The Boyfriend Arrangement. Andrea Laurence
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its occupant to lay fully flat for sleeping on the overnight flight. A flute of champagne and a chocolate-covered strawberry stenciled with the letters V&A in edible gold awaited each guest at their seat as well as a handwritten card in calligraphy with each person’s name.
Violet was certainly out to throw a memorable wedding, if nothing else.
They’d been assigned row thirteen of sixteen, seats A and B, so she made her way down the right aisle through the crowd of familiar faces. They were nearly the last to board, so the area was bustling with activity as guests settled in. Quentin hadn’t been kidding when he’d said this wedding was the event of the year. People salivated over the idea of receiving a coveted invitation, but the guest list had been kept down to less than a hundred by virtue of the plane and the wedding venue.
Even then, Harper still knew almost everyone on the plane. A few friends and family of Violet’s fiancé, Aidan, were unfamiliar to her, but there were far more of Violet’s circle than anyone. She smiled and waved politely as she pressed on, even when she saw Quentin in the back row on the far left. He was sitting beside an attractive brunette who seemed a little young for him, but Harper was trying not to let her bitterness color her opinion.
“Here we go,” she said as she stopped at their row. Emma and Jonah were seated across the aisle from them in the center section, and Harper could see Emma was already heavily appraising Sebastian from her seat. She tried not to focus on that, instead stowing her bag and her coat in the overhead bin to clear the aisle for others to board.
“Introductions!” Emma said before Harper could even slide into the row to sit.
She pasted on a bright smile and turned their way. “Sebastian, these are my good friends Jonah and Emma Flynn. I work for Jonah’s gaming software company, FlynnSoft. You guys, this is my boyfriend, Sebastian West.”
Jonah stuck out his hand and the two men exchanged a firm handshake. “Good to meet you both,” Sebastian said. “Harper has told me how much she enjoys her job at FlynnSoft. I’m sure that reflects well on you, Jonah.”
She tried not to look impressed and instead turned toward her seat. It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed a small, white envelope on the window seat. She picked the envelope up and settled in so Sebastian could take his place at her side. She looked around, wondering who might’ve put it on her seat, but no one seemed to be looking or paying any attention to her. There weren’t envelopes like this one on the other seats. Just one for her, with her name written on the front in nondescript block letters.
While Sebastian put his bag in the overhead bin, Harper opened the envelope and pulled out the single page inside. It was handwritten, and relatively short, but it delivered a huge impact.
I know your little secret. If you don’t want everyone to find out the truth and risk your big inheritance, you’ll do exactly what I say. Once we arrive in Ireland, you’ll go to the bank and withdraw a hundred thousand dollars. Then you’ll leave it in an envelope at the front desk of the hotel for “B. Mayler” by dinnertime tomorrow. Miss the deadline and I’m going to make a big problem for you, Harper.
She read the words a dozen times, trying to make sense of it all, but there was no way to make sense of what she was seeing. Her heart was pounding in her ears, deafening her to anything but the sound of her internal panic. The fantastic plane and everyone on it faded into the background.
This was blackmail. She was being blackmailed.
How was that even possible?
Harper had been so careful about her secret. Aside from sharing some of it with Sebastian yesterday, no one, not her closest friends or family, knew the truth. Not even her brother or father knew about her financial difficulties. She’d kept it quiet for over eight years, working hard to make ends meet until the next payment came and she didn’t have to fake it any longer. Sebastian had been the first to question her curious behavior, and it hadn’t seemed to hurt to share a little information with him considering her birthday was right around the corner.
But someone had found out her secret, and that was a big problem.
Her grandfather on her mother’s side of the family had set up a thirty-million-dollar trust fund for both her and her brother when they were born. It included a two-million-dollar payment on their eighteenth birthdays followed by a twenty-eight-million-dollar payment on their thirtieth birthdays. Harper’s thirtieth was only a few weeks away now. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel. She should be coasting to the finish line, but her foolish youthful behavior had put everything at risk.
After her father ran into financial troubles with his gold-digging second wife, her grandfather had added a new provision to the grandchildren’s trusts—if it was discovered that they had been financially irresponsible with their first payments, there would be no second payment. Ever-responsible Oliver had had no problem managing his money and had made his own fortune many times over. He hardly needed the second payment by the time his thirtieth birthday came around. But not Harper. By the time the provision was added, her frivolous lifestyle had already helped her blow through most of the first two million.
When she found out about the addendum, she’d realized she had to keep her situation a secret. Her grandfather couldn’t find out or she’d risk the money she desperately needed. That second payment would put an end to her charade. She wouldn’t have to eat ramen noodles for weeks to pay her massive building fee at the beginning of the year. She wouldn’t have to return everything she bought and scour the thrift stores for designer finds to keep up her facade of a spoiled heiress. Harper wouldn’t blow this new money—she wasn’t a naive child any longer—but it would be nice not to have to pretend she had more than two grand in her savings account.
Thankfully that two thousand dollars she’d earmarked for Sebastian could stay put. It was all she had aside from her FlynnSoft 401K with its stiff withdrawal penalties. Where was she going to come up with a hundred thousand dollars by tomorrow? In a month, easy. But now...it was an impossible task.
“Are you okay?”
Harper quickly folded the letter closed and shoved it back into the envelope. She looked over at Sebastian, who had settled into his seat and buckled up. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just reading over something.”
“You look like the plane is about to crash,” he noted. “You’re white as a sheet. Since they haven’t even closed the cabin door yet, I was concerned.”
“Flying isn’t my favorite thing,” she lied, and slipped the note into her purse. “Even on a fancy jet like this. My doctor gave me some pills and I hope to wake up in Ireland before I know it.”
“Sleep? And miss a minute of this luxurious travel?” Sebastian picked up his crystal champagne flute. “Shall we toast before you slip into a drug-induced coma?”
Harper picked up her drink and fought to keep her hand from trembling with nerves. “What should we drink to?”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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