The news of my surprise blind date ruined the cadence of my schedule.
On a normal day, I’d be midway into the selection process for a hostile takeover.
Eileen Yang had just saved a company at the expense of my mood.
The doorbell chimed at exactly three o’clock.
At the very least, she’d arrived on time.
I valued punctuality. It showed character. Well, the bare minimum, anyway.
I strode to my window, passing my uneaten lunch. A white Bentley parked beside my fountain, sparkling from a recent wash.
A fine choice. Nothing too offensive or gaudy. No bright-pink Range Rovers or neon-green Lamborghinis.
Stuffing my hands into my front pockets, I strolled out the office and down the staircase to greet my blind date.
To be fair, this could hardly be considered a blind date. Not when I’d cruised by a measly layer of security to get to Eileen’s file from the dating agency.
Eileen Yang.
Thirty-three.
Indeed, a neurologist based out of Manhattan.
Three degrees from two Ivy Leagues. Multiple Doctors Without Borders stints. The author of a popular A.P. Bio study guide.
Last year, she’d drained her royalties to pay off the 12-million-dollar mortgage for a condo on the Upper East side.
It seemed Mom had found the perfect girl for her. Which, of course, meant she’d found the perfect girl for me.
Now all I had to do was not fuck this up.
Easier said than done.
When it came to humans, I had more expertise in fucking up than succeeding. Women, specifically, found my entire existence a personal slight.
I never paid any real attention to them.
But when I did, it usually came in the form of brutal honesty, informing them that I found their conversation to be as mind-numbing as sorting grains of sand by size.
You literally know how to split atoms, Zach.
Surely, you can make this girl not hate you.
I moseyed down the hallway, descending the stairs, noting that the house looked particularly pristine today.
I was a little disappointed Farrow had yet to try anything fishy. I’d been under the impression we’d battle it out as soon as she arrived.
Perhaps she had something up her sleeve for me for later.
No part of me believed she would lay down and take it. Accept me as her boss and behave herself.
When I opened the front door, I found my mother’s ideal woman. Tall and slender with glossy dark tresses that reached her shoulders and a sage-green Burberry suit.
She wore her hair parted down the middle, tucked behind her ears, in a cut that could only be achieved with a ruler.
A neutral expression decorated her face, her posture proud and linear.
“Good afternoon.” She sounded almost robotic. Not necessarily a bad thing for someone who wasn’t a fan of homo sapiens. “Zachary?”
Regrettably.
I did a slight bow, stepping aside and gesturing for her to come in. “Eileen.”
Every fiber in my body shriveled at the idea that she might try to hug or kiss me.
Thankfully, she marched inside with practiced ease, not bothering to glance my way as she placed her black Ferragamo studio bag on the credenza.
She removed her sensible heels, neatly arranged the Malone Souliers together, and tucked them beside the door.
An Hermès scarf wrapped around her throat, designed to shelter the delicate skin from the sun.
She unknotted it, retying the silk into a fashionable bracelet around her wrist.
I pressed my lips together, stifling a grimace. It was as if my mother had personally raised her.
“I won’t take too much of your time.” The words came out with practiced eased, as if they’d been spoken dozens of times. How many blind dates had Eileen suffered through to reach this level of robotic? “If you could lend me the necklace, I’ll be on my way. I’ll inform our mothers we conversed and reached the conclusion that our future plans do not align. I would, however, appreciate the necklace. There’s a St. Jude’s charity event this evening, and your mother will ask questions if I don’t wear it.”
I wanted nothing more than to send her on her merry way, out of my life with that necklace.
But I’d made a promise to marry Mom’s chosen bride, and Eileen was the entire package. A piñata of good manners and superior upbringing.
“Would you like a tour of the house first?” I asked through gritted teeth. “You’ve made it all the way here, after all.”
We stood about eight feet from each other, neither of us eager to bridge the distance.
“Oh, really. I don’t wish to impose.”
Translation: please, don’t make me suffer through another second of this.
“Impose away.” My lips barely moved as I spoke. “The stock market closes in fifty minutes, and I’ve already put in the hours today.”
She stared at me like I’d just announced I bathed in cat urine every evening to unwind. “You finish your work day at four?”
“I work all hours of the day,” I clarified. “And nights.” In case you ever plan to ask for any of my time as a wife.
“Are you always so lax?” She frowned before smoothing out her expression.
I was not worth the wrinkle.
“Only today.” I forced myself to smile, sourness exploding in my mouth. “So? Care to join me?”
Eileen stiffened ever-so-slightly, an exhale sailing past her lips, a touch too rushed.
Obviously, she’d hoped I wouldn’t ask.
“I’ll take a tour, thank you.”
She didn’t want to be here just as much as I didn’t want her to be here. The fact that I wouldn’t have to pry her off me was oddly comforting.
With a swift nod, I cocked my head sideways toward the east wing.
We strolled a good distance away from each other, with me spewing boring anecdotes and facts about each room and the art that decorated it.
Eileen nodded at all the right moments, pretending to care, but I’d caught her checking her thin leather Cartier often.
I could do worse than to marry someone who didn’t want to be in the same room as me. In fact, I preferred it to the alternative.
Fending off a needy wife seemed like a new circle of hell.
On our way to the dining room, I caught sight of Farrow. So much for giving her space on her first day.
She kneeled in the corridor, scrubbing away a persistent mud stain from the porcelain tiles.
I’d gotten used to witnessing her in this state—sweaty, sporting a bird’s nest on her scalp, her clothes peppered with bleached pigments.
She looked pitiful. The product of poverty and exhaustion. So opposite of me and my genteel guest.
And, I realized, for the very first time, so fucking beautiful I couldn’t breathe.
With her sharp features, golden hair, and sparkling blues. And those overgrown bangs—a little wavy and out of control—that made her look like a cool grunge girl on a double spread of Vogue.
The line of thought startled me.
I never admired humans.
I certainly never admired them for something as temporary as their beauty.
This is good. This is fine.
As long as you remember she’s a means to an end and not an actual three-dimensional person, you can admire her looks.
To prove my own point, I sidestepped her like she was a puddle of puke, sneering down at her as I guided Eileen along the hallway. “You missed a spot.”
Farrow glared up at me, no doubt stabbing me in her mind. “Sorry, Boss, but you’re a permanent feature.”
There she is.
At my maid’s smart mouth, Eileen released a tiny gasp, turning to glance between us.
I stopped at the junction between the dining room and the guest wing, my eyes still pinned on my new housekeeper. “It’s Mr. Sun to you.”
Farrow slumped against the wall and blew a lock of hair from her eye, appraising me and Eileen.
No part of her seemed ashamed or distressed at being seen like this. At our feet. Scrubbing my floor to high shine.
She inclined her chin and offered a toothy grin directed at Eileen. “Did he tell you he sucks at Go?”
From her lips, it sounded just as Mom had suspected—like Go was code for something else, and she’d just accused me of being bad in bed.
Eileen’s brows shot to her hairline, her slender fingers kissing her collarbone. “Are you going to let her talk to you like this?”
“Hope not.” Farrow picked up her rag and resumed scrubbing. “My wet dream is to have him fire me.”
Astonishingly, I found myself wanting to be part of her wet dreams.
In fact, I was hard-pressed to conjure something I wanted more than to watch her with her legs spread open, buck naked, showing me how wet she was.
I’d officially lost it. Sailed deep into murky, unchartered waters with these foreign thoughts and unchecked desires.
A speck of dirty water splashed from the rag onto my bare toe with her thorough scrub. My eyelid twitched.
She batted her lashes, awarding us an angelic smile. “Not to be confused with him firing at me. Because he did that, too. Did he tell you he likes throwing knives?”
I was going to kill her.
But first, I was going to fuck her.
Because—and this was important—for whatever unknown reason, she seemed to be the only woman I could even contemplate being intimate with.
In fact, I discovered, I hadn’t stopped thinking about her face. Her body. Her derisive smile. The way she moved on the piste. Like Tinker Bell if she were an assassin.
So lethal and so soft at the same time.
Eileen jerked a step back, spinning her head to me. “You own a throwing knife?”
“Some antique blades.” I shot Farrow a withering look. “As part of my art collection.”
“He owns a tank, too.” Farrow grinned, obviously enjoying herself. “It’s the only thing he drives. G.I. Jerk.”
“It’s not a tank. It’s a Conquest Knight XV.”
“It’s made from aluminum.” Farrow cackled, clutching her stomach, not caring that she’d just added another dirt stain to her shirt. “I took it for a spin, by the way. He really shouldn’t leave his keys where everyone can see them.”
I bet she did.
And I didn’t know why, but it uplifted my mood to know she’d misbehaved.
“Anyway, I see you two have a lot to catch up on.” Farrow put two fingers to her forehead, saluting us. “Have fun, kids. I’ll leave you to it.”
Eileen frowned, palm tightening around the nape of her neck, clearly unimpressed with the verbal battle I’d gotten myself into with the help.
“Sorry about that.” I gestured for Eileen to continue up the stairs. “A pair of hikers found her in the woods just five years ago. She was raised by wild coyotes and grew up thinking she was one of them. I agreed to hire her as part of a rehabilitation program that focuses on integrating low-IQ individuals into society.”
“Interesting. Only five years ago.” Eileen shadowed my steps, swiping at her suit as if she could brush away the encounter with my feral octopus. “Her command of the English language is immaculate.”
We climbed the curved staircase to the soundtrack of Farrow’s bell-chime giggles. They echoed down the cavernous foyer, amplified by the sheer size of the mansion.
Up until now, I’d never considered my home to be too big.
“Her English is fine.” I led her to the opposite hall from my office. “It’s the content spilling from her mouth I take issue with.”
“You seem to share good chemistry.”
“Hardly.”
The only chemistry we shared was radioactive. Farrow and I were two corrosive elements, bound to blow up in spectacular fashion, but I always did like science.
Eileen followed me into my bedroom closet, stopping just shy of the safe.
True to her mannered upbringing, she turned to grant me privacy while I punched in the twenty-two-digit combination and withdrew the imperial-jade necklace my mother lent her.
It wasn’t lost on me that Farrow would not only watch me enter the code but also memorize it to use at a later date.
The two women couldn’t be any more different.
And for some wild, incomprehensible reason, I preferred the one with the manners of a starving bear.
I deposited the engraved case on the closet island between us. The recessed lights casted cold, blue shadows over Eileen.
When I looked at her beneath them, not a hair out of place, tidy, stylish, and deliberate, I knew there was no way I’d ever be able to touch her—with or without Farrow’s help.
This could never work.
I sucked in a breath, loathing myself for breaking my promise to Dad, yet again.
Just as I’d started to send her on her way, Eileen surprised me by blurting out, “I brought mooncakes.”
I crossed my arms. “What?”
Not only was this not the time for them, it was literally not the time for them according to the calendar.
A small smile tipped up her lips. The first human thing she’d done since stepping into my domain.
Rich, coming from me—I know.
She rested a hand on the island, surveying the closet, as though the idea of getting caught sharing the space with me was as disagreeable to her as it was to me.
“Mooncakes. From Chinatown. The real deal. Made by this ancient lady, who felt bad for running out of them last Moon Festival and cooked up a special batch for me. They’re triple yolked.”
Sounds like a recipe for clogged arteries.
It occurred to me that she’d abandoned the stilted formal speech, though I didn’t have a clue as to why.
“Grandma sent me all the way to this third-floor apartment in the middle of the night to pick them up.” When she noticed she’d left a fingerprint on the glass counter, she wiped it with the Hermès scarf swaddled around her wrist. “She said they’d win you over. I… I’m not even sure I want to do that.” Her lower lip twitched as if she’d suppressed a wince. “Win you over, I mean. This has nothing to do with you. You’re overqualified, like I knew you would be. But I don’t like…” She paused.
“You don’t like what?”
Mingling? Being set up by your family? Humans?
“Men,” she finished in a whisper, peering down at her toes.
This explained a lot about her single status.
And, to be frank, her lack of interest in my dick.
A knot in my shoulder began to loosen. “You’re gay?”
I could work with this.
A marriage on paper.
No expectations of emotions, interaction, sex.
“No.” She tucked her lip into her mouth, deliberating her next words. “I don’t like women, either. I don’t feel any desire toward anyone.”
Oh.
Mom truly had found the female version of me.
Well, up until Farrow Ballantine barreled into my life. Now, I one hundred percent did want to touch someone.
In fact, I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that.
Eileen’s gaze traveled up to my ceiling. Tears rimmed the lower ledge of her eyes. She blew out a raspberry, the sound almost jarring coming from her.
I blinked. “You don’t want to fuck me?”
“I wouldn’t even want to hug you if we ever got married. Which, by the way, I’ve only contemplated because I really don’t want to die alone. I want children. I want a family. I want to experience what other people enjoy.”
I stroked my chin.
This could work.
Eileen Yang wasn’t likeable, but she wasn’t horrible, either. Sufficiently quiet. Sufficiently independent.
And we both appeared to share the same problem.
“This is dreadful.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry I came here. I knew the necklace was just an excuse. I’m wasting both our tim—”
“Miss Yang?”
“Yes, Mr. Sun?”
“Let’s have those mooncakes. We have a lot to discuss.”
