CHAPTER 6

ADRIAN

This was stupid.

Hiring this woman on the spot had been stupid. Sitting here now, asking a woman I'd known for less than an hour to marry me, was somehow worse. And putting that caregiver notice up in the first place.... Edward had called that particular decision reckless at least a dozen times over the past week, and for once I couldn't argue with him.

And yet here I was, about to do exactly what I'd sworn I would never do again.

Because I was desperate. Desperate enough that reasoning properly no longer factored into the calculation. Desperate to hear my son's voice again.... any sound at all, a word, a syllable, something. 

Five years old. He should have been loud by now, exhausting, full of questions I was happy to answer even at the end of a long day. Instead he'd gone quiet somewhere along the way, and every specialist I'd flown in from three different countries had circled the same conclusion without ever quite naming it: He needs something none of us can give him.

I knew the reason for it traced back to mistake I'd made.... the hours I'd buried myself in the company instead of in my child's life, telling myself that money and staff and the best schools in the country amounted to the same thing as being present. It hadn't. I knew that now. Knowing it hadn't fixed anything.

Elias's mother belonged to a part of my life I'd sealed off....sealed away cleanly, didn't revisit the numbers, didn't think what might have gone differently. It wasn't a story I told. It wasn't a story I planned to start thinking about tonight.

Then Elena had walked into my house.

Within ten minutes she'd gotten my son to eat, after two days of refusing food from everyone else in this house, including me. I'd watched from the doorway....she'd simply knelt beside him, tasted his food, and made a face so genuinely disgusted that Elias had actually looked at her and then I saw it, the spark in his eyes.

I'd felt something crack open in my chest, standing in that doorway. I hadn't let myself name it as hope, because hope was a dangerous thing but yet here I was.

Then I'd actually looked at her. Dark hair. Green eyes that caught the light strangely. The kind of beauty that would have been the obvious thing to notice, except it wasn't what held my attention.

It was what sat behind her eyes. A kind of emptiness she was working very hard to keep hidden, the specific practiced calm of someone who had learned to perform "fine" long before she ever meant it. I recognized it because I'd been wearing the same expression in mirrors for years.

I'd already read her file before she arrived....or what remained of it. That was the problem. Pieces of it had been deliberately removed, cleanly enough that it took real effort to notice the gaps at all. I didn't like gaps. So I'd had my people dig further, and what they'd found had complicated everything considerably.

Elena Matthews. Married...or formerly married.... to Daniel Bennett.

Daniel. A man I'd refused to do business with for years despite his repeated, increasingly desperate attempts to get in any contact with Blackwood & Co, I'd never trusted him.

Now I understood at least part of it. He'd had a wife. And somehow he'd managed to erase nearly every trace of her existence from every record that mattered.

Why would a man do that to someone he'd married?

And beneath that name was another one, buried deeper still. Elena Matthews. Daughter of a Angelo Matthews I hadn't been able to find a single verified record of anywhere.

Too many gaps. Too many questions I had no immediate use for answering. Tonight, I had exactly one priority, and she was standing across my desk with no idea how much of her I'd already found.

Maybe it was better that way, for now.

"Elena."

She looked at me, cautious. "Yes?"

"I need a wife."

Her eyebrows shot up before I'd finished the sentence.

"And you're the most suitable candidate I've come across."

She stared at me the way you'd stare at someone who'd just wandered into the wrong building entirely. "I'm sorry?"

"You applied for a caregiver position," I said. "I'm offering you something different."

"What position, exactly?"

"My wife."

She actually laughed.... not because anything about this was funny, but because she'd clearly decided, in the space of a heartbeat, that I'd lost my mind.

"Mr. Blackwood, I came here for a caregiver job. Not a marriage contract."

"I'm aware."

"Then why would you ask me to marry you?"

"Elias."

That landed. Her expression shifted, some of the disbelief giving way to something more careful.

"My son needs someone he trusts," I said. "Someone who can reach him when nobody else can. You did that in under ten minutes. No one else in this house has managed it in over a year."

"I can help him without marrying you."

"I know."

"Then why?"

"Because a caregiver leaves at the end of a contract. A mother figure doesn't."

Something crossed her face at that word... brief, gone almost before I caught it. Pain, unmistakably, though she smoothed it over faster than most people could manage.

"You want me to "pretend" to be his mother."

"Not exactly."

"Then what, exactly?"

"My wife. In name. Nothing else." I came around the desk, closing some of the distance between us. "This would be a paper marriage. No expectations beyond what I'm about to describe."

She watched me with open suspicion, arms crossed.

"Separate bedrooms. Separate lives. You live yours, I live mine, and the only place they intersect is under this roof and around my son. You'll have a car, staff, security, anything you require."

"And what happens to me in all this?"

"You'll be there for Elias. That's the whole of it."

"Do you do this often?" she asked, one eyebrow lifting. "Propose marriage to women you've known for an hour?"

The corner of my mouth moved before I could stop it. "No. You'd be the first."

She studied me for a long moment, then shook her head. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't make sense."

"It's not as though you're already married," I said, watching her carefully as I said it.

Her expression froze for exactly one second before she recovered. I filed that away without comment.

"I don't think I'm the right person for this," she said instead, looking away.

"I disagree."

"You don't know me."

"I know enough to make an offer."

She lifted her chin. "How much is this arrangement worth to you?"

"One million a month."

Her eyes widened, and for once she had nothing immediately clever to say to that.

"That's not a normal number, Mr. Blackwood."

"I can afford numbers that aren't normal."

"It's not about the money." She said it quickly, almost defensively, like she needed me to believe that more than she needed me to hear it.

"Then what is it about?"

A pause, longer this time. "My health."

I didn't fill the silence, and after a moment she continued.

"I have some health concerns. After everything that's happened recently, I don't think I'm.... suited for something like this."

I stepped closer, close enough that she had to tip her head back slightly to hold my gaze. "Look at me."

She did, reluctantly.

"Whatever it is, you'll have the best physicians in the country the moment you're under this roof. My family's doctor will oversee your care personally. Whatever you need, you'll receive it without question."

"You don't understand."

"Then explain it to me."

She took a breath, like she was deciding whether to trust me with something. "I want to finish medical school."

That, I hadn't expected.

"Medical school?"

"I gave it up. A long time ago, for.... reasons that don't matter anymore. But I want it back."

"Then have it back."

She blinked. "What?"

"You want to become a doctor. Become one."

"You wouldn't object?"

"Why would I."

"Because if I'm your wife, wouldn't you expect me at home? Managing Elias, managing this house?"

"No." I walked back toward my desk, putting a professional distance between us again. "You're not marrying me to become housemaid with a ring on her finger. You're marrying me because my son needs you." I looked at her directly. "I won't ask you to give up anything else because you're wearing my name."

Something in her posture loosened, fractionally.

"Really?"

"Really. I'll make certain you have whatever you need to finish it."

She looked at me for a long moment, and I watched something settle in her....the fear didn't leave entirely, but something steadier moved in beside it.

She signs the papers and stands, moving closer to me and extendeds her hand.

I looked at it, then at her. "What's this?"

"A deal should be sealed properly." A faint, wry edge had crept into her voice. "Shake on it, Mr. Blackwood."

I hadn't expected that either. I took her hand... smaller than mine, her grip steadier than I would have guessed given everything sitting behind her eyes.

"I look forward to being your fake wife," she said, releasing my hand before I fully had.

"We'll see how it goes."

She offered something close to a smile. "So what am I supposed to do?" she added. "Starting when?"

"Mrs. Carter walk you through everything." I nodded toward the door, where I knew Mrs. Carter had positioned herself. "Tonight, She will get you settled and go over the ground rules of this house."

Mrs. Carter knocks and enters my office immediately. "This way, Miss Matthews, Oh, deeply sorry, Mrs Blackwood." she says with a weird look on her face.

Elena glanced back at me once, unreadable, then followed her out.

The door closed and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

I looked down at her redacted file, tracing the blank spaces where her history had been torn away by a man who thought he could throw her away and make the world forget.

I didn't know what she had survived under her ex-husband's roof, and I didn't care about the gaps in the paper trail. The moment she stepped back through these gates, none of that mattered anymore.

She was under my roof now. And she was mine to protect.