I never should have listened to Julia.

If I’d shut her down when she waltzed into my office yesterday like she runs the place instead of me, I wouldn’t be making last-minute phone calls from a town car on the tarmac at LaGuardia, fuming that I agreed to take a vacation as ridiculous as this one. Our stockholders aren’t paying me to take vacations. They’re paying me to work, and Julia should know that by now.

She hadn’t even paused at the office door. In classic Julia fashion she barged on in, chattering about how she hated to interrupt me. The sight of me working should have been enough to stop her, but that’s Julia for you. I was in the middle of something—reading an email about one of our most important residential developments in Palm Springs—and I only caught the tail end of what she said.

“—I’ve got something that needs your urgent attention.”

“Bullshit,” I said, not looking away from the screen.

She dropped a folder onto the desk with a flourish. “Look.”

“I’m busy.”

“Look.”

I knew it wasn’t urgent. She knew it wasn’t urgent. Her boss, my old buddy old pal Dex Michaels, would have come himself if it was urgent. But Julia is nothing if not persistent. Arguing was going to take longer. Time is money. Money won out.

I opened the folder. It was a fact sheet for a luxury resort in the Virgin Islands.

I closed the folder.

“This is not urgent.”

“It is urgent,” Julia said, cocking her hip to one side and crossing her arms. She looked every bit the polished executive assistant—smart skirt suit, dark hair perfectly swept back—but she was lying through her teeth. “Emerald Shores.” She waved one hand at the folder. “Dex needs you to go and check this place out.”

“Dex has an entire staff to do this kind of work for him, and if all else fails, he can go.”

I picked up the folder and held it out to her.

“You’re not even going to look at the details?”

I dropped the folder back on the desk and flipped to the second page—on it was a list of numbers and other information about the property. “Oh, look. It says here that my sister Julia is trying to force me to take a vacation that I do not want to take.”

She narrowed her eyes. Julia might not fully appreciate the importance of getting a regular paycheck, but there are hundreds of other employees of Cash Industries who do, and who makes that happen? Me.

Of course, it’s a team effort—it always is. But good old dad proved that one can drag down an entire company. Julia may have let that business lesson slide in the haze of a college party or two, but I sure as hell haven’t.

I gave her a stern, steady look.

She glared back.

There’s a jaunty rap at the door. “I’m not interrupting, am I?” Dex’s innocent face is such an exaggerated parody that I almost laughed. He’s got a folder tucked under his arm, likely some recent acquisitions he wants me to approve.

I brandished the folder from Julia. “We were discussing this.”

“What’s that?”

“You two are the worst actors on the planet.”

They exchanged a look. They didn’t need a dead giveaway, but there it was. Julia dropped her standoff stance and stepped toward my desk. “Charlie—” She caught herself as soon as she noticed the tiniest raise of my eyebrows. “Charles, you need to get out of the office.”

Dex put both hands in the air. “This doesn’t sound like a conversation that I—”

“Oh, shut the hell up. You two have a little conspiracy going, so don’t act like you played no part in this.”

Dex laughed. “Fine. Fine. You got me.” Then he pursed his lips. “But Julia’s right.”

“Charlie, your entire life is passing you by. You need to get outside. You need to throw open the curtains—” She gestured grandly toward the floor-to-ceiling windows adorning two sides of my office that displayed a view of the skyline that would be stunning if I ever stopped to appreciate it. “—not that there are curtains in here, but imagine it.” She turned back, folding her hands under her chin. “I am your sister. And I am begging you. Take me up on this offer.”

I laughed out loud. Julia is twenty-one, mere months out of college, and I’m the one at the helm of Cash Industries. “Last I checked, you’re an executive assistant for the head of the Commercial Real Estate Department.”

Dex cleared his throat. “Look, this is the perfect—” He cut himself off before he could say excuse. “This is the perfect combination of business and pleasure. You go check out this resort and take a breather. You need it, buddy.”

I shouldn’t have listened to him, either. Even though he’s been my friend since the first semester at college. The first time I laughed until I cried was that fall, when he got kicked out of a girl’s dorm room bare-ass naked and came streaking across the quad. But his pale white ass was not relevant to the discussion at hand.

“It’s lovely for you both to be so concerned, but I’m fine. Is there anything else you want to discuss?”

It was a dismissal, and they both knew it. Julia glanced toward the floor and bit the inside of her lip. Dex asked a throwaway question about some deal we settled months ago, to smooth over the moment, and then they both turned toward the door.

The air hung stagnant, waiting.

For Julia, because never in her life has Julia taken no for an answer.

She whirled around at the door, her face a mask of worry. “You haven’t taken a day off in six years. You have to take a vacation sometime, Charlie, or you’ll end up like Uncle Brandon.”

Uncle Brandon, my father’s brother, who died at the age of forty-two from a massive heart attack. Stress, the autopsy report had read. I was ready to wave off that line of bullshit, but Julia was serious, and her expression squeezed at my heart.

She was right about that. Ever since Dad’s Great Fuck-up, I haven’t taken a day off.

Which is how it should be.

* * *

I haven’t taken a day off until now, and it’s already a pain in the ass. The stress settles, heavy on my shoulders like the full weight of all the years combined are pressing in on me.

“No, I want you to keep me updated,” I tell Dex for the thousandth time. “Don’t you dare leave me on this godforsaken island without—”

“I won’t, I promise! Oh—my next meeting just walked in the door. Gotta go. Call when you land! Bye!”

He clicks off the call before I can say another word.

“Sir?” Damion, my driver, chooses his moment with the same precision he uses to drive.

“Yeah?”

“The flight crew is wondering if you’re ready to board. There’s one other guest on the charter.”

Oh, for God’s sake. Probably some elderly country club member I’m going to have to make small talk with for the entire flight. Adam has the family jet in India, but Julia and Dex insisted that I leave right away. She even made the booking herself. Cash Industries has equity ownership in a small fleet of other jets. In all my time at the helm of the family business, there’s never been another person on board one of these planes. It would happen now.

I want to keep them waiting, but it would be fucking rude, so I swallow my irritation. “I’m good to go.”

I cross the tarmac, head up the stairs, and nod at the stewardess, who beams at me like there’s a chance we might have a moment together on this flight. No. Not on this flight, and not ever.

I lift my travel bag—a black duffel that I keep packed and ready to go in one of my closet drawers in case of business travel—who has time for this vacation shit?—up to my shoulder. Ready, and…brace for the old man.

But it’s not an old man who’s curled up in the front seat of the plane, clutching a half-empty mimosa and swirling a straw delicately around it with her fingers. It’s not an old man whose eyes go wide when she sees me. It’s not an old man who takes in a breath so deep that it shoves her cleavage out another inch from the tank top she’s wearing under a blazer that’s pretending to be smart.

No, it’s not an old man.

It’s fucking Josephine Paxton.