Four

"Say something," Grayson said, when the silence went on a beat too long. "I've closed hostile takeovers faster than you're taking to answer this."

"This isn't a takeover. It's a marriage."

"It's a business arrangement wearing a marriage's clothes." He crossed the room, stopped close enough that she caught the clean, expensive smell of him again. "One year. My lawyer drafts a full agreement. You keep the nanny salary plus a settlement at the end, enough to set your mother up somewhere better if that's what you want. In return, no judge argues Theo's home isn't stable."

She thought about her mother's cramped apartment outside Lyon. About Marc and Sylvan sharing a room barely big enough for one bed. About the ring some other man had slid onto her finger four years back, right before he found out her father's death left them with debt instead of money, and how fast he'd vanished once there was nothing to inherit.

"If I say yes," she said, slow, testing each word, "I want it written down that this ends at the year mark. No strings. I'm not signing up to get trapped in something."

"Agreed." Fast enough that it stung a little, though she couldn't have explained why. "You get your own lawyer to review everything, not just mine."

"And Theo doesn't find out it's fake."

"Theo doesn't need to know anything except that you're staying." His voice caught on something, brief, hard to name. "He's already lost people who left without explaining. I won't do that to him twice. Contract or not."

That landed harder than the money had. A man could fake plenty of things. He couldn't easily fake the way his jaw locked up every time the subject of letting Theo down came anywhere near him.

"Okay," she said. "I'll do it."

The breath he let out sounded like it had been sitting in his chest since the Whitfields' lawyer called that morning.

The wedding happened eleven days later. Small. Fast. Courthouse, not cameras. His lawyer stood as one witness, and Odette, unashamedly teary, stood as the other. Theo wore a bow tie he refused to take off for two full days after and held Marielle's hand through the whole five-minute ceremony like he understood, in whatever way a five-year-old understands anything, that something important was happening around him.

She signed her name next to a man she'd known less than two weeks and tried not to notice how steady his hand was sliding the ring onto her finger, or how unsteady hers felt doing the same for him.

They moved her things into the main house that night, out of the guest wing and into the room beside his, connected by a shared sitting area Odette had clearly scrambled to make presentable. Grayson leaned in the doorway while the movers set down her last box, arms crossed, watching her unpack the same duffel bag she'd arrived with two weeks before.

"You don't have much," he said.

"I don't need much."

"You will now. Odette's taking you shopping this week. There's a gala Friday, Cole Maritime's fundraiser. Your first appearance as Mrs. Cole."

"That's soon."

"Diane will be there." Something shifted in his tone, and Marielle looked up from her half-unpacked bag. "My ex-fiancée. Left three years back when the company had a rough quarter and my net worth dipped enough to matter to her. She'll ask questions about how fast this happened, and she won't ask kindly."

"You could've mentioned her sooner."

"Mentioning her now." He held her gaze, no trace of the charm he'd used on Patricia. "She looks for cracks. I'd rather you hear that from me than find out from her."

"I don't have cracks to find."

Something moved behind his eyes, there and gone too fast to read. "Everyone does," he said. "I'd rather it come from me."