Unraveled Read online

  Unraveled

  Amy Knupp

  About the book

  A marriage of convenience can test even the best of friends.

  Holden Henry is every girl’s dream—kind, funny, outgoing. A catch in every sense. Despite my wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing, he’s been my friend forever. He has no idea I’ve had more-than-friends feelings for him for years, and I intend to keep it that way.

  When I’m forced to return to the small town where we grew up, I’m faced with a big, fat problem. Being a good pal, Holden offers me a too-tempting solution: a marriage of convenience. It’s a crazy plan…but I’m desperate enough to try it. Besides, he’s not just saving me; we’ll be helping each other.

  The catch? We have to stay married for a year. But once I inherit the company of my dreams and Holden launches his own start-up, we can go back to being just friends, right? Except…what if he figures out that I’ve been in love with him forever? Worse, what if I have to choose between the career I’ve always wanted and the man I can’t live without?

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amy Knupp

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chloe

  There was a reason I hadn’t been back to my hometown in sixteen years.

  Sixteen life-changing years. Yet as I approached the town limits of Dragonfly Lake on this brisk, drizzly March morning, there it was. That familiar feeling slid into my gut like an acid bath, sucking my self-confidence out of me and threatening to turn me back into an insecure girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

  The ancient wooden sign that read “Welcome to Picturesque Dragonfly Lake, Population: More than a Couple Dozen”—hand-carved by Anna Delfico’s grandfather long before the population had grown to more than a few thousand on a good summer weekend—came into view. I sat up straighter and steeled myself.

  I glanced down at my armor—high-dollar, designer-label, tailored black pants, silky cream-colored blouse, the trench coat that’d cost more than my monthly rent, and especially the red-soled, black ankle boots—and muttered out loud, “You’re not that girl anymore.”

  My silver Lexus ES 350 was further proof, considering my ride out of Dragonfly Lake all those years ago had been in the passenger seat of my friend Holden Henry’s beat-up old puke-green Chevy Impala.

  But as soon as I reached the downtown area—the highway becoming Main Street and the speed limit plummeting—I bit down on the inside of my lip, taking in the sight of everything that had once been so familiar. The elementary school, where I’d been the janitor’s daughter. The high school, where I’d been the geeky straight-A student with no social life to speak of. The Dragonfly Diner, where all the kids hung out for fries and shakes—except me.

  I turned the radio on and cranked up a rock music station, as if that could drown out the world outside my windows. When I was almost to the lake itself, its grayness blending in with the colorless sky, I took a right turn on Honeysuckle Road and forced my mind to the mission at hand.

  My boss, Angelica Marks, had summoned me to a construction site meeting with no concern for my Monday schedule or my to-do list that never seemed to get any shorter. I was fine with the to-do list and the schedule and was used to doing whatever Angelica required. It was part of my job as the executive vice president of development for Marks International Hotels, a job I mostly loved.

  My relationship with Angelica was not so clear-cut. On the one hand, she was a difficult person. Demanding, a perfectionist, with a cold edge to her personality that didn’t encourage close personal ties. She expected the utmost from her employees, but I couldn’t fault her for that. Those expectations were why she led a billion-dollar boutique hotel development company with sixty-two exclusive properties around the globe. She’d built up Marks International from nothing, and despite her less-than-warm personality, she inspired loyalty and hard work from her minions. My assistant, Bethany, was holding down the fort for me in the Nashville office, as curious as I was about why Angelica needed to talk in person.

  All that aside, I owed Angelica for everything I had. Which was why, when she’d texted me at six forty-nine a.m., asking me to make the hour-plus drive to the jobsite at Dragonfly Lake, I’d told her I’d be there by eight thirty.

  The clock on the dash read 8:23, but the hotel site, just a mile or so down the road from the town I’d grown up in, was only three minutes away. Closer than I liked to cut it, but traffic in Nashville had been particularly shit show-ish.

  I hung a left onto the construction site and couldn’t deny the little spark of excitement at laying my eyes on Marks International’s latest endeavor. It wasn’t quite finished, but the exterior was getting there, and it was impressive. It made my blood pump to see it in person, something I didn’t normally get to do until a property was finished.

  As the VP of development, I was involved in demographic analysis, site selection, and the preliminary details for each new property. Scouting was a big part of my job. With this particular property, though, Angelica had seen the real estate listing on the shore of Dragonfly Lake and decided she wanted a property close to home. That had essentially taken me out of the equation, which was ideal, since I’d been avoiding going back for so long.

  Scanning the muddy lot, I located the trailer that had been Angelica’s temporary home office for the past several months, parked my car, headed up the three steps, and went inside.

  I expected to find my boss rattling off orders to her assistant, Sabrina, or with a phone to her ear, giving someone a silent glare that somehow transmitted over the line. Instead, she sat at the desk, alone, staring off into the distance, rubbing her chin pensively with one hand.

  Weird.

  Angelica was a lot of things, but pensive wasn’t one of them. She was all about action. Getting shit done and done right. Yesterday.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  She jerked toward me, as if she hadn’t heard me come in. Also out of character.

  “Good morning, Chloe. Have a seat.” She offered what I’d almost call a smile. It didn’t really reach her eyes, but still, usually she didn’t even try, and I tilted my head, thinking, What the hell is going on?

  “Where’s Sabrina?”

  “She’s handling a meeting with the landscape architect’s team. Would you like some tea?” she asked, leaning her thin frame forward and nodding at her mug. “I’ve got cinnamon goji berry matcha.”

  I was a coffee girl through and through, and Angelica always had been too. It was one thing we bonded over—as much as a girl could bond with her cold, strict boss—the coffee in the office had to be high-quality Jamaican blend, or sometimes we got ahold of some top-notch Hawaiian. Angelica insisted on it even though she was onsite at the latest property eighty-five percent of the time.

  Even if I were a tea lover, that blend sounded like some kind of health potion. “I’m good,” I told her as I sat in one of the hard, uninviting chairs opposite her. I took out my electronic tablet, ready to jot down whatever I needed to act on, as I always did.

  “No notes,” Ang
elica said, sounding… restrained. Serious. She was always serious as a heart attack, but today she was… morose.

  My heart pumped harder as adrenaline shot through me. What crisis had cropped up? What obstacle did we need to overcome? Trouble-shooting and thinking on our feet were big parts of our jobs, but something in her tone in those two short words told me this one was going to be a doozy.

  “What’s going on?” I prompted when she didn’t immediately speak up.

  She opened her mouth as if to answer, then closed it, and my imagination went wild. Was there an issue with the latest inspection? Had someone screwed up majorly enough to make us miss our deadline for opening? Had there been a construction accident and the foreman had landed in the hospital? That was the kind of vibe I was getting from her.

  Instead of filling me in, she pushed her chair back and stood, crossed her arms, paced a few steps, and stopped with her back to me.

  “Angelica?”

  She pivoted, the move efficient and precise. I heard her inhale, then she said, “On Friday, I was diagnosed with an aggressive type of brain cancer.”

  My heart stopped. My brows shot up, and my mouth gaped open as that sank in. I tried to swallow my fear on her behalf and watched her, waiting for her to tell me it wasn’t so, but of course, if it wasn’t, those words would never have crossed her lips. She wasn’t one to joke around. Her face gave no hint of emotion.

  “I’m… God, Angelica. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  She walked back to her desk, then past it, as if she couldn’t bear to sit down, and I watched her for a cue. I’d learned to read her pretty well in the twelve years I’d worked for her, but she wasn’t making eye contact and had her walls up high. Now that I looked harder, I noted she looked tired, worn down, a little thinner than usual, with dark shadows under her eyes.

  As I was trying to come up with something else to say—what the actual hell was the right thing to say in this situation?—she lowered herself to her chair. There was a millisecond when her defenses failed her, and her chin succumbed to a minute quiver, then she clenched her jaw against it.

  “I’m taking this week to organize, and I’ll be out indefinitely starting next Monday.” I was still playing catch-up in my head when she continued, “I want you to take over the Dragonfly Lake project, effective as soon as you can get your team prepped to cover for you.”

  “Of course,” I said on autopilot. Her wish, my command. Never mind that it was a giant honor to step in as the leader of this project—of any project—in her stead. I’d process that later, after the whole cancer bombshell took hold.

  I wanted to ask her what her prognosis was. That seemed like pertinent info whether it was your boss or your family member, but…

  Hell. What would happen to Marks International if she wasn’t here to run it?

  Would I even have a job in a year’s time?

  Congrats on being the most self-centered girl on the planet.

  “I don’t request that of you lightly,” Angelica said, all business. “I know this town makes you uncomfortable.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her.

  Uncomfortable wasn’t the right word. Regressive was more spot-on. Dragonfly Lake had the power to make me regress to that insecure teenage version of me in a heartbeat. It wasn’t logical, but I’d experienced it first-hand not fifteen minutes ago.

  But regressing seemed like nothing compared to what Angelica was dealing with. I would big-girl-panty my way through it and count my blessings. Bethany was a top-notch assistant, and between us, we’d figure out how to conquer the upcoming challenges.

  Questions zipped through my mind so fast I couldn’t decide what to ask first. Before I could say another word, she continued.

  “The more you can sit in on this week, the better. I’d like a smooth transition. With three months till opening, we don’t have time for delays or bumps. We can’t push back any of the future projects.”

  At the word future, Angelica’s brow furrowed slightly, which was saying something, because I was ninety-eight percent sure she Botoxed regularly.

  “You’ll be back in time for the Hallstatt project,” I said supportively.

  At Marks, we generally had one project in construction stages at a time. Hallstatt, Switzerland, was directly after Dragonfly Lake, and we were scheduled to break ground in July.

  She laughed hollowly, then sobered up in an instant. “I don’t think so.” She pressed her lips together. “If the doctors can be believed—and I’m seeing some of the most reputable in the country—I’ll be lucky to be alive in a year.”

  “You’re a fighter, Angelica—”

  “Oh, I’m going to fight. But I’m also a realist.” She swallowed and blinked, and once again, she looked… human. Vulnerable. Scared.

  I’d never in my life seen Angelica Marks look scared. Not for a single second.

  I wanted to contradict what she said, throw out some positive something, but I knew that wouldn’t help.

  “I never thought I’d have to consider what to do with my life’s endeavor at age forty-eight,” Angelica continued. “I’ve always planned to work until I’m eighty.”

  I nodded. I’d heard her say she had no intention of ever retiring. She thrived on her work, lived for it. Put everything she had into it. She was an inspiration to me, regardless of her less-than-warm personality.

  “I spent the weekend thinking.” She let out another humorless laugh. “So much damn thinking, and none of it happy thoughts. Let me tell you, Chloe, it sucks to look at your own life from a new perspective and realize how much you’ve screwed up.”

  “I don’t think you’ve screw—”

  “I’ve lived my life all wrong,” she insisted in that tone that brooked no arguments.

  I bit down on anything I was going to say and sat back to listen. Because clearly she was going somewhere with this or needed to get something off her chest, and that was the one thing I could offer her.

  “I’ve put every last drop of my focus into this company. I’ve loved it more than any man in my life, nurtured it the way most women nurture a child, put all my hopes and dreams into it.”

  “You know I’ve always admired your dedication,” I said.

  She was shaking her head, still looking off into the distance. “It was all wrong. I was wrong. I should’ve made time for a family, should’ve let myself fall in love, get married, have children. Because as it stands, I have no heirs to leave my life’s work to. This is my legacy”—she spread her arms to encompass the portable office, but I knew she meant the whole company—“and… who cares?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to assure her that I cared, but she went on, picking up steam.

  “I’m worth nearly a billion dollars, a billion fucking dollars, Chloe, and I’ve got no one to share that with. My company is worth even more, and I have no family to will it to. No children to carry on my endeavors. All these years, I knew what I was giving up. There were moments when I was lonely, when I would’ve liked to have someone there for me, with me, but instead I chose to give everything I have to this company. But guess what? This company won’t be there to hold my hand when my hair falls out. No flesh and blood of mine will be there to see that my life’s work goes anywhere. And all of a sudden, with that doctor’s words on Friday…” She shook her head, and her voice went quieter. “All of sudden, that matters to me, Chloe.”

  I sucked in a shaky breath, stunned by what she said and, I could admit, a little twitchy at the fact that I had a similar take on work. But this wasn’t about me, and I was only thirty-four anyway.

  “I have never felt such regret as I did over the weekend,” Angelica continued. “Heart-deep regret that I have no one. No built-in support system when I need it. No Marks offspring to take over when I’m gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing full well how lame that response was. I searched for something better to say. Anything. Came up blank as a brand-new whiteboard.

  My boss shook
her head and sat up straighter, finally looking directly at me, as if coming out of a fugue. “After deliberating for the past forty-eight hours, I’ve decided to leave Marks International to one of two people. Either Gloria or you.”

  I fought not to let any reaction show on my face.

  Eighty percent of business is keeping your emotions out of it. You can have them, just don’t show them and don’t make decisions based on them.

  How many dozens of times had Angelica hammered that into my head? I grasped on to that tenet now. But I’ll be honest—my initial reaction was…Gloria fucking Herrera?

  She, too, was an executive VP—there were five of us in the company. She, too, had been handpicked in college by Angelica to be mentored and eventually to enter the fast track within the company.

  “I’ll be straight with you, though, Chloe… I’m leaning hard toward Gloria.”

  I bit down on my lip, literally to keep from saying the first thing that came to mind. Another habit honed by my boss.

  I tilted my head and waited for her to say more.

  Angelica shot a half grin my way and said, “I can hear your thoughts, Ms. Abrams. You’re wondering why. What Gloria has that you don’t.”

  Pretty much. I nodded succinctly.

  “You’re my best worker,” she said. “There’s no question. You’re my workhorse, my go-to, my office mate on the weekends. But to give you this company would guarantee you’d continue to make the same mistakes I’ve made. All work, nothing else worthwhile in your life. And yes, you have the right to make those decisions for yourself, but I don’t have to be an accomplice anymore. I won’t be.”