“Why are you calling me, Mr. Moore?”
“This is a reminder that Mr. Carter’s estate has been in abeyance for the last five years. Mr. Carter wanted you to inherit, but he didn’t want to share his wealth with your future spouse. His will states that if you have not remarried five years after his death, you inherit his estate.”
“What?”
“His estate includes his numerous bank accounts, his properties—both here and overseas—and his shares in Carter International. Also included are his art, furniture and gemstone collections. The estate is valued in the region of $200 million.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want anything! Give it to his sons.”
“The will cannot be changed and his assets cannot be transferred. If you remarry before the anniversary of his death, then you will no longer be a beneficiary of Mr. Carter’s will and only then will his estate be split evenly between his two sons.”
Toby, you scumbag. “So I have to marry within four months to make sure that his sons inherit what they are—morally and ethically—entitled to?” Cal demanded, feeling her heart thud against her rib cage.
“Exactly.”
“Do you know how nuts this is?”
After begging her to read his emails, Moore ended the call. Cal closed her eyes and pulled in deep breaths, flooding her lungs with air in order to push back the panic. Everything Toby owned was tainted, covered with the same deep, dark, controlling and possessive energy that he’d concealed beneath the charming, urbane, kind personality he showed the world.
Cal scrunched her eyelids closed, trying not to remember the vicious taunting, her confusion, the desperation. He was five years dead and he could still make her panic, make her doubt herself, turn her hard-fought independence into insecurity. She couldn’t be his heir. She didn’t want to own anything of his. She never wanted to be linked to him again.
To remain mentally and emotionally free of her husband, she couldn’t be tied to anything he owned. She’d marry the first man she could to rid herself of his contaminated legacy.
Cal turned as she heard the door to the lounge slide open and saw Quinn standing there. She pulled a smile onto her face and hoped that Quinn was too involved in his own drama to notice that she’d taken a starring role in one of her own.
Quinn frowned at her, obviously seeing something on her face or in her eyes to make him pause. “Everything okay?” he asked as he gestured her inside.
Cal nodded as she walked back into the lounge.
“Apart from the fact that I need a husband, I’m good.” Cal saw the shocked expressions that followed and waved her comment away. “Bad joke. Ignore me. So, have you found a solution to your problem? Any ideas on how to get Quinn some good press?”
Wren leaned forward and crossed her legs, linking her hands over her knees, her expression thoughtful. “I wish you weren’t joking, Cal. Quinn marrying you would be excellent PR for him.”
Mac and Kade laughed, Quinn spluttered, but Cal just lifted her eyebrows in a tell-me-more expression.
“You’re PR gold, Callahan. You are the only child of a fairy-tale romance between your superrich father and Rachel Thomas, the principal soloist with the Royal Canadian Ballet Company, who is considered one of the world’s best ballerinas. You married Toby Carter, the most elusive and eligible of Vancouver’s bachelors until these three knuckleheads came along. The public loves you to distraction, despite the fact that you are seldom in the city.”
Could she? Did she dare? It would be a quick, convenient solution.
Cal gathered her courage, pulled on her brightest smile and turned to Quinn. “So, what do you think? Want to get married?”
Cal called a final good-bye to Quinn’s friends and closed the sliding door behind them. She walked through the main salon, passed the large dining table and hesitated at the steps that would take her belowdecks to the sleeping cabins below. Quinn had hurried down those stairs after she’d dropped her bombshell but not before telling her that her suggestion that they marry was deeply unamusing and wildly inappropriate.
She hadn’t been joking and the urge to run downstairs and explain was strong. But Cal knew Quinn, knew that he needed some time alone to work through his temper, to gather his thoughts. She did too. To give them both a little time, she walked back into the kitchen and snagged a microbrew from his stash in the fridge. Twisting the top off, she took a swallow straight from the bottle. She’d been back in Vancouver for less than a day and she already felt like the city had a feather pillow over her face.
Being back in Vancouver always did that to her; the city she’d loved as a child, a teenager and a young woman now felt like it was trying to smother her.
Cal pulled a face. As pretty as Quinn’s new yacht was, she didn’t want to be here. A square inch of her heart—the inch that was pure bitch—resented having to come back here, resented leaving the anonymity of the life she’d created after Toby. But her father needed her here and since he was the only family she had left, she’d caught the first flight home.
Cal ran the cold bottle over her cheek and closed her eyes. When she was away from Vancouver, she was Cal Adam and she had little connection to Callahan Adam-Carter, Toby’s young, socially connected, perfectly pedigreed bride. Despite the fact that she stood to inherit her father’s wealth, she was as far removed from the wife she’d been as politicians were from the truth. The residents of her hometown would be shocked to realize that she was now as normal as any single, almost-thirty-year-old widowed woman who’d grown up in the public eye could be.
She’d worked hard to chase her freedom, to live independently, to find her individuality. It hadn’t always been easy. She was the only child of one of the country’s richest men, the widow of another rich, wildly popular man and the daughter of a beloved icon of the dance world. Her best friend was also the city’s favorite bad boy.
To whom, on a spur-of-the-moment suggestion, she’d just proposed marriage. Crazy!
Yet...yet in a small, pure part of her brain, it made complete sense on a number of levels and in the last few years she’d learned to listen to that insistent voice.
First, and most important, marrying her would be a good move for Quinn. She was reasonably pretty, socially connected and the reporters and photographers loved her. She was also so rarely in the city that whatever she did, or said, was guaranteed to garner coverage. In a nutshell, she sold newspapers, online or print. Being linked with her, being married to her, would send a very strong message that Quinn was turning his life around.
Because nobody—not even Quinn Rayne, legendary bad boy—would play games with Callahan Adam-Carter. And, as a bonus, her father and Warren Bayliss did a lot of business together, so Bayliss wouldn’t dare try excluding Cauley’s son-in-law from any deal involving the other two Mavericks.
Yeah, marrying her would be a very good move on Quinn’s part.
As for her...
If she wanted no part of Toby’s inheritance, then she needed to marry. That was nonnegotiable. And in order to protect herself, to protect her freedom and independence, she needed to marry a man who was safe, someone she could be honest with. She knew Quinn and trusted him. He lived life on his own terms and, since he hated restrictions, he was a live-and-let-live type of guy. Just the type of man—the only type of man—she could ever consider marrying.
Quinn wouldn’t rock her emotional boat. She’d known him all her life, and never thought of him in