Forever Mine Read online

  Summary

  I’ve been saying that Lucy’s going to be my bride for years now, but she doesn’t take me seriously. I mean every word, and my love for her has never wavered.

  I finally convince her to tie the knot by making up a story that I need a bride to take over my family’s firm. It works. I’m married to the girl of my dreams.

  The problem is that now she thinks I don’t actually love her and that I married her only because I wanted money. How does a man go about convincing his best friend that he lives for her? That money means nothing if he doesn’t have her?

  I don’t know, but I won’t give up until I find out.

  Forever Mine

  Ella Goode

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Also by Ella Goode

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  Chapter One

  Wyatt

  “I need a wife.”

  “Not this again,” Lucy groans. She covers her eyes as if blocking her sight will block out my words. I pull her hand away and try to get her to meet my gaze. She refuses.

  “Yes, this again, and this time, it’s serious. Baker took me aside this morning and said that he wanted to promote me to the executive committee, but he couldn’t because I was single. Uncle Cristoff came by my office and stood at the doorway for five minutes in complete silence looking like someone had kicked his puppy.”

  “He doesn’t have a puppy.” She pulls her hand out of mine and brushes some non-existent crumbs off her lap. We just finished devouring a pizza while watching Chef’s Table on Netflix. We always eat while we watch the show, but while the on-screen people are eating some glorious concoction with ingredients that Lucy and I have to google, we’re munching on takeout from the local pizzeria or Thai place. Neither of us have the time or skill to cook. We live on restaurant food. Maybe that’s the problem. I try to remember if any of Lucy’s past boyfriends cooked. I can’t recall, but it’s because I’ve blocked all those memories out in the rare times she’s brought them up.

  “I know. That’s what made it even sadder.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “What do you think I did? I pretended he wasn’t there.” Like I pretend her exes don’t exist. Any man, really. “I acted very busy, reading depositions from that Friendship app copyright case, and he finally moved on.”

  “So get married.”

  “I can’t. I’m saving myself for you,” I reply as I always do.

  “Har har har,” she fake laughs and then punches me in the shoulder, as she always does. “Seriously, though, if getting married is what is preventing you from taking over the firm as your uncle wants, then get married. It’s not like you’re getting any younger.”

  “I’m thirty-five.” Although I do feel my age. I get tired easier. After my five-mile morning run, I’m gassed, whereas ten years ago, I could do the run and lift weights for an hour and still feel energized. These days, I’m dragging my ass down my route and coming home out of breath. What a pisser.

  “Like I said”—she pushes to her feet, as graceful as a ballerina—“you’re not getting any younger.” She walks toward the door of my townhouse where her purse sits and her shoes are tangled with mine. “I’ll send you a list of women.”

  “I don’t want it.” I cross my arms like a petulant kid.

  “Uncle Cristoff isn’t going to retire until the partners vote you into the chair seat, and if it requires you to get married, then I think we both know what you should do.”

  “Kidnap you,” I mutter under my breath.

  “What was that?” She hitches on her jacket.

  “I was closing the pizza box. Did you hear something?” There’s no point in me bringing up the marriage thing again.

  “I guess not.” She blows me a kiss from her lips. “Take care of yourself and don’t drink too much tonight. I’ll see you this weekend. We’re still on for dinner at Lucca’s, right?”

  “How do you know I’ll be drinking tonight?”

  “I see Leo walking up the side stairs carrying a bottle of booze.”

  “That could be just for him.”

  “Sure, Wyatt. It’s not your favorite or anything and about two hundred dollars more than Leo would ever spend. Anyway, be a good boy.” She ducks out the door with that.

  “As if I’m ever anything but a good boy,” I grumble. About five minutes later, there’s a double tap on the back door.

  “Come in. It’s unlocked,” I yell.

  Leo waltzes in, his nose red and goosepimples all over his uncovered forearms. “Heard Lucy leaving.” He holds up a bottle. “Want some?”

  “I’ll take it all.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “She’s sending me a list of eligible candidates.” I told Leo all about my dilemma earlier in the day before Lucy came over to shoot me down once again.

  Leo toes off his shoes and comes over to drop down on the sofa beside me. He nudges the pizza box open and swipes a leftover slice before breaking open the bottle.

  “I think you need to just come out and confess to her.” Leo fills the glass a third of the way full and hands it over.

  I gesture for him to pour more. It’s a half a bottle kind of night, not half a glass. “How much more blunt can I be than ‘we should get married’?”

  “I dunno, but whatever you’re doing isn’t working.”

  “You know what? Just hand me the bottle. This glass is for kids.”

  “I’m drinking from a glass,” he protests.

  “Precisely. You live in my attic, drink five hundred dollar Scotch out of plastic cups, and eat leftover pizza. You are a child.”

  “Well, so are you. Your toys are just bigger and more expensive, but you eat pizza and pad Thai instead of going to restaurants with the models that keep slipping you their phone numbers.”

  “That happened twice. You make it sound like I’m collecting them every week.”

  “Did the waitress at Soup and Salad not write her phone number down in front of both Lucy and me last Tuesday?”

  “I have no idea if it was a number. It could have been my order,” I lie. It was a number, and she winked at me, too. Lucy glared at both of us and said that we were trying to have lunch not get laid.

  I take a huge swallow and let the expensive liquor burn its way down to my stomach. Too bad I can’t scorch my unrequited love like this. Just take a torch to my heart and incinerate it. Wait, that’s what Lucy does every time she turns me down, but my stupid heart just regenerates. Did I really graduate summa cum laude? How can I be so dumb in real life? At some point, my heart will take the hint and move on. Right? RIGHT?

  Chapter Two

  Lucy

  With each name I put on the list, my stomach turns. I should have known this was going to happen. Why did I agree to do this to begin with? It’s as though I’m looking to inflict torture on myself. Or maybe it’s because I figured if Wyatt finds someone to marry then maybe I will be able to move past this crush I have on him.

  I should have anticipated it coming to an end. That we wouldn’t be able to stay in the safe bubble we created over the past two years since he came into my life out of nowhere. It felt like it was only yesterday that he acted like a knight in shining armor and saved me from
being fired from my job.

  I’d barely been with Perfect Event Creations for a few months when I suddenly lost my mom. Dealing with the grief of losing the most important person in my life and trying to keep up with my job had me in way over my head.

  Wyatt’s firm had hired us for an event. Our job was to set up and make sure everything ran smoothly. I was in charge of hiring the talent and doing the welcome gifts along with a few other odds and ends. I’d messed up both of the two main things I was told to do by hiring the wrong band and forgetting the gift bags.

  My boss had been laying into me, and I swear she was seconds away from kicking me to the curb when Wyatt strolled in. He proceeded to tell her that he had asked me for the change of band and said he canceled the gift bags because the firm had decided they were going to make a donation in each guest's name to a local food bank instead.

  I got a small scolding for not telling my boss Meredith about the changes, but she quickly got over it. And the glowing review the firm left about me had me getting a promotion instead of getting canned as I should have been. Since then, Wyatt has been a rock that pushed his way into my life. One I leaned on during one of the hardest times in my life.

  “Whatcha doing?” Eden drops down in the chair next to mine, pulling off her barista hat. She’s been working at my local coffee shop The Daily Drip for a few months now. She loves gossip and has slowly pulled the fact that I have a crush on Wyatt out of me.

  I swear she’s better than any bartender at getting people to spill stuff. But I know I can trust her. She’s like a vault when it comes to keeping secrets. She may get you to reveal them to her, but she doesn’t go spreading your business to others.

  “Making a list.” Her eyes drop down to the paper, where I have some of the names listed.

  “Another over-the-top party with the rich and famous?”

  “If only.” I’d so rather the list be for that than what it’s actually for. “It is a list of the rich, though.” I was going through our database looking for women who I knew were single and measured up to Wyatt’s family in social class, power, and money. The kind of girl they would be looking for him to marry.

  “Tell me more.” She leans in.

  “Wyatt needs a wife. Pretty sure he wants one too. He's been acting differently lately.”

  “Then he should marry you. Problem solved.” She says it like it’s the obvious choice.

  I roll my eyes. “He’s my best friend. Besides, I might work in his world, as the hired help, mind you,” I point out. “But I’m not a part of it. Plus you know how I feel about marriage. Love ruins lives.” I know this firsthand. It ruined my mother’s.

  “Not every man is your father.”

  I shake my head. Even on her deathbed my mom asked if he was coming. I’d broken down and begged him to come. He finally said he would do it but only if I agreed to have monthly dinners with him. I had. I would’ve done anything for my mom. Even make a deal with the devil. And my dad was pretty close to being just that.

  “Are you sure about that? I tried dating some before Mom got sick, and it was—” I make a face that explains it all. Then again, I never met any man like Wyatt before.

  “So you’re going to watch your best friend”—she holds up her fingers doing air quotes when she says it—“marry someone.”

  “You’re forgetting he doesn't see me as more than a friend. He’s made that clear in the past.” I try not to cringe thinking about it. It had been a few months after we met and we’d been hanging at his place. We’d watched the movie Stepmom. Between that and too much wine I’d been a mess. I tried to kiss him. He’d shut it down quick. I tried icing him out after that, embarrassed that I had come on to him. But in true Wyatt fashion he didn't let me, and our friendship only grew from there. So has my crush.

  Even calling it a crush is too small for what I feel for him. He has this calming force over me. I relax when I’m with him. I don’t know how he manages it, but he does. I’ve had to learn to live with the fact that he only considers me a friend. Yet I have to admit that each time he suggests that I marry him, a small part of me wishes I could do exactly that. Even though I know he’d only be doing it out of convenience.

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen the way he looks at you when he comes in here.”

  “I think you’re reading too many romance novels.” I open my laptop and attach the list to an email. My finger hovers over the send button. Don’t be selfish. He saved my job once; this is my chance to return the favor.

  I hit send. Regret hits me harder than I ever could have imagined.

  Chapter Three

  Wyatt

  A list? I stare in stupefaction at the email I just got from Lucy. She actually did it. How in the world could she create a list of supposedly perfect candidates for marriage? It should only be her name on the list. I press print, grab the paper, and rush out the door to The Daily Drip, where I know Lucy will be hanging out as the place is her second home.

  “What the hell is this?” I shout, shaking the paper at her.

  “It’s a piece of paper from the looks of it, and since you’re a lawyer, it could be anything from you demanding a million dollars to you asking for the network to be checked because you can’t load the NBA app.” She takes a sip of her skinny mocha no whip, extra hot, please, latte. Her friend, Eden, watches from behind the espresso machine.

  “It’s the list of names you sent me. Don’t forget the almond milk. That shit is good.”

  “I know how you like it,” calls Eden.

  “But you only started making it with almond milk six months ago,” I remind her. At first, I didn’t like the change-up, but now I can’t drink the regular cow stuff.

  “Because Lucy told me to switch it up for you. She knows what you like.”

  I turn to Lucy with a glower. “This is not the same thing as turning me on to almond milk in my coffee.”

  Lucy grabs the list from me. “Stop waving that around. Why are you printing it out anyway? Save some trees.” She grabs the now finished drink from Eden, shoves it into my hand, takes my phone from my other hand, flashes it in front of the screen, and then places it into my breast pocket. “There you go. Coffee made. Check paid. Off you go.”

  And just like that I’m dismissed. Unreal. I pick up my coffee and take a drink. At least my morning brew is perfect.

  When I get to my office, Ernest informs me that my Uncle Cristoff wants to see me.

  “Give him this,” I tell my assistant. I shove the crumpled paper in his face.

  He scans it over quickly and asks, “Is this a marriage list?”

  “I didn’t make it. It’s a gift from Lucy.” I really thought after Lucy kissed me that we might have a chance, but the next day, when she wasn’t drunk, she acted like she never wanted to speak of the incident again. As if kissing me was the worst thing she’d ever done in her life.

  “Lucy gave you this?” he repeats.

  “Yes. I feel the same way—dumbfounded.”

  “I don’t see her name on it.”

  “She doesn’t think she’s good marriage material.”

  “Maybe she thinks you’re not good marriage material,” Ernest counters.

  I stop at the door to my office and spin back to my assistant. “Are you serious?”

  “You’re a workaholic, somewhat short-tempered, don’t care much for other people’s opinions, like having your own way. Did I mention workaholic?”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “You had a shower installed because you felt like it took too long to get to your townhouse which is a five-minute walk away.”

  I frown. Everyone at the firm thought my shower idea was brilliant. Three more went in after mine was installed. “Are you complaining about your hours, Ernest?”

  He throws up his hands. “No. I love working on Saturdays.”

  “Good because this weekend, we’re going over the Patrie depos. I think I caught one of the brothers admitting he was intentionally decreasing the
value of the stock to play into the hands of short sellers.”

  “Sounds like the best time.” Ernest flops into his chair.

  “I feel like that’s sarcasm, but I’m going to ignore it because that’s what I do.” I slam the door to my office shut and stomp over to my desk. Lucy giving me the list and Ernest complaining about work puts me in a sour mood. So what that I like to work? What else is there to do when the love of your life is ignoring your non-stop proposals for marriage?

  The phone rings as I’m contemplating the unfairness of it all.

  “It’s your uncle.” Ernest’s voice speaks over the intercom.

  I ignore the phone and get up. Uncle Cristoff will keep calling until I go and see him. “Not a word, Ernest,” I warn when I leave the office. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him making a zipping motion across his lips.

  Uncle Cristoff’s office is at the end of the floor, behind a set of solid cherry doors. I wave to his secretary, a lithe young thing of maybe twenty-five. He always replaces them before they’re thirty. “I’m old,” he told me once, “and having nice things to look at is my one weakness.”

  Because Uncle Cristoff is the head of our family, I refrained from pointing out that he has a gambling addiction as well as a tendency to make terrible investments in the market. Good thing we Donovans have a buttload of money, or Uncle Cristoff would be living in a shack along the railroad tracks.

  “Wyatt, my boy! Come in. Come in.” The old man waves me into one of the large leather chairs arranged in front of his desk. Cigar smoke is so thick it almost creates an opaque bubble around Cristoff’s head.