around at all the men in the room who were just staring at me. "But really," I pointed at Sammy-the-playboy again, "that's what you gave me to work with, and I won't look like the idiot woman who has zero standards about the man she's with. I just can't do it. Besides, what if my fans realized who I was married to and saw the shit I put up with? It would kill my credibility."

Granted, I had no fans, because I had yet to publish, but in my hypothetical world where I actually sold the book that I was working on one day, it might matter. The men in this room did not need to know that though. So, I moved closer to the door, ready to make my escape before the elder Mr. Tucker called out to me. When I turned around, he was giving his son a death glare.

"Mina, I understand your concerns. What can we do to convince you to go through with this?"

I laughed. He had to be joking, right? "Seriously? No offense, Mr. Tucker, but there doesn't appear to be any fixing your son's shitastic personality. I think it's better this way. Maybe you can sucker some other girl into an arranged marriage with," I glanced at Samuel again and cringed, "that." My whole hand moved forward and swiped the air in the general direction of his son, as if I could wipe it clean.

"Who the hell are you to judge me?" Samuel asked, finally looking angry as he rose to his feet. While he wore a suit, it was completely disheveled and looked like something he'd picked up off whatever hotel room floor he'd landed in the night before.

I smiled at him and then moved closer to the table, across from where he stood. I took the iPad I brought with me back out of my bag and slapped it onto the table, none too carefully. I would hate myself for that bit of carelessness later. Then, quietly, while the men in the room watched, I pulled up all the pictures I'd saved for just this occasion, including the ones that were removed from Insta for their inappropriate nature. Then, I maximized the first one to fit the entire screen and started flipping through them one by one. I went slowly too, so that each of the men, whose eyes were glued to the screen, could see every little detail of his debauchery.

"These are only from the past two weeks. In fourteen days, you've had your hands, mouth, and other body parts in inappropriate places on just as many women and then some. You've done this all in a very public way, obviously, because I didn't even have to try hard to find these pictures. They were just there for the taking on any given day and night. Some of them were sent to me by my sister. Others by the woman who was my nanny when we were growing up. My own mother is actually the one who screenshotted the naughty ones from last night that were removed from Insta for violations of their nudity clause."

I continued to scroll through the pictures, there were over 50 and those were just the ones I'd saved. "So, when you ask who in the hell am I to judge you, I'm the woman who is supposed to pretend to be in love with you enough to marry you and save your business from falling to whomever your shareholders deem more responsible than you.

"Let's face it, if my family and former nanny are looking at these images and sending them to me, then your shareholders probably have a similar dossier to use against you when they suggest your replacement in the company. I don't have to judge you. You put it all out there for everyone to see, and for them to come to me with their concerns." I then took the too-many paged prenuptial agreement and tossed it to the center of the table.

"Then there's that hot mess. If you can't say what needs to be said in a prenup in less than 10 pages, really less than five would be lovely, then I won't even think of looking at it. Keep it simple, and all that. But in reality, it's a moot point considering," I pointed at the iPad where last night's naughtier photo still sat open for everyone to see. The photo showed Samuel lounging back on a couch, legs spread, pants unfastened, and cock out as a brunette woman, who was fully nude, was on her knees before him, hand on his cock, along with her mouth. You could just see the base of his cock where it jutted from his body, her hand, and then the point where her lips met her hand. Another woman, also nude and applying what looked like a line of coke to her breast, had just walked into the picture. I could only assume that the young lawyer – who was here in the boardroom with us – had taken the photo, though apparently it had been one of the women who posted to their social media thinking it was a good idea. Then I turned to my father. "It's one thing to ask me to do something like enter into a marriage of convenience, but it's another to ask me to stoop this low," I told him. "You should want far better for me, even from a fake relationship."

"I'll marry you instead," the friendly, younger lawyer confided.

"What the fuck, Wes? Shut up!" Sam glanced down at the iPad then and shook his own head in disgust, or at least that's what it seemed like for a moment. "Can we put that away now? Didn't really plan on my father seeing that."

"What? You didn't want your father to see you snorting coke off some stripper's tits while you're getting your dick sucked? Might should have thought about that one before doing it with cameras present."

He glared up at me then before picking up my iPad and throwing it across the room. "It's not what it looks like," he attempted to explain.

I simply laughed. "Even if someone had done a bang up photoshop job there, that's the image you present to the general public on a regular basis. So, if you're mad about your dad seeing it, imagine how your mom must feel, because I guarantee someone showed it to her and asked her about it."

His face paled. His father's head hung, as if he had already had to do some damage control where his wife was concerned. After the initial shock, he spat venomous words at me. "Like you're perfect! You admitted to writing fucking dark fantasy, mommy porn. You were probably out fucking just as many people."

I smirked in his direction. "You know the difference between me and you?" He didn't answer so I just went on. "Discretion, asshole. I have a fuck buddy who makes my body sing when I get an itch that needs scratched. Before today, there were exactly two people who knew about that arrangement." I glanced over at my father. "Sorry, Dad, I know you don't want to hear this."

I turned back to Sam, "My friend and I were together last night, testing out an idea I had for a scene I was writing, and you know what didn't happen? There were no pictures taken, no video, no evidence that it ever took place. I wouldn't even be talking about it to you now, especially not with my father present, but you need to understand the difference between the shit you pull and how grown ups handle their business. When you grow up and decide that your image matters to your family's company and its brand, as well as to yourself; then maybe you will be worthy of earning your place there. As it stands now, I can't help you, because you're an idiot."