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CHAPTER TWO
BASTIENHUNGUP the phone and tried to work on his spreadsheets, but he couldn’t concentrate. He wished the bachelor party was over and done with instead of just beginning. It brought back too many memories of his own wedding and what an idiot he had been.
Clicking over to his external drive, Bastien accessed Jace Benjamin’s folder. Bastien checked the information that he had the private investigator gather for him. Jace was financially solvent. He was not marrying Kitty for her money. But Bastien strongly suspected Jace’s father would reward him somehow for marrying into the Ainsworth family.
Unfortunately, Bastien didn’t know how to prove that without breaking his sister’s heart in the process.
“Knock knock.”
Speak of the devil.
Kitty had short brown hair and green eyes. She looked like their mother’s side of the family and had inherited the nose. Unlike her mother and her mother before her, Kitty refused to get plastic surgery to make it more “photogenic,” as their mother put it. Bastien thought Kitty was beautiful just the way she was. He only hoped Jace felt the same way.
“I was just thinking about you,” he said.
“Is that why you were scowling at the computer?” Kitty flopped into the chair across from his desk. “I didn’t do it. I swear it wasn’t me. I wasn’t even in the factory when it happened.”
Bastien opened his mouth to ask, and then shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”
Kitty was a buyer for the company and had an eye for textiles and design. Their mother wanted her to be a model, but...the nose.
“I was hoping we could go out to lunch,” she said.
Bastien checked his watch. It was barely 11:30 a.m., but he wasn’t doing anything productive anyway. “I suppose I’m buying?”
“How kind of you to offer.” She smirked.
They walked in companionable silence until they got to the elevator. “So, what’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it Jace?”
“What? No.” She shook her head. “I just wanted to spend some time with my favorite brother. Is that too much to ask?”
“I’m your only brother. How much?”
“How much time?”
“How much money do you want?”
“Well, if you’ve got your checkbook open, I wouldn’t refuse if you wanted to give me an advance on next month’s salary.”
“What do you want to buy?”
“I want to elope to Tahiti.”
Bastien grunted. “No way. You’re not leaving me alone to deal with Mom and Dad getting stood up at the altar.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Kitty said, “I can’t take it anymore. They’re driving me crazy.”
“Stop answering your phone. That’s what I do.”
“Then they come over unannounced. Last week, they caught me and Jace in the hot tub.”
Bastien held up his hand. “I don’t want to know what they caught you doing.”
“We weren’t playing pinochle.”
“You’ve got three weeks and then it’ll all be over,” he said. “The wedding, not the marriage. I hope. Unless you’re trying to beat my record.”
“No, thanks,” Kitty said as they walked out of the elevator and into the crowded lobby. “I’m all about the domestic bliss.”
