Unfortunately, they’d blessed Kenna with her own mind. Hence, the Mallory family issues. She didn’t toe the line, she didn’t follow the rules, she didn’t fit the mold. Their mold.

Which explained the slightly exasperated voice of her father in her ear, courtesy of the cell phone she’d won in a mail sweepstakes.

“Kenna, honestly. You baffle me.” This was said in a paternal tone suggesting impatience, superiority and that mind-boggling emotion called love. A powerful combination on the best of days, designed to crank the guilt factor up to maximum overload. “I’ve got the perfect job for you, and you have no response.”

None that he wanted to hear, anyway.

Since he’d been doing his damnedest to run her life from the moment she’d been born, and she’d been doing her damnedest not to let him, the result had made for some interesting arguments over the past twenty-seven years. “Dad…thank you. I appreciate it, but I’ve got my own job, remember?”

“Washing crap out of poodles’ tails is not a job, Kenna.”

She glanced at the waves pounding the shore because it was calming, and at the moment, she needed calming. “I don’t do that anymore and you know it.” She purposely avoided reminding him exactly what she did do for a living. Did she really need to say-again-that she wasn’t in his world because he’d kicked her out of it?

Since then, sure, she’d had some, uh, creative jobs to earn her way through college. But recently, she’d landed herself a position in the accounting department of Nordstrom’s. One thing she’d gotten from Kenneth Mallory, III, was her love of business and finance. She was good at it. So good, in fact, that on her better days she’d call herself a whiz.

“The job I have for you is important,” he said. “As opposed to, say, slinging beer at that bar where the women wear those tight white tank tops.”