“It’s actually my collection,” Daren repeats.

I snap my eyes to him. “Why are you even here?”

“Uh… because your father and I had an arrangement concerning my baseball cards. Have I not made that clear?”

“Oh, you’ve made it clear. You’ve made it crystal clear,” I say, feeling my pulse rise. “I just don’t understand why my father is leaving a bunch of crap to people I don’t even know.”

Daren mocks an offended look. “You know me.”

“Do I?” I say, mimicking his sarcasm. “No. I know of you, but I don’t know you. So forgive me if I don’t understand what you’re doing at the reading of my father’s will.”

His charming good looks ice over and a muscle works in his jaw. “I spent more time with your father than you ever did. If anyone’s presence here is unmerited it’s yours.”

Our eyes lock in a gaze of mutual contempt. Daren’s attendance at this very personal, and somewhat heartbreaking, will reading makes me want to howl. He knows nothing about my father and me. Nothing.

Mr. Perkins clears his throat and we break our gaze to look back at him.

“James Turner’s last wishes were to leave something to you both. Something he entrusted to me.” He sets the folder down and scratches his head again before scurrying about the messy room. “I know I had it here somewhere…”

I have no idea what the bumbling man is looking for now, but after spending two minutes with him, I’m impressed he managed to leave his house today without forgetting to put on pants.

Daren leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he watches Mr. Perkins fret about the room. I watch as he laces his long fingers and casually taps the pads of his thumbs together.

“Ah, yes. Here it is.” The lawyer holds up a DVD then slips it into a large TV across the room and cues it up. “James put together this will himself just a few months ago. I only opened the initial package last week. Inside, he requested that the two of you be present for this video message.”

He presses Play and my father appears on the screen. His brown hair is grayer than I remember, his green eyes a bit faded, and he’s thinner than ever before, but everything else about his youthful face is the same. He was in his fifties when the cancer took him, but he looked like he was thirty and probably acted like he was twenty. Mom always said that’s what she loved most about him—his childlike silliness. That’s what I liked most about him too.

My heart twists and I drop my eyes to concentrate on a small tear in the couch. That was a long time ago. I look back up.

James Turner is dressed in a tweed jacket and tie, and has his thin-rimmed glasses on. He looks like a college professor from the ’50s. All he’s missing is a pipe and a mustache. And he really did smoke a pipe when he was alive.

He was an eccentric man, always goofing around and doing odd things. But he was good to our family when I was young. My parents divorced when I was six, but before they broke up we used to go on a family picnic every Sunday. My dad would send my mom and I on little scavenger hunts for things like white roses and four-leaf clovers and then we’d lay our blue-and-white-checkered quilt on the grass and eat fried chicken until the sun set.

That was before my mom decided she’d rather be single and swept me off to Chicago. And before my dad decided he didn’t want a family anymore.

I stare down at the couch rip until I hear my father clear his throat. “Hello, Kayla and Daren.” I look up. “If you’re watching this, then I assume I’m dead. Which is unfortunate, because I really liked being alive.”

I already hate this.

“Nevertheless, now that I’m gone I have a letter I want to leave to you—to both of you. The only catch is that you two must agree to wear handcuffs while retrieving it.”

I blink, not sure I heard him correctly.

He smiles. “It’s really the only way to ensure that you stay together and cooperate with each other. You’re both only children with circumstances that have taught you not to rely on others, and being such, I’m sure your first instincts will be to separate and go at it alone. So you’ll understand why I feel the handcuffs are necessary.”

My jaw drops. It actually falls open in shock.

Handcuffs?

Handcuffs? What the hell?

He continues, “I’m sure this sounds preposterous and I have no doubt you both hate this idea but you might someday thank me for it anyway.” He winks at the camera. “Happy hunting.”

And the screen goes black.

Is he—what in the—why would—

WHAT. THE. HELL.

I shift my eyes from the lawyer to the TV and back to the lawyer. I don’t even know where to start.

“That’s it?” I say, stunned. “That five-second message is the entire video from my deceased father?”

Mr. Perkins nervously nods.

I let out a sharp exhale in disbelief. My father has a chance to say his final words to me and he chooses “Wear handcuffs” and “Happy hunting”?

If he weren’t already dead I’d go kill him myself.

Daren puckers his lips and furrows his brow. “I don’t get it.”

Mr. Perkins inhales slowly. “It seems Mr. Turner wants you and Kayla to be handcuffed together while you go find a letter.”

My jaw is still hanging open like a broken nutcracker soldier. What the hell is happening right now?

“Yeah, I got that. But go ‘find’ a letter?” Daren squints. “What does that mean? Is the letter lost?”

I drop my face into my hands, trying to get a grip on the emotion swelling behind my eyes. James Turner couldn’t be a normal father, oh no. He couldn’t just leave me a message saying he loved me or that he was sorry for being a deadbeat dad these last few years, no way. He had to be his usual pompous self and leave me some cryptic video note.

I pull my head up and blink a few times. I will not cry. I will not cry.

Mr. Perkins refers to his papers again before reading out loud, “ ‘If Kayla and Daren work together while handcuffed, they should be able to complete their task in a single day.’ ”

All words fail me. I want to cry and scream and laugh hysterically. I might do all three. Right here on this squeaky black couch. In front of God, and Mr. Perkins, and Daren effing Ackwood.

“It’s going to take a whole day to pick up this letter?” Daren looks just as baffled as I feel. “Where did Turner leave it, in another state?”

The letter. Right. Because that’s the crazy piece in this crackpot puzzle.

“ ‘But if they fail to cooperate with each other,’ ” Mr. Perkins continues, “ ‘their mission may take longer.’ ”

“Mission?” Daren says. “What are we, spies?”

“So let me get this straight.” Shifting in my seat, I press my lips together and try to control the anger bubbling up inside me. “The only thing my father left me, his only child, in his will was a stupid letter? And the only way I can get this stupid letter is by handcuffing—handcuffing—myself to a total stranger?”

“Wha—” Daren turns to me and makes a face. “I’m not a stranger. And I’ll have you know, lots of girls would be happy to be handcuffed to me.” He pulls a crooked smile. “Some actually have been.”

Something in his expression wavers, making me question the cockiness in his eyes—not the fact that girls have played sexy handcuff games with him, just the arrogance with which he announced it, and I stare at him incredulously.

“Yeah, well, lots of girls are morons.” I turn back to the lawyer and plead, “Please tell me I’m misunderstanding and that this is all just some horrid nightmare.”

“Nightmare.” Daren lifts an eyebrow. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“You are not misunderstanding, Ms. Turner.” Mr. Perkins pulls his handkerchief back out and dabs his lip again. “Your father does, in fact, want you to handcuff yourself to Daren while you retrieve the letter he left you.”

I laugh darkly and lean back on the couch with my already broken heart breaking into more pieces than I even knew were left. “Fantastic,” I mutter.

It was sad when my father missed by sixteenth birthday. It was hurtful when he stopped returning my phone calls every year after that. But failing to leave me anything in his will other than a ridiculous hide-and-seek game for what is probably a disappointing handwritten message scrawled out on his monogrammed stationery is just. Plain. Insulting.

And I thought the face spider was bad.

4 Daren

Clearly, Old Man Turner went a little nutty at the end. I knew the guy had some quirks—I mean come on, he stole a kid’s baseball card collection—but I never thought he was crazy. Until now.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind being handcuffed to a hot blonde all day. That’s like handing me sex on a platter. But being handcuffed to Kayla Turner all day? That would just piss me off. I don’t care how sexy she is in her tight little skirt and skinny high heels. She was a rotten daughter to a man who was nothing but a wonderful father, and I don’t think I’d be able to put my judgment of her aside long enough to make it out of this office, let alone go track down some letter. I’d probably end up telling her off and she’d probably end up crying, and then I’d have a blubbering mess attached to my arm. No thanks.

“Eddie, my man.” I smile and clasp my hands. “I’m sure there’s another way around all this nonsense. Why don’t we skip the handcuffing and go straight to the letter part? I’m sure you know where it is. All you have to do is tell us and we’ll be on our way.”

Kayla nods. “Exactly. Because we’re obviously not going to chain ourselves together.”

“Yeah. That would be insane.” I lean back and stretch my body out again, trying to assume a casual air. “And unless there’s a bed and lingerie involved, I’d really rather not spend my day locked up to a feisty blonde.”

She scans my face with her big blue eyes. “Really?”

I wait for her cheeks to tint ever so slightly, like most girls’ do when I allude to sex in their presence, but she just stares at me like I’m a douche bag. No blushing. No nervous blinking. No shifting in her seat.

I was only trying to get a rise out of her, but shit. Now I kind of feel like a douche bag.

Eddie wrings his hands. “I’m sorry, but I made a promise to James and he was pretty clear about his wishes. It’s the handcuffs or no letter.”

“Well I’m not doing it,” Kayla says, pulling her eyes off mine and crossing her arms in true tantrum fashion.

God. She couldn’t look snobbier if she tried.

“If my father had something to say to me,” she says, “he could have said it when he was alive and not written it down in some faraway note.”

I look at my phone. “Yeah, and I have to be at work in an hour.”

“I understand.” Eddie nods. “Mr. Turner’s will is definitely… unorthodox.” He shakes his head with a sigh. “Well then, I guess all you need to do is sign this document that says I presented the will to you both, and we can all be on our way.”

I sit up. “What about my baseball cards?”

Kayla rolls her eyes.

Eddie skims the pages again. “I’m afraid there’s nothing in here about baseball cards.”

“Nothing?” I squawk. “No cards? No green box?”

“Wow.” Kayla stares at me. “I’ve never heard a grown man whine so much about a collection of cards before.”

“It’s not about the cards,” I snap, shooting her a dark look. She couldn’t possibly understand how much getting that box back would mean to me. I turn to Eddie. “There must be some mistake. Turner promised I’d get them back.”

He tucks the handkerchief away. “I’m sorry, Daren. There’s no mention of any cards in the will. At least not that I remember…”

As Eddie fidgets through the papers again I curse under my breath.

“Don’t act so surprised,” Kayla says. “My father never cared about anyone but himself.”

I halt my inner turmoil and scowl at her. “Your father was a good guy. One of the best,” I bite out. “So ease up.”

She ignores me and stands up. “Where do I sign so I can be on my way?”

I make a sound of disgust. “You’re sure in a hurry to leave daddy dearest in the dust.”

“And you’re sure in a hurry to snatch up his baseball memorabilia,” she barks back.

“They were my cards,” I say. “Cards that your father stole from me when I was a kid, by the way, but you don’t see me spitting on his grave.”