The introduction

{Hailey Pov}

“You will find out soon.” Clara gave me a knowing look. The foyer was bigger than some houses, easily a thousand square feet, like the person who had built it was afraid that the entryway might have to double as a place to host balls. Stone archways lined the foyer on either side, and the room stretched up two stories to an ornate ceiling, elaborately carved from wood. Even just looking up took my breath away.

“You’ve arrived.” A voice drew my attention back down to earth. “And right on time. I trust there were no problems with your flight?”

Harrison Leech was wearing a different suit now. This one was black, and so were his shirt and his tie.

“You.” Clara greeted him with a steely-eyed look.

“I take it I’m not forgiven for interfering?” Harrison asked.

“You’re old enough,” Clara retorted. “Would it kill you to act like it?”

“It might.” Harrison flashed his teeth in a smile. “And you’re welcome.” It took me a second to realize that by interfering, Harrison meant coming to fetch me. “Ladies,” he said, “may I take your coats?”

“I’ll keep mine,” I replied, feeling contrary, and like an extra layer between me and the rest of the world couldn’t hurt.

“And yours?” Harrison asked Kiara smoothly.

Still agog at the foyer, Libby shed her box and handed it to him.

A boy, maybe my age, maybe a little younger. He was wearing a suit. The boy’s suit was rumpled like he’d taken a nap in it, or twenty. The jacket wasn’t buttoned. The tie lying around his neck wasn’t tied. He was tall but had a baby face and a mop of dark, curly hair. His eyes were light brown, and so was his skin.

“Am I late?” he asked Harrison.

“One might suggest that you direct that query toward your watch.”

“Is Julian here yet?” the dark-haired boy amended his question.

Harrison stiffened. “No.”

The other boy grinned. “Then I’m not late!” He looked past Harrison to Kiara and me. “And these must be our guests! How rude of Harrison not to introduce us.”

A muscle in Harrison’s jaw twitched. “Hailey Vale,” he said formally, “and her friend Kiara, ladies, this is the youngest grandson of George Lachlan; Aaron.”

“Aaron is the baby of the house.”

“I’m the handsome one,” he corrected.

My fingers itched to pull out my phone and start taking pictures, but I resisted. Kiara had no such compunctions.

“May I ask: What are your feelings on roller coasters?”

I thought Kiara’s eyes might pop out of her head. “This place has a roller coaster?”

Aaron grinned. “Not exactly.” The next thing I knew, the “baby” of the Lachlan family, who was six feet three if he was an inch, was pulling my friend toward the back of the foyer.

I was dumbfounded. How can a house “not exactly” have a roller coaster? Beside me, Harrison snorted. I caught him looking at me. And narrowed my eyes. “What?”

“Ms. Clack said there were four of you.” I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know more about this family. About him.

“Four grandsons, I mean.”I have three brothers,” Aaron told me. “Same mother, different fathers. Our aunt Agnes doesn’t have any children.”

Speak of the devil.

He looked past me. “And on the topic of my relations, I feel as though I should issue a second apology, in advance.”

“Aaron, darling!” A woman swept up to us in a swirl of fabric and motion. Once her flowy shirt had settled around her, I tried to peg her age. Older than thirty, younger than fifty.

Beyond that, I couldn’t tell. “They’re ready for us in the Great Room,” she told Aaron. “Or they will be shortly.

Where’s your brother?”

“Specificity, Mother.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ‘Mother’ me, Aaron Lachlan.” She turned to me. “You’d think he was born wearing that suit,” she said with the air of someone confiding a great secret, “but Aaron was my little streaker. A real free spirit. We couldn’t keep clothes on him at all until he was four. Frankly. I didn't even try.”

She paused and assessed me without bothering to hide what she was doing. “You must be Hailey.”

The woman sighed but also smiled like she couldn't look at her son and not find herself utterly delighted in his presence. “I always swore my children would call me by my first name,” she told me. “I’d raise them as my equals, you know? But then, I always imagined having girls. Four boys later…” She gave the world’s most elegant shrug. Objectively, Aaron’s mother was over the top. But subjectively? She was infectious.

“Do you mind if I ask, dear, when is your birthday?” she asked suddenly, reaching up to touch my cheek. “Scorpio? Capricorn? Not a Pisces…

“Mother,” Aaron groaned. Then, with a dramatic eye-roll, “Debra.”

So this was Debra.

“Aaron’s a good boy,” she said with a wink. “Too good. We’ll talk.”

It took me a moment to realize that must be her first name, and that he’d used it to humor her in an attempt to get her to stop astrologically cross-examining me.

A second woman, Debra’s age or a little older, inserted herself into our conversation.

If Debra was flowy fabric and oversharing, this woman was pencil skirts and pearls.

“I’m Agnes Lachlan.” She eyed me, the expression on her face as plain as her name. “Do you mind if I ask, how did you know my father?”

Silence descended on the cavernous foyer. I swallowed.

“I didn’t.”

Aaron turned to look at me. Everyone else did too.

Agnes gave a tight, practiced smile. “Well. We appreciate your presence. It’s been a trying few weeks, as you can imagine.

These past few weeks, I filled in, when no one could get a hold of me.

A man with slicked-back hair appeared beside her. “Agnes, Mr. Smith would like a word.”

He didn’t look at me once.

Debra made up for it, and then some. “My sister ‘has words’ with people,” she commented. “I have conversations. Lovely conversations. Quite frankly, that’s how I ended up with four sons. Wonderful, intimate conversations with four fascinating men…”

“Please stop,” a new male voice groaned. “I’ll pay you to stop.”

A man in a slick navy suit, tailored within an inch of its life. Sharp jaw, colder eyes, hair darker. He looked like he hadn’t cracked a genuine smile since he came out of the womb. Power clung to him like smoke, undeniable, dangerous.

His expression was sharp enough to slice diamonds.

“Julian,” Harrison said with exaggerated relief. “Thank God you’re here.”

Debra beamed. “That’s our heir apparent,” she said, then looked at me. “Bribe, threaten, buy out, he couldn’t be more Lachlan if he tried.”

There was something in Debra’s voice, something about Julian’s expression when his mother said the phrase heir apparent, that made me think I had greatly underestimated just how much the Lachlan family wanted the will to be read.

They don’t know what’s in the will, either . I suddenly felt like I’d stepped into an arena, utterly unaware of the rules of the game.

“Now,” Debra said, looping one arm around me and one around Julian, “why don’t we make our way to the Great Room?”