Page 2 of The Love Losers

“I do,” I say wryly. “Seven years of lessons.”

Jake rolls his eyes. “Did you ride your pony while playing the piano?”

I roll my eyes right back at him. Jake grew up in foster care, something I didn’t know until recently, and he’s admitted that he has a chip on his shoulder about the rich. So do I. Which means I have a chip on my shoulder about myself. Someone who’s been as fortunate as me, with a springboard pushed beneath me to catch all of my falls, shouldn’t have anything to complain about. Yet I’ve never found very much joy in my opulent life.

“The true elite know that pocket keyboards don’t count,” I say, “and it was a horse. My father didn’t believe in half measures.”

“Neither does your mother,” Jake points out with a half-smile.

“Don’t get me started on her.”

He laughs again. “I don’t want to. I’ve got places to be, and once you get started, you have a hell of a time stopping.” His expression sobers. “Don’t give up hope, man. I think this next one really might be it. She didn’t give off a weird vibe at all.”

“You just said that about finger lady.”

He shrugs it off. “But finger lady is a masseuse. I should have been more suspicious, because I don’t think I’ve ever met a normal masseuse. This woman, though. She’s an accountant. Have you ever met an interesting accountant?” He slaps the table for emphasis, and the peanuts jump in their bowl. “She wants the money so she can open a private accounting firm. Make some ‘smart’ investments. Nothing off-the-wall or interesting about that.”

A laugh gusts out of me, but something inside of me feels like it’s sinking.

Boring is better than unhinged,I tell myself.Hell, if she’s a good accountant, maybe she can help you bring the business back to black.

All of that is true, and logically I know I’m not looking for a real relationship. That’s the last thing I want or need right now. But Iwillhave to spend a time with whomever I marry. We’ll have to make a few public appearances together before the scheduled breakup. Is it so much to ask that she be neither boring nor unhinged?

I shake off the thought, which belongs to a version of me who still hoped my eventual marriage would be more than a farce. “Maybe I should just let this go,” I say. “My sister Emma thinks I should walk away from the money.”

He snorts. “Easy for her to say. Didn’t you tell me she got her own trust fund, free and clear?”

I nod, my jaw tight at the reminder that my father didn’t trust me to amount to anything without external help from someone “stronger,” but he thought my sister would be perfectly fine onher own. Emma would remind me that he’d also paved the way for me to take over his company and hadn’t once considered the possibility that his daughter might be better-suited for the role. She’d be right. Then again, one of the only things Emma and I seem to agree on lately is that our father was an asshole.

“You don’t walk away from that kind of money,” Jake says firmly. “You just don’t.”

He’s not wrong.

Eleven-point-five millionisa lot of money. My father might have talked big about creating an empire, but he also inherited one. Both of his parents came from wealthy British bloodlines, imported from Massachusetts. My great-great-grandparents dined with the Vanderbilts at the Biltmore, a fact my father liked to remind us of when we didn’t want to eat our broccoli.

I steel my spine and nod. “Okay. I’ll meet with the accountant.” I lift my tainted ring finger and point it at him. “But if she sucks my finger, you’re fired.”

“What if she sucks—”

I cut him off with a glare.

He grins and nods. “I told you. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. She’s discreet. How about Saturday night? We’ve only got two weeks left, so I say we keep rolling.”

“How many more people have you talked to?” I ask, turning my pint glass in circles.

“We’re talking to two others,” Jake says, “but if you want my honest opinion, the accountant might be our best option. Lainey and I are going to keep looking for people, though. We’re trying a new ad.”

“Okay,” I say with a nod. “Saturday’s fine, but let’s make it lunch. Text me the details.”

Truthfully, I want a break from all of this, an escape, but he’s right. Time is running out, and I’d be a fool to walk away from the money and the deal.

Jake slaps the table again, smiling, then downs the rest of his beer. “I’ve gotta go, man.”

I motion to his empty glass. “Shouldn’t you wait a minute?”

“Lainey’s picking me up. She’s already outside, actually, but then you started talking about the finger sucking, and obviously I couldn’t leave until I heard all of it.”

“And I assume you’re about to tell her everything?”

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