I should have known it was inevitable, but I was genuinely surprised when I received a call from Calvin Ross as I was shaving that morning. I narrowly avoided slicing through my carotid artery with the razor when my phone buzzed. Carefully, I set down the blade and scooped up my phone. I suddenly wasn’t sure which tool was more dangerous to my health.

“Good morning Ryan.” Ross sounded ecstatic, which made me instantly suspicious.

“Good morning.” Perhaps if I replied with a minimum-necessary of information, I could make it through this conversation unscathed. I resolved to keep any details about what I was up to with Rosie confidential.

“So, I hear from my daughter that you’ve made a positive impression on her. Good job.”

I blinked at my reflection in the mirror. “What did she tell you?” I was too curious not to ask. I like gossip just as much as the next person. Especially if it was about what the woman I was obsessing over thought of me.

“Not much,” he replied, going from ecstatic to grouchy in the time it took to sigh through the phone. “She’s a frustratingly private creature. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but Rosie doesn’t exactly over-share. However, she did tell me enough that I think we should talk about your approach to phase two.”

Ross’ fucking plan had phases? I wished I was surprised. He was a consummate schemer. “What’s phase two?”

“You don’t need to sound so frightened, Conroe. It’s not complicated. Phase one was simply establishing your credibility with Rosie. You did that by helping resolve her plumbing problem. Phase two is convincing her to give up her whole singing-is-a-viable-career- plan thing.”

Just that. Only that. Only Rosie’s dream for her future.

“I see.” I paused. “Well, regarding phase one, were you aware that Rosie’s apartment has become totally unlivable? The flooding was much more intense than I expected based on our conversation last night. She was in some serious danger.”

A brief period of silence told me the answer was no. His reply was softer. “Rosie just said she had an issue. Sometimes—a lot of the time—she underrepresents her problems to me. She wants to be independent. You know how teenagers are.” He huffed into the phone and I imagined him shaking his head in frustration. “She’s safe though, right? She’s not scared, is she? I can fly down there right now if it’s really bad.”

Just for a moment, Ross transformed from a callous asshole to a caring, doting father. It was like he had a personality disorder. I’d long considered it possible, but it was still surprising to witness. More likely, he was just a bit of an asshole with moments of non-asshole-ness. Personality disorders were rare. Assholery was, sadly, much more common.

“She’s totally fine,” I reassured him. “Rosie’s safe.” Not safe from me pursuing her, but otherwise, yeah, safe enough.

Ross’ exhale of relief was the end of his random spurt of good nature. “Excellent. I sent her a new credit card, by the way. See if you can’t engineer some way to encourage her to activate it, will you? I worry about her. Sometimes I think she’d rather starve than listen to me. She’s so much like her mother…”

I had no reply to that, so I didn’t attempt one. Thankfully, Ross was already mentally moving on. “I want you to work on exposing Rosie to the entertainment industry a bit,” he told me. “I’ve given it some thought and I think I might be approaching this problem all wrong. We need to make it seem like Rosie is reaching her own conclusions. Forcing it on her won’t work. It needs to seem like her idea. I’ve got a plan about how to do that, but I’m still working out the details. In the meantime, spend some time with her. Figure out a way to tell her about yourself and what your law practice is like. Maybe introduce her to a few particularly sad clients of yours. People the industry churned through and left broken and broke... hey, speaking of which, how’s Ian?”

I cringed. Ross really was a grade-A asshole. “Ian’s fine. Clean and sober now for almost a year.”

“Glad to hear it. Introduce Rosie to Ian. He’s perfect. I think maybe meeting him will help convince her not to pursue music.”

Introduce Rosie to Ian? That was the opposite of what I wanted to do. Time to lie.

“Ian’s been busy recording with his new band. In between, he has to fit all his continuing sobriety stuff. I’m not sure I can arrange a meeting.” I took a deep breath and tried to come up with something plausible. “I think he’s at an Ashram in Arizona right now. A yoga retreat or something.”

Ross laughed into the phone, and I knew he bought it. “God, why do they all have to get so new-age about recovering from addiction? I just finished sending yet another former Disney star to yet another Reiki-based rehab. Maybe they’d have more success if they used, you know, science and doctors instead of women named Crystal with crystals. But whatever. Even if Ian’s out, I have faith in you. What’s that singer’s name that was dating Jason Kane before he decided he wanted to go all family man on us? The crazy redhead whose band broke up and left her scrambling right after she got a big record deal?”

I groaned inside. “Victoria Priestly?” That was actually potentially worse.

“That’s the one. How about her?”

“You really think she’d be a positive influence on Rosie?” I definitely didn’t. Victoria was wild, impetuous, and a bit on the crazy side. She had the quintessential eccentric artist personality. But it was really her apparent propensity for cruelty to men that concerned me. I didn’t want my brother Ian mixed up with her, and I was fairly sure I didn’t trust her around Rosie, either.

“I think she’d be an excellent cautionary tale,” Ross was saying. “In a supervised environment, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I parroted back. “I’ll think about it.” I’d already thought about it, and I positively hated the idea. In fact, I hated the entire idea of crushing Rosie’s dreams. I’d already resolved not to do it.

However, the more I thought about it, and despite what her father thought, introducing Rosie to Ian and/or Victoria might not be the most horrible idea in the history of time. They both knew people in the industry—people other than me. People that could help Rosie find representation and grow her network.

Victoria might be dangerous to my brother’s heart and his continued sobriety, but she could also be useful to Rosie’s career. She was well connected, and despite what Calvin Ross thought, doing just fine in her career. She had a new band and a solid cult following. As long as I impressed on Victoria that she needed to treat Rosie with kid gloves, maybe the prospect of them meeting wasn’t so bad. The wheels in my head started to turn. If only I had something to offer Victoria in return for her help…

Calvin Ross wasn’t the only lawyer who knew how to scheme. With her father scheming against Rosie, it seemed only fair that I should scheme for her. And for me, too.