Adding Up to You Read online

  All’s fair in love and war…and business, in this reader-favorite novel by New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis!

  Kenna Mallory is loath to give up her hard-won independence, but when her father asks her to take over as VP of one of the family’s latest hotel acquisitions, Kenna can’t resist the opportunity to prove herself. The catch? She has to be the co-VP along with Weston Roth. With a name like that, Kenna is sure Weston must be old and doddering.

  Wes is neither. And after years of working hard to get where he is, he doesn’t appreciate Kenna’s sudden arrival on the scene. Yet he can’t deny that she’s determined, smart, good with numbers…and nearly impossible to resist. Can he mix business with pleasure without losing everything he’s worked for?

  Originally published as Natural Blond Instincts in 2003.

  Books by Jill Shalvis

  Colorado Protector

  Long-Lost Mom

  The Rancher’s Surrender

  The Detective’s Undoing

  Who’s the Boss?

  Roughing with Ryan

  Tangling with Ty

  Messing with Mac

  The Street Where She Lives

  Out of the Blue

  Hero for Hire

  Her Perfect Stranger

  The Bachelor’s Bed

  Chance Encounter

  Naughty But Nice

  Adding Up to you

  Together Again?

  Adding Up to You (Natural Blond Instincts)

  Jill Shalvis

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER 1

  KENNA MALLORY thought she’d turned out okay, though she supposed that depended on who you asked. Zipping alongside the Pacific coast just outside Santa Barbara, the sun at her back, the radio blaring…she herself couldn’t have asked for more.

  But her parents…undoubtedly they could have filled volumes on how they might have changed their only daughter. Changed and molded and created.

  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.”

  “Now, you know I only did that for one week.” And she’d made enough money to cover an entire semester’s tuition. Who could complain about that?

  “Kenna, for once, listen.”

  “Fine.” She pretended his tone didn’t sneak past her defenses and stab at her. Was it so bad to want to make her own way? To want to be successful and please him at the same time, without compromising herself and her beliefs just because they were different than his?

  “You’re a Mallory—”

  Oh yeah, here it came. The Mallory card. She could recite it verbatim. As a Mallory, you owe it to the family… As a Mallory, you must present yourself this way… As a Mallory…

  Never mind that she didn’t consider herself a Mallory, and that she hadn’t for a long time. It wasn’t the name she minded, but the baggage attached to it that she could definitely live without. She just wanted to be her own person.

  Her own person who lived quite happily in a four-hundred-square-foot studio apartment in Santa Barbara. Sure, she had neither an adequate bathroom mirror nor a tub, not to mention only enough closet space for one pair of shoes, but she had her pride and her freedom, and she valued both. “I just really want to manage on my own.”

  “Want has little to do with family obligation. Remember your great-great-grandfather Philippe, who—”

  “—came over on the boat from France with only the clothes on his back,” she intoned along with him. “Walking to work every day in the icy, freezing snow, ten miles uphill each way—” She stopped when she heard his reluctant chuckle.

  “Okay, so I’ve mentioned him before.”

  “Only a few billion times.” She smiled at his admission. “I get it, Dad, honest. We work hard. But I am working hard, just not for you.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Explain it to me. Make me understand.”

  As she came into Santa Barbara, a sprawling, hopping, happy beach town that liked to party, the glittering summer sun set its edges down on the ocean, creating a glorious end to the day. Never one to pass up a sky-gazing moment, Kenna shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head to see better. “Well, for starters, you and Mom live in San Diego.”

  “Not a good enough excuse.”

  “It’s four hours away, Dad.”

  “Like you’ve never moved before.”

  “Well then, how about because we spontaneously combust if we’re together in the same room for more than five minutes?”

  “So we’ve had a few obstacles in our day. That’s no reason to stop trying.”

  Obstacles. Meaning, of course, her wild and crazy years. The years Kenna had spent battling her insecurities and inadequacies in the face of her brilliant parents had been long and rather ugly. But she’d paid the price—dearly—when, at the age of eighteen, she’d had all funds yanked from beneath her feet, leaving her as accused.

  Wild and crazy.

  And penniless.

  It had been their version of tough love, and it had been tough. Extremely so. But she hadn’t been born a Mallory for nothing. Stubbornness and tenacity had been bred into her, and she’d marched off to college determined to prove she could manage on her own. She’d been the principled, idealistic rebel, an activist on campus staging sit-ins at the administrative building whenever she thought an injustice had been committed.

  She’d horrified her parents on a weekly basis, but because they’d already overplayed their hand by cutting off the money, they