ALMS TO LOVE CHAPTER 5

"She'll be okay," Charles told him, coldness in his tone. "She knows the conditions."

"Terms?" Jamaica's cackle was cold and lethal. "Sweetheart, this is not a merger. This is your last chance to show me that you're not emotionally constipated. I want fireworks. Passion. Love burning in her eyes. True or false. Because if I get so much as a sniff of pretension, I'm shipping it all to your cousin Daniel. And that kid thinks Excel is a nightclub."

Charles closed his eyes. The headache was already there, knocking like a collector.

“You’ll meet her,” he said. “Just… not yet.”

“Oh,” she purred. “You’re protecting her already. How romantic.”

“I’m protecting the arrangement,” he growled.

"Mhm. Alright." Silence. And then, in a completely matter-of-fact voice, as if ordering coffee. "Brunch with family. Sunday. No exceptions. I want smiling faces and holding hands. And for goodness' sake, Charles, do not look like someone has just blown away your Labrador."

CLICK.

It was over.

Charles glared at the dark screen in his hand. A family brunch. How lovely. Fiona had simply not agreed to the entire day, and now she was being drafted in to impress the fire-breathing matriarch of the Billion dynasty.

He reclined in the seat, let the phone drop beside him on the leather, and closed his eyes. The burden of it all came crashing in.

This was slipping from him faster than he'd meant.

"God forgive us both," he growled.

And in his belly, for the first time, Charles felt something hard and bitter shift beneath his ribs. Not regret.

Worse.

Doubt.

The hospital's overhead fluorescent lights hummed softly above her, cutting pale shadows on worn tile floors. Fiona glided down the corridor under the force of a thousand heavy thoughts upon her breast. Gentle was her heel, but louder to her own ears was the thud of her heart.

She pushed open Room 417.

Within, the air was stagnant. Flat. Damp.

Liza Liana Generys lay extended on the bed, her tiny body barely lifting off the blankets with each breath. The IV machine whirred softly to one side of her like a lullaby. Fiona entered quietly so that she wouldn't awaken her. Her heart skipped a beat to see it—her little, rough-around-the-edges seven-year-old warrior sleeping peacefully, a pale pink bunny clutched tightly in her arm, her mouth parted slightly as she slept.

She sat beside her and extended quivering fingers, pushing back the damp hair from Liza's wet brow. She left the palm there, warm and soothing.

Liza stirred.

Her lids flapped open, sleepily gauzy, but the moment they focussed—her face glowed like sunrise.

"Mom… you're here," she gasped.

Fiona swallowed. "Of course I am."

And in an instant, Liza had her spindly arms around her neck.

The hug was soft, but with searing passion.

"I missed you," Liza breathed against her shoulder.

"I missed you more," Fiona whispered, holding her. "I always do."

Liza moved back, studying her mother's face with her eyes. "Did you talk to the doctor? Are they going to put me on the new medication?

Fiona's heart skipped a beat. Then she smiled, stroking the hair at the back of Liza's ear.

"Yes, baby. The new treatment is about to start very soon. Mommy's doing everything she can to make it so."

Liza nodded solemnly, believing. "You always do."

Fiona's throat burned. She stooped down and kissed the top of Liza's head and prepared herself to be strong—to maintain the smile plastered on her face, to be the heroine her little girl believed she was.

Because now, it was all about Liza.

Even the marriage she formed with a brooding, enigmatic billionaire who provided her salvation in gold chains on her wrists.

Fiona sat by Liza's bed far beyond the time the girl had fallen again into sleep. Her soft breathing was the sole murmur in the room now, the occasional beep of the IV monitor. Fiona did not move—sat there, holding her daughter's hand, etching into her memory the shape of her lashes, the warm softness of her skin.

She was about to let go and drift off into a daze when her phone began to ring on silent in her bag.

Unknown Number.

Fiona felt her stomach drop.

There was only one person it could be.

She pulled her hand back from Liza and stepped up and out of the room into the hall. It was quietening.

Fiona picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

Charles's voice was husky and sharp-steel, slicing through silk.

"We have a problem."

Fiona blinked. "Excuse me?"

"My grandmother would adore to meet you. Sunday. Brunch with the family."

There was a silence. "That gives us two days."

Fiona leaned against the wall, fist around the telephone. "Two days for what?"

"For you to be the perfect fiancée."

She laughed, loud and blunt, not with humor—but with astonishment. "Are you kidding me?"

"Do I sound like I'm joking?"

Between them there was a silence as tautly drawn wire.

Charles continued, voice even lower now. “She wants to see love in your eyes. Real or not. If she senses a single crack in the act, everything falls apart.”

Fiona exhaled through her nose. “So I’m expected to smile, pretend I’m head over heels in love with a man I’ve known for five minutes, and impress a billionaire matriarch who could probably smell fear through Prada?”

"Right. Something pale-colored. No red. She hates red—it reminds her of weddings she didn't approve of."

"Is that a common complaint? Fiona growled.

He turned her out. "My stylist will come. You will be fitted. Get easy facts about my life, and I'll do the same. We have to be slick. Persuasive."

Fiona closed her eyes. "You're very persuasive. You're good at this, aren't you?"

"I'm good at handling. Handling Madam Jamaica, that is."

"Right," Fiona answered. "Survival. That's all this is, isn't it?"

Charles's voice was a beat behind, as well.

"That was the agreement, wasn't it?"

And with that, the phone went dead.

Fiona froze in place in the hallway, phone still clutched to her ear long after the call had been cut. Her heart raced—not with fear now, but with the pent-up tempest brewing inside.

That was the agreement.

Three months.

No strings.

No feelings.

Just survival.

She jammed the phone into her coat pocket, swallowing hard. The hospital's antiseptic smell felt more suffocating than ever before. Her own image in the glass window at the end of the nurses' station—same face, same eyes—but something was already. different.

Was it guilt? Or that she was no longer the captain of her own life?

"Three months," she thought to herself. "Sixty million pesos. Smiling like a bimbo. True stress."

In the background, Liza Liana slept peacefully unaware that her mother had just sacrificed her in her pursuit of survival.

Fiona twitched, rubbing under her eyes, and returned to the room.

Whatever came next—hair-styling, script-writing, pearl-adorned brunches with queens—she would do it with her head held high.

For Liza.

Even if the man she had just promised to love in public life might very well prove to be the chilliest storm she ever got the opportunity to dance through.

Fiona glared at the phone for a slow second. Then she let out a breath and thrust it back into her purse, and went towards the hospital room.

She looked in at sleeping Liza, her breast tight with all she couldn't tell.

To improve, Liza would wear warm-hued deceptions.

She'd read the life story of a stranger.

And charm a woman who ruled empires.

Faking love for Charles Billion wasn't the hardest.

Being not afraid was.