The Heir Agreement by Kenzie Leon Page B

that unbelievable salary, but I got an email requesting further information a day later. It was more information than I’d ever had to provide for an application, but I was comfortable with it because the job had been posted on my former university’s career site, so I knew it had been fully vetted by the school as being legitimate.
    I filled out the ten-page application, even answering the question about whether I was married, divorced, in a relationship, or casually dating. I was pretty sure employers were forbidden to ask those sorts of questions, but I checked the ‘single’ box anyway, figuring they just wanted to know if I’d be completely devoted to the job. Besides, I had a hundred thousand reasons to give them whatever information they wanted. I also uploaded five character references, two photographs of myself, and a video recording of my personal statement as had been requested.
    A week later, I received a phone call from a man named Mr. Ferguson, who told me he was calling on behalf of his client, whose identity was being kept confidential for privacy purposes. I guessed whoever it was didn’t want desperate applicants showing up on the doorsteps of their mansion to beg for the job.
    I’d been selected for an in-person interview, but first I had to undergo a full medical workup. Luckily, the doctor’s bill was covered by Mr. Ferguson, or whoever it was he was representing.
    And now here I was, walking into the conference room of Grant Ventures. When I entered, I saw that there were three people in the room already. Two women were seated beside each other at the large table and a man stood at the front of the room.
    “You’ve arrived.” The man had snow-white hair and a faintly British accent, which I recognized as the voice from the phone calls. Mr. Ferguson was older, maybe in his sixties or seventies, but not at all frail. “Now we can begin. I’m Mr. Ferguson.”
    “I’m Brooke. It’s nice to meet you.”
    After shaking his hand, I turned to face the women who were at the table, realizing that they must be the women I was interviewing for. They made a beautiful couple, one with pale blonde locks swept away from her face in a high ponytail and the other with a sleek black bob that accentuated her model-good looks.
    The two were not much older than me, but looked so much more put together than I ever would. They were impeccably dressed, with outfits that looked like they cost more than my good-for-nothing car had. Suddenly, the white button-up I borrowed from my waitress uniform and the black heels I’d found at the secondhand store didn’t seem up to par.
    Still, it wasn’t like a killer fashion sense was the most important requirement for the job, right? They were probably mostly concerned with how well I’d take care of their child, not the fact that I shopped in the sale section of thrift stores. I forced myself to smile.
    “You may have a seat with the other applicants.” Mr. Ferguson gestured toward the two seated women. “Your prospective employer will be in shortly to continue the interview process.”
    My heart fell.
    The other applicants?
    Instead of interviewing for them as I’d thought, I was up against them? I walked over to take a seat next to them as Mr. Ferguson left the room.
    My sinking feeling of disappointment grew as we waited for the interview to begin. The women introduced themselves, but quickly lost interest in me after asking a few pointed questions. Apparently, I was competing against two women who’d gone to private schools all their lives and traveled the world, and they seemed confident that as someone who hadn’t even finished her degree at a state school, I was no competition at all.
    I was a big ball of tangled nerves, kicking myself for ever believing that things could turn out right for me, that I actually had a chance at getting this job so I could chip away at the burden that had been weighing on me like a two-ton cartoon anvil for the past two months