SIX MONTHS

"You're not actually reading that for the legal language."

Sophia looked up from the contract, caught. She was on page three for the fifth time, and Liam had clearly noticed. They sat across from each other at his kitchen counter, the document between them like a chessboard, neither of them wanting to move on first. Outside the window behind him, the city had already gone dark, the same skyline she'd looked at a hundred times from this exact apartment as a friend, now somehow different because in eighteen days her name would legally sit beside his on every document tied to it.

"I'm making sure I understand what I signed."

"You understand it. You're stalling."

He wasn't wrong, which annoyed her more than if he had been. Sophia closed the folder and pushed it toward the centre of the counter, out of reach, like it might bite her if she stared at it any longer.

"I think we should acknowledge," she said carefully, "that this is objectively insane."

"Objectively." Something close to a smile crossed his face and vanished before it fully arrived. He'd been doing that more since the study, these small aborted almost-smiles that never quite landed. "Marcus asked me twice if I was under duress."

"Are you?"

"No." He said it too fast. Then, slower, like he meant it more the second time around. "No."

Marcus had emailed the final terms that morning, four pages condensed from the draft they'd signed two nights earlier. Sophia read through them again anyway, out loud this time, because saying the words felt like the only way to make them real.

"Six months minimum," she read. "Separate bedrooms. No physical relationship beyond what's required for public appearances. Full confidentiality, enforced by a penalty large enough to bankrupt a small country. Public affection whenever the situation requires it."

"That last one's the important one." Liam leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. "The board needs to believe this is real. So does the press. So does anyone who might use a fake marriage as leverage against the company."

"And the feelings clause." Sophia tapped the paragraph, forcing her voice into something breezy and unbothered. "No emotional expectations beyond friendship. I appreciate the specificity."

"You wrote half of that clause yourself."

"I did." She had. Two nights ago, exhausted and terrified and trying to build a wall thick enough to survive six months of pretending to be married to a man she'd loved in silence for three years. "Doesn't mean I don't appreciate seeing it in writing."

Liam studied her for a moment longer than the conversation strictly required. "You really think you can do this? Live here. Play the part. Not let it become something it isn't supposed to be?"

"I think," Sophia said, "that I've been doing exactly that for three years already. This just comes with better real estate."

Something flickered behind his eyes, gone before she could read it clearly. He pushed off the counter and crossed to the window, looking out over a skyline that belonged to him in every practical sense except the one that mattered legally, at least for another eighteen days.

"My grandfather wanted someone who chose me," he said quietly, more to the glass than to her. "Not the company, not the name. Just me."

"And instead he got a business arrangement drafted by lawyers, complete with a penalty clause and a confidentiality agreement thick enough to double as a doorstop."

"He got you." Liam turned back to face her, and whatever had flickered in his eyes a moment ago hadn't fully gone. "For six months, at least. That's more than I expected when Marcus walked into that study."

Sophia's chest did something complicated and unhelpful. She reached for her coffee instead of answering, needing something to occupy her hands, and Liam let the silence sit between them a beat longer than comfortable before continuing.

"There's something else," he said. "Something I should have said before you signed."

"What?"

"This has to look real, Sophia. Not performed. Real." He crossed back to the counter, closing some of the distance he'd just put between them. "The board is looking for any excuse to challenge the marriage clause. If they think for one second this is staged, they'll drag us both through a legal process that makes the last three weeks look gentle. Reporters will be watching every dinner, every event, every time we're photographed together."

"I'm aware of how cameras work."

"I'm not talking about cameras." His voice dropped, lower and more careful than she'd heard it in years. "I'm talking about us. We have to make everyone believe we're in love. Not just act like it in public. Believe it. Completely."

The kitchen went very quiet.

Sophia set her coffee down carefully, aware of exactly how unsteady her hand had become. "That's not in the contract."

"It should have been." Liam's eyes hadn't left hers since he started speaking, and there was nothing performed in them now, nothing that looked like a man rehearsing a line for an audience that wasn't there. "Because if we don't sell this completely, from the very first public appearance, everything we're trying to protect falls apart. My inheritance. Your reputation. All of it. Marcus already warned me the board will send someone to watch us at the first event. They'll be looking for exactly the kind of hesitation you're showing right now."

"So what exactly are you asking me to do?"

Liam stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly to hold his gaze, close enough that she could see the exact moment his careful composure started to slip.

"I'm asking you to marry a man who's about to fall in love with his own wife in front of several hundred cameras," he said, "and I need you to be ready for what that might actually mean."

Sophia's heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs.

"Liam—"

"We have to make everyone believe we're in love," he said again, quieter this time, closer than the first, and for one suspended second neither of them moved, neither of them breathed, and Sophia understood with sudden, terrifying clarity that the six-month wall she'd built two nights ago had already developed its first crack.

She didn't know how to answer him. She wasn't sure there was an answer that wouldn't give away exactly how easy this particular assignment might turn out to be for her and exactly how dangerous that ease could become for both of them once the cameras started rolling and the six months started counting down.