The Prenup - Lauren Layne Page 0,3

of this as I am. “Thank you for coming.”

“You said it was urgent?” I ask, deliberately letting the question enter my tone.

I’m dying of curiosity here. I have been ever since his email came three days ago, saying he needed to discuss something urgent with me—in person.

After establishing that my brother wasn’t dying of cancer or something awful, I’d agreed. Partially because I needed a break from work, partially because I was dreadfully curious, and partially because, well … a little sliver of me has known for a while that it’s time—past time—to face this part of my life.

He waits until the server puts a wonderfully large martini in front of me, waits until I take a sip and somehow manage to withhold a moan at how good it tastes after the day I’ve had.

And then, as though he’s been deliberately waiting until I had a little booze flowing through my veins, lets me know the reason I’m here.

“Charlotte.”

“Yeah?” I give him an encouraging smile.

He looks nervous but determined.

Then he lays it on me: “I want a divorce.”

Chapter 2

Thursday, August 13

I can explain. Really, I can. Throughout my teens and early twenties, I was, um … how do I put this …?

A bit of a handful.

I’m not sure when it started. Puberty, I suppose. Up until then, I was the perfect WASP daughter. I wore big bows in my hair that matched the adorable, little-girl dresses I wore to St. Thomas Church every Sunday. Eventually, I graduated to wearing headbands that matched the pastel cashmere twinsets, paired with flouncy skirts.

I played piano, I did ballet, I got straight A’s at boarding school. Yes, boarding school.

I did everything exactly right.

Right up until the moment I quit being the good girl.

It wasn’t some grand, overnight rebellion or anything, but somewhere around the age of fifteen, I found myself irritatingly and persistently bored. Bored with my parents, their friends, my friends. Bored with the Ivy League life laid out for me, the well-connected husband already picked out for me in pedigree, if not by name.

I made it until age twenty-one before I cracked—really truly, decided I couldn’t do it anymore … wouldn’t do it anymore.

My parents were … well, let’s just say my failure to heel like my family’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel did not go over well. See, there were a lot of things the Spencers of the Upper East Side didn’t like. Jersey. Fried food. Catholics. Girls with short hair, boys with long hair.

And, as I learned during one particularly heated argument: college dropouts.

You’ll get your degree, Charlotte Elizabeth Spencer, or you’ll leave this house without a dime.

It was this without a dime part that was a bit of a problem. It shames me to have to admit it now, but back then, I really didn’t have a clue where money came from other than Daddy’s wallet.

Am I ashamed of this fact? Embarrassed? Absolutely. But it doesn’t make it less true. I was born with a silver spoon, all my friends were born with silver spoons, and at twenty-one, I didn’t fully comprehend where one could get another silver spoon, should that first one be taken away by stern parents.

I mean, I knew the basics. I knew I could get a job, obviously. I wanted a job. Craved it, even. But I also knew that the type of job I was qualified for wouldn’t get me particularly close to the future I envisioned for myself. I had big dreams and no big cash flow to support said dreams if my parents cut me off. Which they made clear they would do.

And at twenty-one, the trust fund left to me by my grandmother was off-limits. Not because of my age, but because of my marital status; specifically, my single status.

Yep, that’s right. That sort of thing still happens among the richy-rich of New York. Grandparents leave grandkids money that the parents can’t touch until certain conditions are met. And in the case of my marriage-minded Grandma Geraldine, that condition was … drum roll, please:

Marriage.

Per Grandma Geraldine’s stipulations: if I got married, I got a six-figure chunk of change. Stay single; stay poor. Definitely a dilemma for a twenty-one-year-old with no boyfriend in sight. But I had a solution.

Enter Colin Walsh.

I didn’t know much about my brother’s law school bestie other than the fact that he was Irish and a ridiculous overachiever, chasing his JD and MBA concurrently.

Back then, I’d been quick to deem him nerd, and his shy intensity and man bun