CHAPTER FOUR

Arian's POV

She arrived at precisely nine in the morning the following day, which I acknowledged with an unusual degree of satisfaction. Whatever else Megan Valtz was, she wasn't a waste of time.

I heard her story before I saw her. Killian gave me a call from the floor below, his voice a mixture of amusement and caution.

"There's a young woman at the reception requesting to meet with you," he said. "The security was not going to let it pass through the front desk — she did not look like she belonged there, for starters, and she did not give up the company's name or reference an appointment."

"Let her up," I said. "Now."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone, as if he wanted to ask something and then changed his mind. "Understood."

A few minutes later, my office door opened, and I watched Megan Valtz stroll in, dismissing a visibly confused assistant who hadn't been told more than to let her pass. She didn't look the part of a successful businesswoman — jeans and a jacket that only saw the inside of a winter closet, and no sign that she belonged anywhere near the top floor of Z Corporation. Yet, she walked in like she owned the room anyway: the look of determination carved into her jaw was the one I recognized from the shop, as if she had already decided that nothing would take her down in front of me.

"I've thought about it," she said before I even gestured for her to sit. "I'll do it."

"Sit down, Miss Valtz."

She sat down and straightened her back, hands folded over her kneecaps as if preparing for a tribunal.

"Before we move any further," I said, pulling out a folder from my desk, "I want to make a few things clear to you. This is a business arrangement. One year, as I said. You'll be introduced to the board as my wife — to the board, to my family, to anyone who asks. In return, the hospital's debt will be cleared, your mother's medical expenses for the course of the contract, and the matter of the card will be forgotten entirely."

"And after a year?"

"We part ways. Quietly. No further responsibilities from either of us." I pushed the folder across the table to her. "The details of the agreement are all there. I suggest you read them over carefully before signing anything."

She opened it and scanned the pages with the same kind of focused interest I remembered from the day at the shop, when she had stared down two men without blinking. It took a few minutes. I let her take a look.

"There's nothing about how we are supposed to act as a married couple," she said finally, looking up. "In public. In private."

"That's what I intend to add before we sign. Go ahead."

She hesitated for only a second before speaking, as if she had practiced it along the way. "No physical relationship. None. It is a contract and not a marriage in any sense, so I will not be expected to—" she paused, choosing her next words carefully, "—perform any part of it that isn't strictly a public appearance. Separate rooms. No exceptions."

"Agreed," I said. "It hadn't occurred to me to expect otherwise, but somehow, the way you prepared to say that told me otherwise."

"I have terms of my own."

"Go ahead."

"You don't discuss the details of this arrangement with anyone outside the people who already need to know. Your friend, your mother — fine, if you trust them to keep it quiet. No one else. If this gets out before I secure my position with the board, the entire arrangement is worthless for both of us."

"I wasn't planning on announcing it to strangers, Mr. Carusso."

"And you'll attend whatever functions I require you to attend. Dinners, galas, anything the board or my family expects to see us at together. I don't need you to be enthusiastic. I need you convincing."

Something flickered across her face — irritation, perhaps, quickly smoothed over. "Fine."

"And you'll call me Arian. If you slip into 'Mr. Carusso' in front of my mother, she'll know something is wrong within the first five minutes."

That one caught her off guard a bit more than the rest. "Arian," she repeated, testing it out as if the name itself was part of the terms she had agreed to.

"One more thing," I said. "Whatever this becomes on paper, it stays on paper. No expectations beyond what is written here. I don't want either of us to walk into this thinking it's something it isn't."

She looked at me for a long moment before answering, and something about the straightforwardness of it made me wonder, briefly, what she thought she saw when she looked at me — the man who had bailed her mother out of a crisis, or the one currently handing her a legal document instead of comfort.

"Understood," she said. "Where do the signatures go?"

I turned the last page over toward her and handed her a pen. She didn't hesitate the way I half expected her to. Her signature was quick, decisive — like she had already spent the entire drive over convincing herself that there was no version of this where she would walk away.

I signed beneath it.

"The wedding will happen in two days, I have no time to spare," I said, closing the folder. "Small. Efficient. I'll have my assistant coordinate the details with you — venue, paperwork, whatever is needed to make it look properly done for the benefit of the board."

"Two days," she repeated, and for the first time since she had walked in, her expression changed to something like disbelief. "You want to get married in two days."

"I don't have the luxury any longer, Miss Valtz. Neither, as it happens, do you."

She didn't argue, only nodded once, and gathered the folder back into her arms like she needed something solid in her hands. "I'll see you at the wedding," she said, already turning for the door, and there was something almost defiant in the way she said it — like she was challenging either of us to take exception to that sentence coming from two people who had known each other for only four days.

I watched her go, and it wasn't until the door had fully shut behind her that I exhaled.

Killian appeared in the doorway a moment later, arms crossed, clearly having waited outside long enough for her to leave. "Unscheduled visitor, no appointment, and you cleared your entire morning the moment she walked in." He raised an eyebrow. "Is this about that card you lost? The shop?"

"It's about the card," I said, not bothering to explain it further.

"And you're fine with that?"

I looked out the window, toward the street below, half expecting to catch a glimpse of her walking away. "I don't need them to be comfortable, Killian. I need them convinced."

He didn't look entirely reassured, but he left it, the way he always did when he could tell I wasn't in the mood to explain myself further.

Two days to convince the board I had a real marriage.

I had a feeling convincing them would be the easy part.