Chapter 1

I f you'd told Liam Michaelson three years ago that he'd be single, jobless, and spending more time with his father's twenty-nine-year-old wife than anyone else, he might have tried a little harder to stop the devastatingly fast downfall of his life.

Maggie, his dad's wife, sat across from him, weighing the ivory envelope in her hands and wrinkling her nose. "It's definitely something important."

"They wouldn't do that, though. Right?"

She lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. "You'd hope not, but once upon a time you probably would've said they wouldn't sleep together and they did that."

They'd definitely done that. Liam had been so sure India was the one—sure enough to have a ring tucked away in his desk. A ring he'd excitedly shown his best friend of twenty years, who had pretended to be happy for him, even though he was already sleeping with India behind his back.

In one night, he'd lost his girlfriend, best friend, and the entire friend group they'd shared. He'd been so sure that was his rock bottom, until he'd gotten too drunk at the VIP party for the Seattle Art Museum's Spring Exhibit, spotted India's dad, and lost it. It turned out telling one of the museum's biggest donors that he should've spent more time at home and less with his many mistresses so his daughter wouldn't grow up to be a cheater was a one-way ticket to losing his job as Head Curator. And there it was: rock bottom.

"I'm just not going to open it. If I don't open it, I'll never know." Liam sat back in his chair, as if he daren't get too close to the envelope.

"True," Maggie agreed, but she didn't put the envelope down.

They shared a weighted look before Liam added, "Of course, you could open it. You wouldn't have to tell me what it said."

Maggie raised a brow, but slipped her thumb into the envelope seal anyway and pulled out a matching card. She scanned it, her face betraying nothing.

"Well?" Liam asked, leaning forward on his elbows. So much for never knowing.

Maggie met his eye and her expression said it all. His heart twisted uncomfortably in his chest as she said, "You are invited to celebrate the wedding of Bartholomew Charles Heasman the third and India Beatrice Avery on June twentieth."

"Christ." Liam's head fell into his hands and he rubbed his face. "What kind of people do that?"

"The kind of people named Bartholomew Charles Heasman the third and India Beatrice Avery. What the fuck kind of names are those?" Maggie asked, staring at the invitation with disdain and dropping it on the table between them. Liam snorted and slid it closer. It was exactly the gauche invitation he'd expect India and Bart's parents to pick out, because fuck knows they would have no say in their special day .

"Honestly, as far as names went at my school, those are pretty tame." Liam would never blame his parents for sending him to a fancy prep school—they were just trying to do what was best for him—but he'd never quite blended in with the other kids. His moms were both well respected in their fields, owning a successful optometrists practice and teaching criminal psychology at the University of Washington, and his dad was the top business lawyer in the region, but there was a big difference between old money and new money, and Liam had been in the minority among his classmates.

"We had very different upbringings," Maggie replied with a shake of her head. That was an understatement. Maggie's family had used her as free labor for most of her life until she'd put her foot down; Liam was pretty sure no one in the world had parents as great as his. They'd taught him the value of hard work, but they'd also given him unconditional love and support every step of the way.

Liam had been a surprise, born when his parents were still in college. Neither of them had known the first thing about raising a kid. He couldn't remember the early years, when they'd fought and eventually divorced, but it had been the best thing for them. His dad had introduced his mom to Danisha when he was seven, and she'd fit into their little family like she was always meant to be there. Liam had grown up with two moms and a dad who loved him more than anything in the world, and he would never take it for granted. And now he had a stepmom, even if she was seven years younger than him, and glared whenever he jokingly called her mom .

"Are you going to go?" she asked, nodding at the invitation.

Liam snorted. "Sure. And while I'm at it, I'll just book myself in for a colonoscopy, do my taxes, and stick needles in my eyes."

Maggie ignored him, reading over the invitation again. "People usually send wedding invitations months in advance. This is in three and a half weeks."

"Great. Not only are they trying to rub my face in it, but they're doing it as an afterthought. That makes me feel much better, thanks."

"Maybe. Or maybe they're trying to feel like the bigger person by inviting you. You should go," Maggie said, and he blinked at her.

"What? Are you kidding?"

"Nope. Show up and show off. Show them exactly what they're missing."

"Maggie, I'm a lonely, jobless man in my mid-thirties. They're missing nothing. I have nothing to show off. You're basically my only friend and you're technically my stepmom."

As expected, she narrowed her brows in a glare. "First of all, fuck you. Second, fake it." She shrugged. "Take a hot date that's going to make them crazy jealous."

"And should I just conjure said date out of thin air?"

Maggie mulled it over, and he was sure she was flicking through a mental list of everyone she knew. "You should take Jazz," she said, finally, and Liam's heart dropped into his stomach. "She's used to faking it at fancy events because of her parents, and she's never met anyone she couldn't charm."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he replied quickly. Probably too quickly.

"Why not?"

"Because she's your best friend. And she works for my dad." And because he'd been head over heels obsessed with her since the second he'd laid eyes on her.

Jasmine had taken over as his dad's assistant when Maggie quit, and she'd been permanently on Liam's mind since the day he'd walked into his dad's office expecting to see Maggie, and instead seen a smiling redhead with hazel eyes that now had a starring role in his dreams.

"I'm not suggesting you actually date," Maggie said, rolling her eyes. "Just pretend. A little dancing, maybe a kiss on the cheek for show. You don't have to make out at the reception or drag her back to your hotel room."

She wrinkled her nose like she couldn't imagine anything worse, and Liam was struck with the realization that she didn't know. Maggie had no idea that they'd done just that after her wedding. A onetime drunken hook up that he'd been certain Jasmine would tell her about. He'd assumed Maggie was choosing to ignore it, just like the two of them were.

"I'll think about it," he said, not wanting to make promises. He'd seen Jasmine plenty since the wedding, but they'd never spoken about what happened. When the morning after had dawned, they'd sat next to each other at breakfast like nothing had happened.

That didn't mean he hadn't thought about it. He had. Constantly. Jasmine's energy was electric—bright and sparkly, and really fucking weird—and he couldn't get enough.

He'd considered asking her out when they'd first met, but after finding out how close she and Maggie were—and taking the fact that she worked for his dad into consideration—he'd let it go. Falling into bed together hadn't been part of the plan, but the only part Liam regretted was doing it so drunk he could barely remember it. But the flashes he could remember were better than anything his imagination could have dreamed up.

"You okay?"

He started at Maggie's question, clearing his throat. "Yeah. Just, you know." He gestured to the wedding invitation; better for Maggie to think he was thinking about that and not her best friend naked.

Sympathy shone in her blue eyes. "It's been a rough couple of months—years, I guess—but it can only be uphill from here."

That wasn't as comforting as she probably intended it to be. "True."

"I didn't actually invite you over for this. "

"You mean you didn't guess that my asshole ex-best friend and girlfriend's wedding invitation would arrive today and I'd be too chickenshit to open it?"

"I'm good, but not that good," Maggie replied, tucking the invitation back into the envelope and sliding it across the table toward him. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Shoot."

"I want to be clear that I'm just floating the idea out there. You're not obligated to agree, and I'm not suggesting it just because we're family."

Liam frowned. What the hell was she talking about? "Noted."

"Okay, so you know Grace that works on sourcing and staging for me?" Liam nodded; he'd spent a lot of time hanging around Maggie and her team at work since losing his job. Maggie owned a home renovation and interior design company and had a big social media platform. Mostly, he sat around, tearing through romance books on his Kindle and wondering how he'd fallen so far from grace, but she liked to pick his brain about designs, and he liked having an excuse to get out the house. "Well, she and her family are moving back to Taiwan. She found out yesterday. Her husband got a promotion and his company wants them over there next week."

"Shit. That soon?"

"Yeah." Maggie sighed. She only had six people on her team; losing even one would be a headache. "I'm happy for them. It's what he's been working toward, but giving a family of five a week's notice to relocate almost five thousand miles isn't ideal. Anyway, I'm obviously going to have to replace her and I know it's not exactly what you're used to, but I was wondering if you might be interested? You have experience and you've been a ton of help over the past few weeks. The team all love having you around."

Surprise flitted through him. As much as he enjoyed being with Maggie and her team, he'd assumed he was annoying them. Though he'd worked at the Seattle Art Museum for over a decade before the incident , he'd only been the Head Curator for a few years. And as much as he'd loved running the curatorial department and overseeing everything, he had missed being in a more hands-on role. He had plenty of experience staging exhibits and sourcing pieces for the museum, and for the smaller galleries he'd worked at when he was in college. But he'd never worked in any kind of home design capacity.

"What does sourcing and staging look like for you?" he asked, and Maggie, ever-prepared, opened her tablet to a job description he knew she would have written up as soon as she found out Grace was leaving.

"Sourcing would be specific pieces, if me or one of the other designers has something in mind, or sourcing a selection based on a brief so we can pick the best thing for the space. Staging would basically be the final touches in a space, making sure everything looks intentional," she explained. "The staging is more about the video side of things than the design side."

It was all stuff he was familiar with, just with a different medium. But even though she'd told him otherwise, he couldn't shake the feeling that she was only asking him because of who they were to each other.

Maggie must have taken his silence as hesitation because of the job itself, not the fact she was offering it, because her face fell a little and she said, "I know it's not art in the traditional sense but?—"

"Of course what you do is art," Liam interrupted. "I love your work." That wasn't the problem. He knew he would enjoy working for her, and he loved the Maggie Makes Home team. Maybe he needed to just get over himself. Maggie put a hundred and ten percent into every area of her business; she wouldn't be suggesting this if she hadn't thought it through.

"You're only saying that because you're my stepson," she replied with a wry smile and he laughed.

"Of course I'm not. Can I call you Mom at work?"

"Try it and see what happens," she warned. "Does this mean you're in?"

"Are you sure you want me?" he asked, and her face softened. She swiped on her tablet and slid it across the table. It was an employment contract with his name, probably written by an attorney from his dad's firm. Liam scanned it, raising his brows when he spied the date. "This was written two weeks ago." Before Grace gave her notice.

Maggie nodded. "I was planning on offering you a job anyway, but I wasn't sure how you'd take it, so I've been procrastinating. It's just become a little more urgent with Grace leaving. I really think you'd be a perfect fit. "

Liam took a deep breath, his eyes roaming the contract and job description. It was something new, and definitely more exciting day-to-day than his work at the gallery. And he'd been working with Maggie.

"Yeah," he said, finally. "I'm in."