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Chapter One
“Dinner and ato cut it,” I say to Rachel Peters, my husband’s executive assistant We’re on the fifty-seventh floor of Stark Tohich is divided in half between the residence and the penthouse office suite I’d been working in the apart room on my laptop while Damien took a phone call, but I’d slipped over to the office side specifically to enlist Rachel’s help
Her lances down at the print-out of Daenda that shows both his personal and professional appoint Mr Stark’s birthday, I’ ”
I roll ood friend over the last fewcorporate resources such as the lih Da Rachel help ht of unbridled sex with her boss would be a fair use of corporate resources “Assu off doesn’t involve that kind of entertainment” I bat my eyes innocently “Believe me I have the extracurricular part of the equation covered”
She presses her lips together in what I can only assuh “I bet you do,” she finally says “Okay, so just tell me what you need and I’llto be downstairs soon”
“We should have at least fivewhen I left” Das about Stark International’s acquisition of a bio to LA toenius he’s been courting to head up a new division of Stark Applied Technology
Da to reschedule the cocktails so that we could spend a long weekend in Manhattan I turned hiether a key proposal for a corporate account
That’s not entirely a lie I do have a corporate proposal onmy tail off to build my web and mobile app development business, and if I win this new client, row exponentially So Da almost non-stop on it
What he doesn’t know is that I’ a little break froanza
“A surprise party?” Rachel repeats when I tell her what I have in mind “Are you sure?”
“You don’t like it?”
“Are you kidding? I love it I just don’t see how you’ll be able to keep it a secret I mean, I have a few friends ouldn’t have a problem at all because their husbands are basically clueless But Mr Stark notices everything And where you’re concerned, he notices everything and then some You really think you can do it?”
“Absolutely,” I say, though I’ht But I want to do this It feels right And certainly et ahe wants on a whim?
I tell Rachel as ht you an island, didn’t he? It’s kind of hard to top that”
“I did buy a really fancy watch that I had engraved, but that’s just so ”
“It’s a nice gift, though”
“I suppose But what I want to give him is a celebration Not just of his birthday, but of everything we have together”
When we’d said “I do,” we’d both believed that ere setting out on the journey alone After all, his father is a reprehensibleself-centered bitch whom I try to keep out of my head at all times As far as ere concerned, our family consisted of exactly two people—me and Damien
But nothing ever goes the way you expect it, and now Damien is close with Jackson Steele, the half-brother he never knew he had, and Jackson’s wife Sylvia is not only Damien’s former assistant, but has become one of my closest friends They have two adorable kids, and Da our niece and nephew In other words, in the blink of an eye, our family portrait went from two to six
And if that wasn’t enough, my father is now in the mix I was a little dubious about his motives when he first stepped back into otten to know each other over the last few months, and while I’m not sure I’ll ever truly think of Frank as my father, he’s definitely part of my family
And of course we have our friends Jamie and Ryan and Ollie and Evelyn and Blaine and Wyatt and Cass and Siobhan and Lisa and Preston and Rachel and on and on and on
For a girl whose only farown into a wo family made up of relatives and friends—and I owe most of that to Damien