Chapter Two

Chelle

A few days earlier…

Chelle Finch was T-minus five seconds from losing her shit.

The Finch Foundation had been ignored and all but abandoned by her family when she’d taken it over fifteen years ago. Her father—who had never believed that women, not even his own daughter, should be heading an organization—had figured she couldn’t really do any harm to what was essentially a tax write-off. And sometimes when she was alone in the cramped foundation offices late at night, finishing up board reports or reviewing grant proposals, she could still hear his words when he’d given in and agreed to appoint her as the foundation’s executive director. She’d gotten the job after months of explaining why she was the best candidate when no one else had accepted the position that paid roughly half of the going rate for the qualifications required.

Her dad had been a quarter through a bowl of plain, watery oatmeal, and he’d let out a woe-is-me sigh before saying, “It’ll keep you busy until you finally find a husband.”

Yeah, it hadn’t been a ringing endorsement by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d seized the opportunity with both hands and had made something of the foundation.

It had gone from being a shell of an organization to actually doing good for people in Harbor City. Not that he’d noticed any of that before he’d had an unexpected fatal heart attack last year. Instead, he’d just called it a distraction from her real job in life—finding a man to guide her and take care of her.

She swallowed her anger. There were misogynistic fathers, and then there was her toxic dad, who was king of outdated ideas and just-let-the-menfolk-take-care-of-it bullshit.

Really, was anyone surprised that she spent all of her free time writing fantasy books where the female leads kicked ass?

She’d thought by moving out of the family mansion and remaining single she’d finally escaped the curse hovering over the Finch women that always seemed to land them with some jerk of a man who thought he knew better than any mere woman ever could. So far, it had worked.

But apparently her dad was capable of reaching out from the grave to pull the rug right out from under her sensible shoes today.

Her smarmy jerk of an uncle was more than happy to deliver the news to her as he sat behind Chelle’s desk with his size-nine cowboy boots (the ones with the hidden lift insoles) propped up on the battered wood corner. His ten-gallon hat was half on and half off a stack of aid requests sitting in the middle of her desk, making the half-a-foot-high stack look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Never mind the fact that in his sixty-five years, the closest Buckley Finch had ever been to a ranch was watching old westerns and rereading every Louis L’Amour book lining the library at his mansion on Eighty-Sixth.

“No one is saying you haven’t accomplished, by a miracle no doubt, something that no one thought you possibly could,” Uncle Buckley said as he patted down his silver combover, the few strands of which were always popping up anyway despite the amount of hairspray he blasted on it. “But you knew being executive director was a limited-time engagement. The business world is no place for a woman, and your dad cared about you enough to know that you needed a nudge in that direction.”

“A nudge?” That’s what he was calling this absolute metric ton of bullshit? “Getting slammed by a rocket loaded with billionaires suited up for low atmospheric joyrides in zero G would be less of a nudge than this.”

She tucked some of her dark hair behind her ears and took in a deep, cleansing breath, willing herself to calm down. The last thing she needed right now was to appear anything but calm, cool, and collected. Uncle Buckley would seize on the moment to tell her that women were too emotional for leadership positions, she was sure.

He shrugged. “It is what it is, and you knew what was going to happen when your dad’s will was read last Christmas.”

Chelle’s pulse skyrocketed as she fought to keep an even-keel exterior even though, on the inside, she felt like she was drowning. “I never thought my own family would follow his ridiculous dictate.”

It really had been too bizarre to even consider. For all of their many faults and toxic attributes, she’d thought her family loved her and finally saw her as a smart, independent, forty-two-year-old woman who had proven herself. That, obviously, had been wishful thinking on her part.

“Your father was right, and you know it.” Uncle Buckley plopped his feet back on the ground and leaned forward, his elbow bumping against his hat, which pushed against the stack of aid requests and sent them tumbling over. He looked at the resulting messy pile in the middle of her desk as if he had no idea how it had happened. “You’ve played your little game of Boss Lady long enough. You either have a husband by Christmas as required by your father’s will, or I become the foundation’s executive director and shut the place down.” He narrowed his beady little eyes at her. “You could’ve spent the past year looking for a man who might have let you play executive director on a very part-time basis. Instead, you just stuck your head in the sand and pretended that you could change the way things are.”

The urge to rage at this man (the de facto leader of their family and the one who lorded over them all like a real-life Lord Farquaad) rushed up her body like a hot wave of pent-up fury as she sat in the guest chair in her own damn office.

“This isn’t the Middle Ages,” she said, needing to stay calm because other people’s ability to buy groceries, to learn new skills, and to pay daycare bills depended on the foundation continuing its work. “You can’t force me to get married or fire me. That’s not legal.”

“First of all, this is an at-will state. The foundation’s board can fire you for any reason or none at all. Secondly, force you to get married?” Buckley’s voice went up as if he was shocked—shocked—she’d level such an accusation against him. “Michelle Christine Finch, we are only guiding you toward your true calling—being a wife and submitting to your husband. Maybe if your dad had listened to me and put his foot down immediately with you, we wouldn’t be in this situation, but here we are.”

“This is blackmail.” She sank back against the chair, her spine curling into a C as her shoulders drooped under the weight of lost hope. “People depend on this foundation. It helps thousands of people every month.”

“Yes,” Uncle Buckley said, having the audacity to look all torn up about the situation—or as close as he could with a heart as small as a pebble on the beach. “It would be a shame if they suffered because of your pride and selfishness.”

And there it was, the battle she’d been fighting since she’d come out of the womb without a penis into a family that claimed to believe in traditional values, when it was really all about control. How foolish she’d been to think she’d escaped their clutches and could live as the outcast of one of Harbor City’s richest and most powerful families.

“So I get married and that’s that? The foundation will be safe?” Chelle asked, fighting for breath as anxiety and a sense of claustrophobia squeezed her lungs.

“Exactly,” he said. “It’s about time you got with the program. Lucky for you, I have a list of men who would benefit from having you as a helpmate, even if you are much older than a bride should be—especially when it comes to having babies.”

Revulsion at the idea of marrying someone her uncle picked, much less having a child with them, rushed through her, and she shot up out of the chair. “No.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” she said, shaky from the adrenaline pumping through her veins. She marched the three steps to her office door and yanked it open. “I’ll handle the details myself. Now get out.”

“You think you can find someone who’d want to marry someone nearly too old to have kids and too fat to be a draw to the marriage bed?” He let out a cruel bark of a laugh. “Good luck with that.” He stood up, doing his best, no doubt, to look intimidating. “I’m offering you the only way to keep this foundation going.” He plopped his cowboy hat on his head. “You’ve been to the lawyers—don’t think they haven’t reached out to me—and you know that there’s no way to break your dad’s will. It’s either you finally take your place as God intended as a wife, or this foundation, which does indeed help the downtrodden here in Harbor City, closes its doors. Of course, I should have known you were too emotional to have a logical, adult conversation.” He walked around her desk to the door, pausing long enough to let loose one last barb. “Blessed be, there really is nothing worse than a hysterical woman.”

Then he walked out, strutting down the hall like a man who had everything in the world.

Chelle squeezed the doorknob tighter, needing something solid to hold onto. Unless she found a way out of this mess, she was absolutely positive that the foundation’s doors wouldn’t stay open after the new year.