Page 11 of The Paradise Problem

“Correct.” He looks down to his lap. “Only Jake knew the real situation. The rest of my family was disappointed that I didn’t let them throw me a big wedding, but I guess they weren’t all that surprised. I’ve always been private.”

“So you married me for housing but ended up getting a ton of cash, too?”

He nods. “With the inheritance, I could pay my tuition and living expenses and avoid having to ever work with my father.”

“Okay,” I say, dragging the word out. “I’m happy for you, but you started stressing out about the legal documents, and now I’m stressing out about them. What exactly did I sign? I thought the first was a standard prenup.”

He nods at this. “It was a document saying you are not entitled to any of my income or property.”

I frown. That’s a bummer. “I get nothing?” I grimace, realizing I sound greedy. “I guess I already got this couch and the old TV.”

“You also get ten thousand dollars once our divorce is final.”

Sitting up, I feel my lips stretch into a smile. “Seriously?”

West gives a tiny flicker of a smile. “Seriously.”

“Ten thousand dollars.” I pass a hand down my face, trying to keep it together, but that amount of money is life-changing. I could pay down over half of Dad’s remaining hospital bills. And then his words penetrate my fog. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘once our divorce is final’? Are you saying we aren’t divorced?”

He nods slowly. “I’m saying we are not divorced.”

I have to reach out and touch his leg again to make sure my brain isn’t making up this entire conversation. The firmness of his thigh under my fingers, the sheer strength of muscle there, tells me I’m not. “I thought the second set of papers I signed when you moved out were, like, standard divorce papers.”

He purses his lips, swallows. “They were not.”

I lean back against the couch. “Whoa. This is heavy.”

West nods. “The trust stipulates a five-year marriage. It does this to prevent one of the grandchildren from marrying someone and immediately divorcing them simply to get access to their money. The trust pays out a stipend every year for five years, and then the entirety of the remaining balance is mine. If we divorce before the five years passes, I forfeit the remaining balance of my trust.”

“What is your grandpa’s deal with being married? Like, can’t a dude just… date? Sow some wild oats?”

“He and my granny Lottie have both passed away, but they were very happily married for nearly sixty years. He created the business to be a family business, and this marriage stipulation was a way, he thought, of ensuring that it stayed a family business.” There’s something in his eyes, some tension that I am too high to translate. “He wanted that happiness for his grandkids.”

“Well… you do seem blissful, West. Really just a portrait of laid-back joy.”

I am rewarded with a smirk. “The contract you signed before I moved out states that we would remain married until September first of this year.”

I count out the remaining months on my fingers. May, June, July, August. Four more to go. “Okay, that’s not too bad.”

“After September first,” he says, “I can tell my family that things didn’t work out for us.”

“What if someone had wanted to marry me in the meantime?” He hesitates just a little too long. “It could happen!”

“You do realize we talked about all of this before I had the second contract drawn up?”

I wince, drawing my shoulders up to my ears. “It’s possible it felt like a lot of irrelevant details?” At his expression, I deflate. “I had a lot going on! I was graduating and finding a new place to live and dealing with stuff with my dad.”

We stare at each other.

“West? Hello, I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. How am I supposed to help you right now?”

“My family still thinks we’re married, but… there’s tension there with my father. He wants me to return to the family company.”

“Just tell him you’re very sorry, but you’re too busy being Indiana Jones now.”

“It isn’t that simple,” West says gently. “If my father suspects that our marriage is fraudulent, he will use my inheritance as leverage to get me to come back. I can avoid the conversation if I don’t see him, but seeing him is about to be unavoidable. Unless you help me, I’m concerned that he’ll begin to wonder whether I married you only to trigger my inheritance.”

“Because you did.”

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