“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked, obviously not taking the hint. “I know they’re small, but their weight is enough to pull the seams of the cushions. That would be a real headache to fix and—”

Chelle held up the damp washcloth, putting the corner that had turned a very light pink from the cut on his forehead right in front of his eyes.

All of the color drained from his face, and he gulped. “That’s not fair.”

“No.” She folded up the cloth so he couldn’t see the stained side. “But it got you to stop mansplaining my own apartment decor to me.”

He opened up his mouth as if he was going to make another run at the topic, closed it for a second, and then said, “Mom said you need help.”

“I do, but I don’t think you’ll be able to do anything,” Chelle said as she put a bandage over his cut with hands that shook just enough to remind her to take a deep breath before all the anger at the injustice of it all swirling around in her belly took over. “I have to break a condition of my father’s will, and every lawyer I’ve talked to said it can’t be done.” She stood up and gathered the cloth, the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and the bandage wrapper. “If I can’t, then control of the charity foundation I’ve dedicated my life to running goes to my uncle, who would love nothing more than to shut it down or turn it into a paper charity. I mean, the foundation has a board, but they’ll fall in step behind my uncle. He has all the right connections to press his point. I can’t let that happen.”

Her heart was going a million miles an hour, and if she clamped her teeth together any tighter she was going to crack a molar, but she held onto her control. Giving in to the fury never helped when it came to her family.

“What’s the will require?”

“That I get married,” she said.

Did it come out like she’d said bury herself in a hole so deep she’d disappear completely? Well, that tracked, because that’s the type of marriage her father had no doubt envisioned for her.

“There is no way that’s legal,” Nash said.

“Well, according to the lawyers I’ve talked with, the wording in my father’s will skirts that line just enough to make it work.” Dread and a sense of powerlessness ate away at her stomach lining. “And after they fire me as the Finch Foundation’s executive director, Uncle Buckley will install some figurehead to keep the foundation functioning enough to be a tax write-off, but that’ll be it. It’ll be a shadow of its former self.”