Page 5 of The Loophole

This was a truly strange idea, but we were talking about a lot of money here. Even just the thousand dollars a month would be great, let alone that pot of gold a year from now.

Plus, Bryson seemed nice enough, so being his roommate and fake husband wouldn’t be a hardship. If he’d been a jerk, forget about it. I wouldn’t have done that to myself.

I knew I shouldn’t get my hopes up, though. He probably thought I was unhinged, or maybe some kind of con artist, after approaching him like that.

Still, I was proud of myself. I’d taken a chance, one with the potential to turn my life around. I’d been brave and bold, two words that didn’t usually apply to me.

Now I needed to think about whether I could really go through with this, on the off chance he actually said yes.

2

Bryson

I didn’t know what to think as I watched Embry leave the coffee house. Normally, if a stranger approached me like that, I would have walked away instead of hearing them out.

It probably helped that he was the least intimidating human being I’d ever seen. For one thing, he was tiny. Plus, he looked like a cartoon character with his big, blue eyes, curly white-blond hair that didn’t match his dark brows, and oversized pink hoodie, which had a picture of a unicorn farting a rainbow on it.

On the way out, he tripped over the perfectly flush threshold and squealed in alarm. I started to get up to go help him, but he managed to remain on his feet and made it through the door without further incident.

Yeah, definitely not intimidating.

I tried to imagine my uptight family’s reaction if I brought that guy and his hoodie home for Christmas, and a snort of laughter slipped from me. That made several people turn and stare at me—again. What an utterly humiliating day this had been.

I grabbed my coat and tossed my empty coffee cup on the way out. As soon as I stepped outside, a shiver ran through me.No wonder. I was sopping wet, and the breeze had picked up. I put on the coat and started walking at a quick pace.

It was barely six o’clock, but it was already dark. I hated that about winter. It made me want to go to bed and stay there. How the hell was it December already? There were colorful holiday decorations in almost every shop window, a constant reminder that I’d let this entire year get away from me.

I never should have gotten this close to the deadline without a plan in place. My grandfather was dead serious about it, too. When I’d approached him this past summer and asked for an extension, he’d turned me down flat and reminded me I’d had several years to make this happen.

I’d tried to tell him the idea that everyone needed to get married was outdated, and I was perfectly happy being single. I thought he’d get mad. Instead, he looked like he felt sorry for me. He’d said, “No you’re not, Bryson. You’re not happy at all. I’m not naïve enough to think finding yourself a wife will fix all your problems. But the forty-two years I had with your grandmother were the very best of my life, and I want you to experience what it’s like to have someone love you like that.”

It was a low blow to play the dead wife card. How could I argue with that? He’d also told me, “I don’t believe you’ll get out there and find someone on your own, which is why I felt the need to light this fire under your ass in the first place. And if you think I’m bluffing, make no mistake—if you don’t find someone and get married, you’re not getting a dime. Not now, and not when I die. I’ll make sure every penny goes to your brother and his spoiled kids.”

He honestly believed he was helping me, misguided as it was. And, of course, it was his money. He could do anything he wanted with it, including tying it up with unreasonable terms and conditions. Hell, he could leave his entire fortune to his neighbor’s parrot if he wanted to. It was totally his call.

I wished the money didn’t matter to me, but it was the only way I’d be able to try again with a new restaurant. So many people, including several family members, had told me the last one was going to fail. I needed to show them I could do this. The next onehad tobe a success.

I also needed to prove to myself there was one thing in the world I was actually good at. I’d worked so hard to learn my craft. I’d put absolutely everything on the back burner while I became the best chef I could possibly be, starting when I was still in high school. Instead of spending time with friends, or dating, or going to parties, I spent my evenings and weekends working as a dishwasher, a bus boy, a line cook—any job I could get, as long as it was in a restaurant.

Giving up on this dream would be like giving up on myself. There were a lot of days where I felt fully prepared to do that, but as long as a tiny glimmer of hope lived on somewhere deep inside me, I had to keep trying.

And this was the only path to my second chance. I’d destroyed my credit by getting overextended when the restaurant started to fail, and now there wasn’t a single financial institution that would give me a loan.

Nobody wanted to work with me, either. After exhausting all my west coast contacts looking for a partner or investor, I’d spent most of November going around to every contact I’d made in New York when I worked there in my twenties. But I had the stink of failure and desperation on me, so no wonder I’d come up empty-handed.

Thinking about this stuff was depressing, and by the time I reached my neighborhood, I was in a sour mood. The fact that my street looked like a holiday postcard just made me crankier.

I’d grown up on this block, but the atmosphere was changing. The older people were downsizing, and tech money was moving in. One of my new neighbors had decided to go all out withthe holiday decorations this year, and most of the block had followed suit.

Not me, though. My house was the only dark one on this side of the street. All the others were brightly lit and tastefully decorated. The money might be new, but this was still Nob Hill, with its stately single-family homes and timeless architecture. Nobody was hanging an inflatable Santa off the roof.

I paused on the sidewalk and looked up at my beautiful indigo blue Edwardian. My dad had bought it when I was ten, right after he and my mom got a divorce. I’d come to live with him, and I’d been happy here. We both were.

When he died four years ago and left me the house, it had been totally paid off. But I’d taken out high-interest first and second mortgages on it in my desperate attempt to keep the restaurant afloat. I’d liquidated all its assets after the restaurant failed, so I had enough in the bank to make the huge payments on those mortgages for the next year, but that was about it.

So yeah, I really needed my inheritance—not just to build another restaurant and secure my future, but to secure my past. My dad meant the world to me. He’d been my best friend, and this house was his pride and joy. Putting it at risk with those loans had been stupid and irresponsible, an act of desperation.

Was some quirky little guy in a farting unicorn sweatshirt the answer to my problems? I’d obviously have to do some digging and find out who the hell he was, but if it turned out he was trustworthy, could we really pull off a fake marriage?