CHAPTER FIVE: MIDNIGHT BLUE DRESS

“How was it?” Jade asked immediately she got home.

Anne dropped her bag on the floor and sat beside Jade. Steve migrated immediately from the windowsill to Anne’s lap, which he did whenever she seemed like she needed the weight off something.

“He wants to fund ANGEL” Anne sighed.

“Okay” Jade said carefully. “That’s good news right?”

“There’s a condition.”

“I knew it! What was it?”

Anne looked at her. “He needs a wife. For twelve months. For a public image situation involving his company board and the gala.”

“He wants you,” Jade said slowly, “to marry him.”

“In exchange for full seed capital, infrastructure and personal mentorship for ANGEL.”

The apartment was quiet except from the purring sounds coming from Steve 

Jade looked at her for a long moment “Steve,”addressing the cat, “your landlord is getting married.”

Steve purred.

“It’s not a real marriage,” Anne said.

“It’s a legal marriage for money, which is technically the original definition of marriage, so.”

“Jade.”

“I’m not judging.” Jade tucked her legs underneath her and gave Anne her full, serious face. “Tell me everything from the beginning. Leave out nothing.”

###

The second visit to DuPont Tower was different, she knew where the visitor parking was this time around.  She also knew Marcus would appear from somewhere in the parking lot. 

What she didn’t know was what exactly she was going to say when she got there.

She had a plan and the plan was to say yes, negotiate the margin note she’d written at midnight, shake hands, leave before she thought too hard about any of it.

Simple and professional.

She’d also worn the burgundy mis fitted blazer, because Jade had been right, some decisions deserved a signature outfit.

Royce was at his desk when Marcus showed her in. He looked up, looked at her, looked at his watch.

“You’re early.”

“Seven hours early,” she agreed. “I’m an early bird. It’s in my profile.”

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. “Sit down, Ms. Brooke.”

“Anne.”

A pause. “Anne.”

She sat while he waited. She pulled out the document she took yesterday, and turned it to him. In the bottom margin, in blue pen she’d written in one addition.

He leaned forward to read it.

ANGEL launches as a fully independent company and DuPont Technologies takes no equity. Ever. The ever was underlined twice. She wasn’t apologizing for that.

He read it and sat back. “Ever”

“Ever,” she confirmed.

“That’s a strong word.”

“It’s the right word.”

He looked at her for a moment and then he picked up his pen and wrote one word beneath her addition. Fine. And signed his name beneath it.

Anne looked at the word and the signature. At the whole absurd, significant, completely unprecedented document in front of her.

She signed her name beside his and shook his hands across the desk. 

His hand was warm. She’d wondered about this the first time she met him. Now she knows.

“Welcome,” Royce said, “to a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” Anne said.

This time, the corner of his mouth made it further. Almost like a smile.

“Sooo, when do I meet the team that’s going to turn me into your wife?”

“Tomorrow, by nine o’clock.”

“Should I wear the navy dress again or has it peaked?”

He looked at her with the expression of someone encountering a question their system wasn’t built to process. “Wear whatever you want.”

“Helpful. Very helpful. Thank you.”

“Diana will have opinions.”

“Who’s Diana?”

“You’ll know when you meet her.”

###

Diana Fitch, the PR strategist of NeuroPont had an intensity about her as she came breezing into Royce's office the next day with a stylist behind her. She was short, and a little bit round and had a stern face. She shook Anne’s hand with the grip of someone taking possession “You have a wonderful face. We’ll work with that,” which Anne decided to receive as a compliment.

Beau, who arrived with her, assessed Anne in one full second “Magnificent,” he said.

“Thank you?”

“Don’t thank me yet we have work to do.”

The fitting was extensive. Beau moved around her with fabric samples and opinions and the occasional sound of genuine emotion, which he expressed without embarrassment. 

For two hours, Anne tried on things that cost more than her rent in fabrics she didn’t have words for. Beau cried at a green silk evening gown she wore. Anne laughed at the wrong moments and stood wrong in the right ones.

Royce sat on the couch on the far side of the office with his laptop in front of him.

He was not working.

He was watching Anne hold a midnight blue gown against herself and argue cheerfully with Beau about hemlines. 

She was laughing at something, a real laugh, and the sound moved through the room and landed somewhere in Royce’s chest which made him feel uncomfortable.

She tried on the  midnight blue gown last and looked in the mirror.

“Oh,” she said, quietly.

“Yes,” said Beau.

She was stunning. He couldn’t help himself “That one,” he said, when Beau twirled her around to inspect it 

Everyone turned but he was already looking at his screen.

Anne looked at Beau in the mirror lost for words.

“I have never,” he whispered, “in fifteen years, seen that man show interest in someone before.”

“He was looking at the dress, he has eyes” Anne said.

Beau smiled the smile of someone who knew better and was too professional to say so. “Of course he was.”

Moving into Royce's penthouse really felt real. It all sounded like a joke before but now it felt real

Royce’s penthouse was the kind of space that appeared in architecture magazines under headlines like When Less Is A Flex. Everything was deliberate. Clean surfaces. No clutter. A kitchen that looked used by someone who made coffee and heated things and nothing more.

“It’s very–“ she started.

“Functional,” Royce said.

“I was going to say gray.”

“Slate.”

“Royce, it’s  gray.”

Yeah she had work to do if this place was going to be her home for the next twelve months. She can’t be living in an unloved environment without making it home. 

He looked at her. “Your room is the second door on the left. The closet has also been cleared.”

“You cleared a closet?”

“My assistant cleared a closet.”

“How much of your life does Marcus live for you?”

“An efficient amount.”

She laughed. He didn’t, but something in his jaw did a thing that was close to it. She was beginning to understand his vocabulary, the way warmth moved through him not in the usual places but in the margins, in the pauses, in the particular quality of his attention when he was trying not to show it.

She picked up her suitcase to the bedroom. 

The bedroom was enormous and white and had a view that made her feel briefly and pleasurably insignificant. She set her suitcase on the bed and opened it and began unpacking books, clothes, her charger, even the small cactus she’d carried from the apartment because she’d been keeping it alive for two years and wasn’t stopping now. She set the cactus on the windowsill.

“What is that?”

She turned to find Royce was in the doorway looking at the cactus as if it was a breach of contract.

“A cactus, his name is Gerald.”

“You named your cactus?”

“He needed one. He’s been through a lot.”

“It’s a plant.”

“He’s resilient and low maintenance and thrives in hostile environments. I find him relatable.”

Royce looked at her. The look went on a second longer than either of them had agreed to. The room was very quiet in the way rooms were quiet when two people were both aware of the same thing and neither was saying it.

“The bathroom is through there,” he said. “I’ve left the right side of the vanity.”

“Half the vanity,” she said. “That’s almost romantic.”

“It’s geometry.”

“Royce.”

“Anne.”

“You’re going to have to learn to take a compliment.”

“You’re going to have to learn the difference between a compliment and a provocation.”

She smiled slowly. “What if they’re the same thing?”

He looked at her one more moment, the tension seizing up in the room “Goodnight,” he said quietly.

“You said it like a human this time” she said.

“Don’t make it strange.”

“Too late.” she laughed.

She turned back to the window when he left. She put her hand on the glass and felt it cool against her palm and stood there for a moment in the enormous white room that smelled faintly of cedarwood and clean linen and him.

Yeah she could understand Royce better with the little tells she sees in him. She just needed a little more time to befriend him. She would make it her mission to help him look more human so maybe he could be better for his real marriage. 

Gerald the cactus sat on the windowsill between her and the city. She looked at him.

“Don’t,” she told him.

He said nothing, he was a cactus afterall but he looked smug about it.