BOOK DESCRIPTION
I was hired to find the cocky A-hole THE perfect wife.
What was not in this job description was kissing the future groom.
Much less have a one-night stand with him.
But guess what, he made me break all those rules... freaking one by one.
He made me forget what was on the line if I fail this job.
How much I stand to lose if anyone finds out I slept with the client.
Cliff
Why should I get married and tie myself down to only one woman when I could have them all.
Who wants to get burned all over again in this stupid game of love.
But of course, my parents had other ideas.
It's either follow their wishes or lose the company I have worked my ass off to expand.
When I am introduced to my little curvy very off-limits miss matchmaker,
The process to find my unicorn of a future wife does not seem so bad after all.
Especially when I am on the way to perfecting my art of pissing her off with each one of my failed dates.
I know I'm probably well on the way to getting kicked in the nuts,
And disowned by my parents,
But I just can't seem to behave when she is around.
CHAPTER 1
Cliff
“You’re disowned, Cliff. Disowned! D-I-S-OWNED.”
For the record, I’ve heard this before. Always from my mom, never from my dad. Usually, when she has the disinherited conversations with me, my dad isn’t around. Not because he doesn’t know what’s going on or that she’s doing it, but because her threats are always idle. She doesn’t mean it. My mom has a heart of pure frickin’ gold, and she’d never cut off her only son. Sure, I’ve pissed her off a fair number of times in the past, and shit got real, real fast, but this is just another tantrum.
Or so I thought until my dad stepped into the room and quietly took a seat on the Italian leather sofa beside my mom. I thought he’d crack a smile at me or give me some encouragement, but so far, all I’m staring at is a brick wall of grim-faced finality.
“Do you hear me, Cliff? You’ve denied me grandbabies for far too long! You’re thirty-three years old. Thirty-three. Thirty-three!” Mom’s tone gets high pitched at the end. She’s the queen of repeating stuff, as though if she does, she’s magically going to get through to me. Mom sniffs dramatically and reaches up to wipe at her eyes. I stiffen because I might be a thirty-three-year-old man but there’s no way I like to see my mom cry. Ever. “We have both come to the conclusion that we are going to have to take drastic measures for you to listen to us. Nothing we’ve done in the past has worked. The only thing that motivates you is money, so we’re cracking down unless you do exactly as we say.”
This has been an ongoing battle since the time my nuts dropped. My mom is frantic about grandbabies, and my dad, though he never shows it, is pretty frantic about the family name dying off. I guess the whole inheritance thing is an issue for them because they’re seriously loaded. Old money, straight up. They both came from large families and from generations of people who protected their money and turned it into more money to pass down to their hardworking offspring who proved themselves worthy of carrying the damn torch.
“You have only had one serious relationship in your life. One! And that was twelve years ago!” Mom is working herself up to her normal theatrics.
All I can do is sit back and wince and try not to think about Amy. If only Mom knew how things ended—mainly with a real shit pile’s worth of pain and heartache for me—maybe she’d understand why casual encounters had become more my thing. Getting burned is one thing. Getting burned like Amy did to me pretty much incinerates a guy’s heart.
“If I hadn’t—that is—if things hadn’t gone wrong when you were born, I would have given you brothers and sisters. You would have had playmates!” Mom says morosely. “As it was, we could only have you, and we have loved you with our whole hearts.”
That is true. My mom and dad loved the crap out of me. It never mattered how busy my dad was with business or how stressed my mom was with trying to help him out while raising me; they always made time for me. They played with me. Like, really played. They got right down to it and played all my silly little kid games. They were the brother and sister I never had. They made sure I had a regular life and went to a regular school and had regular friends. Most people didn’t even know they have oodles of money hidden away.
To the tune of a few billion dollars, but who’s counting?
Long story short, my parents are awesome. They’re the best. I love them to death, and I appreciate all they’ve done for me, including paying for a prestigious college and ensuring I got my Bachelor’s Degree in Business instead of just handing me a position at the company that I wasn’t ready for. I’ve worked alongside my parents for ten years now. We design garden supplies and sell seeds. No, not the gold ones. Just regular ones. It is kind of a fun business to be in as we’re always trying to source and find new seeds, even down to having our own farm laboratories to develop new varieties of flowers and vegetables.
My great, great, great grandparents started the company. It’s a family thing, and they want it to continue being a family thing. That’s also why they’re freaking out. My dad has two brothers, and both of them chose to dabble in the business for a while before going their own ways. His older brother is a lawyer while his younger brother cashed in early on his shares in the company and moved to the Caribbean. My mom, who married into the business, has a brother and a sister, and neither of them was interested in working with seeds even though the offer was made. Out of my six cousins, only one of them works at the company, and it looks like it’s going to be short-lived.
“Your cousin, Kyle, met his wife only a few years ago, and now they’re having a baby!” Mom continues on.
I start to fidget in my seat because, at this point, my ass was getting numb, but I also didn’t want to think about Kyle and Christine.
“They met in Vegas, Mom. They got married the same weekend at one of those all-night chapel things.”
“Well, they’re making it work! If they can do it, then anyone can do it.”
“That’s the definition of insanity right there.”
“Enough!” Mom wails, her eyes tearing up, and I knew I was in for it.
There wasn’t any getting out of this storm. Mom’s tears are no joke. So I wisely fall silent. Dad sits beside her, as stoic as a cement pillar, but he’s giving me that look. That disappointed look he gives me when I screw up a seed order or piss off a customer, which I haven’t done in a very long time since I climbed up the ladder to now become the CEO of the company. But I remember the disappointed dad look quite well. He’s given it to me a few times while I was growing up too.
“I’ve had enough, Cliff. This is getting serious. I want grandbabies, but that’s not the real issue. I can see how lonely you are and how you’re heading down a bad path.” So far, this is going the clichéd route of every conversation that no kid ever wants to have with their parents at any age. My mom is dead serious, though, so I sit there silently instead of commenting. “I’m done trying to keep track of your casual encounters. That is not how I raised you to be. I’m also done with hearing about you and your friends going to Vegas and—”