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Sienna was always the logical option.

Aria is the one I can't think logically about.

She's also the one who agreed to the only arrangement I would have accepted—terms, structure, an expiration date. One year. Then we part ways.

Whereas Sienna just admitted what I already suspected. She was hoping I'd come to my senses. And if that's what she wants, she deserves to find it with someone who will considered a future with her.

I have never once considered spanking Sienna in the middle of a workday.

I've considered it with Aria approximately four hundred times since the almond milk incident.

Sienna heads for the door, then pauses with her hand on the handle. "I hope she knows what she's getting into."

So do I.

"She does."

Sienna glances back. "Does she? You're not nearly as hard to fall in love with as your brothers pretend."

Just before she turns, I call out, "Sienna. About our working relationship —"

"Don't worry, Tin Man," she says, using my brothers' nickname for me. The fact that she knows it tells me exactly how much she was paying attention during the years I assumed she wasn't. "You're still my biggest client, and I'm just as ambitious now as I was before I walked into this office. Business as usual."

"Business as usual," I echo.

She leaves. The door clicks shut.

I stare at it for three full seconds. Then I stand, reach for my jacket, and head for the boardroom.

Christian meets me outside the executive conference room with a leather folder and the expression of a man who slept even less than I did.

"You look terrible," he says.

"Good morning to you too."

He hands me the folder. "Updated trust addendum. Read it on the way in if you'd like more reasons to hate our father."

"I already have enough."

Christian's mouth twitches. It doesn't reach humor. "They're taking this seriously. Yesterday's contract meeting was clean, but the board doesn't know about that. All they know is what the cameras showed them."

"I know."

"Do you?" He stops walking. I stop too. "You announced an engagement by making out with your former employee on the steps of an arena in front of cameras. That is either romantic or catastrophic." He gives me a pointed look. "You don't exactly have a history of being romantic."

"She signed the contract. We're aligned."

"Are you?"

I don't answer.

He studies me for half a second longer than is comfortable, then opens the boardroom door.

One long table stretches out. Three directors sit on the opposite side as us. Three expressions that say they smell fraud and are disappointed it isn't easier to prove.

Claudia Preston, Arnold Harris, and Sadie O’Connor. Three associates that Conrad Kauffman called his “inner circle”. The three people he asked to become the trust’s board of trustees to keep the children he never met from foiling his legacy.

Ms. Preston folds her hands. "Mr. Kauffman. Mr. Kauffman."