I Outsourced Breakfast—and Beat the Stepmother

Seattle society believed I married Kellan Bellweather because I wanted his money.

That was insulting.

I had married him because his grandfather offered me four million dollars to remain his wife for exactly one year.

There is a difference.

The contract was twelve pages long, professionally notarized, and more emotionally honest than most marriages I had seen. I would attend essential family events, protect the Bellweather reputation, and never interfere with Kellan’s private life. After twelve months, we would divorce quietly. I would receive enough money to buy a cottage on the Oregon coast, sleep beneath expensive blankets, and avoid ambition until death or excellent pastries took me first.

It was not romance.

It was retirement with rings.

Kellan needed a wife because his grandfather, Augustus Bellweather, refused to transfer control of the family voting trust until Kellan appeared “settled.” Bellweather Dynamics was a technology and shipping empire headquartered beside Lake Washington, and apparently being unmarried made investors nervous in ways tax fraud did not.

Kellan was thirty-four, disciplined, brilliant, and emotionally available only during earnings calls.

I was Romy Vale, twenty-nine, professionally underwhelmed, formerly employed in archival compliance, and deeply committed to preserving my energy for things that mattered, like naps and avoiding unnecessary conversations.

We were perfect.

Or we should have been.

The problem was Odette.

Kellan’s stepmother had spent twenty years positioning herself as the future power behind the Bellweather family. She hosted charity dinners, controlled guest lists, corrected forks, and could make a senator apologize for breathing too loudly near the soup.

Then I arrived with one suitcase, comfortable shoes, and no visible desire to compete with her.

That frightened Odette more than ambition would have.

Ambitious women could be baited.

Desperate women could be bought.

Social climbers could be humiliated.

But I was none of those things.

I was a woman counting down to a coastal cottage.

On my third morning in the mansion, Odette sent a housekeeper to wake me at six thirty.