CHAPTER SEVEN

Arian's POV

The boardroom was already filled with people when I got there with Megan by my side, and the look on their faces when we entered told me everything. The conversations stopped, the chairs were all angled forward, and a dozen pairs of eyes were doing the math as to exactly how soon I managed to find a wife.

"Everyone," I said, taking my usual seat at the head of the table. "This is my wife, Megan."

We got the polite greetings out of the way. Megan sat down next to me, her spine straight and hands clasped together. It was the same calm expression I'd seen on her face the day she sat across my desk and calmly laid out her own terms before she agreed to sign anything.

The meeting started off fine for the first twenty minutes - reports, projections, the same business I could talk about in my sleep while Killian presented, and I interjected every time a discussion took a wrong turn. For a while, it was almost business as usual, with the only difference being that Megan was sitting in the chair beside me instead of my secretary.

I should have known it wasn't going to last.

"Mrs. Carusso," one of the older board members said as he put his pen down slowly. It was Reeves, who had been on the board since before I was born, and I was willing to bet that he answered to Lucas Valmoria more often than he answered to me. "Forgive my curiosity, but the timeline of your relationship with Arian has been quite fascinating. May I ask how you two met?"

There was a lilt of a blade in his voice.

"As a matter of fact, we met by chance," Megan replied smoothly. "There was an accident of sorts, but I was fortunate enough to have Arian around to assist me. After that, things happened quickly, and I understand that it may seem sudden."

"It does rather," Reeves said, smiling in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "Your family, Mrs. Carusso. I understand that you come from rather humble means. I only ask because the board must understand who exactly is representing this company at the board meetings along with Arian now."

I felt my jaw tighten. I was already prepared to get up and stop the conversation when Megan's hand found my arm beneath the table, asking me politely to let her handle the conversation.

"Our family has always worked hard for everything we have," Megan said, eyes locked on Reeves's as she spoke. "I don't think that there is anything wrong with humble means and excellent character. I would almost expect more out of a board that takes the company's reputation as seriously as they claim to than someone who has only been handed everything and doesn't know how difficult it was to earn."

There were a few muffled chuckles around the room. Reeves's expression darkened, and he looked almost annoyed as he recovered quickly, inclining his head as if it was a concession.

"Well said," someone said from further down the table. I caught the look of two of the board members exchange a look that I couldn't quite decipher.

I sat back and watched as her replies to the next few questions she received were met with a few more polite exchanges. Someone asked with poorly concealed condescension if she had any experience with corporate circles, and she laughed, saying that it wasn't experience that helped her recognize condescension in the guise of due diligence, which earned a few chuckles from people at the far end of the table. It was all a well-timed performance, as far as I could tell. Her composure never wavered, and by the time we moved onto the next topic of discussion, Reeves hadn't asked any more questions. I realized with some surprise that he wasn't the only one watching her ask the board questions with an air of reassessment rather than doubt.

I told myself that it was relief that made me feel the way I did about that.

It was strategic satisfaction that the board's skepticism had been dealt with, and it was exactly as it needed to be.

It wasn't until afterwards that we walked out, her heels clicking beside me as we went down the long hallway that I let myself realize it was something else entirely. Something close to pride, which was not right, because pride meant that I wanted to stake a claim on her beyond the contract. Something close to a desire to have stopped the conversation when Reeves brought up her family, contract or not, board optics or not. Anything that I didn't examine too closely, because I didn't want to know what it meant if I did.

It was while I was still thinking about that that Reeves fell in step right behind us, his voice hushed enough that only we could hear him.

"Impressive," he said. "Truly. Lucas will be very interested to hear how well she handled herself."

There was something in the way he said it that had a prickle of alarm going up my spine. It wasn't a compliment, not really, not with the edge of something else that curled under it.

"Why would Lucas Valmoria care how my wife handles a board meeting?" I asked, keeping my voice level.

Reeves only smiled thinly. "Oh, I'm sure it's nothing. He's only been rather curious about her. Ever since he learned her name." He gave a small nod, unbothered, already turning to the opposite direction. "Congratulations again, on the marriage."

He was gone before I could ask what he meant by that.

Beside me, Megan had fallen silent, and I realized, with a pang of realization, that she had heard every word.

"Curious about me how?" she asked quietly. The first time I had met her, I would have said that I heard something beneath her usual calm that almost sounded like fear now.

I didn't have an answer for that. I wasn't sure that I wanted to have an answer, because the only man I knew who made people so curious about someone without having to explain what it was so was the man who had tried to force his daughter into my life for the last three years, and I had no idea as to what any of it had to do with Megan yet.