Across the table, his mom gave him an appraising look as she tucked a long hair behind her ear and started off the jingle jangle of her bracelets again. “It’s Chelle Finch, I presume.”

Nash nodded.

There was a beat of silence, and then everyone—even Griff—asked at the same time, “Who in the hell is Chelle Finch?”

Chapter Two

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 There were misogynistic fathers, and then there was her toxic dad, who was king of outdated ideas and just-let-the-menfolk-take-care-of-it bullshit.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