Best Friend Bride

His mom opened the door before they’d even hit the stone steps at the entryway, likely because she’d been watching for the car. But instead of engulfing Jonas in the first of what would be many hugs, she ignored her only child in favor of her new daughter-in-law.

“You must be Viviana,” his mother gushed, and swept Viv up in an embrace that was part friendly and part Thank you, God, I finally have a daughter. “I’m so happy to meet you.”

Viv took it in stride. “Hi, Mrs. Kim. I’m happy to meet you, too. Please call me Viv.”

Of course she wasn’t ruffled. There was so little that seemed to trip her up—except when Jonas touched her. All practicing had done was create surprisingly acute sexual tension that even a casual observer would recognize as smoldering awareness.

He was currently pretending it didn’t exist. Because that would make it not so, right?

“Hi, Mom,” he threw in blithely since she hadn’t even glanced in his direction.

“Your grandfather is inside. He’d like to talk to you while I get to know Viviana. Tell me everything,” she said to her new daughter-in-law as she accepted the box of cupcakes with a smile. “Have you started thinking about kids yet?”

Jonas barely bit back another curse. “Mom, please. We just got here. Viv doesn’t need the third degree about personal stuff.”

Right out of the gate with the baby questions? Really? He’d expected a little decorum from his mom. In vain, obviously, and a mistake because he hadn’t had a chance to go over that with Viv. Should they say they didn’t want children? That she couldn’t have any?

He and Viv clearly should have spent less time “practicing” and more in deep conversation about all aspects of potential questions that might come up this weekend. Which they’d have to rectify tonight before going to bed. In the same room.

His mother shot him a glare. “Grandchildren are not personal. The hope of one day getting some is the only reason I keep you around, after all.”

That made Viv laugh, which delighted his mother, so really, there was nothing left to do but throw up his hands and go seek out Grandfather for his own version of the third degree.

Grandfather held court in the Kim living room, talking to his son. The older Jonas’s dad got, the more he resembled Grandfather, but the similarities ended there. Where Brian Kim had adopted an American name to match his new homeland, Kim Jung-Su wore his Korean heritage like the badge of honor it was.

Kim Electronics had been born after the war, during a boom in Korean capitalism that only a select few had wisely taken advantage of. Jonas loved his dad, but Grandfather had been his mentor, his partner as Jonas had taken what Jung-Su had built and expanded it into the critical US market. They’d created a chaebol, a family-run conglomerate, where none had existed, and they’d done it together.