CHAPTER TEN

Arian's POV

Chloe's hand didn't move from my chest even after I made it clear I wanted it gone.

"You can stop performing now," she said quietly, once Megan had disappeared back toward the dining room. "I know this marriage isn't real, Arian. Did you really think you could hide something like that from me?"

I kept my voice even, though something cold was already settling into my chest. "I don't know what you think you know."

"Please." She let out a short laugh, stepping back just enough to study my face, clearly enjoying whatever she saw there. "A contract wife, married within a week of some sudden emergency, the board suddenly satisfied overnight? You've never once in your life done anything that fast unless you were solving a problem, not falling in love." She tilted her head, smiling in a way that used to almost work on me, years ago, before I'd learned exactly what was underneath it. "I know you, Arian. Better than you'd like."

I thought about denying it outright, running through the calculations of exactly how convincing I could sound if I tried. I decided against it almost immediately. Chloe had known me too long, in too many contexts, to fall for a denial delivered without conviction, and I wasn't about to hand her the satisfaction of watching me fumble one.

"Even if that were true," I said instead, "it changes nothing."

"Doesn't it?" She reached into the small clutch she'd been carrying all evening and withdrew a folded piece of paper, worn soft at the creases like it had been handled many times before. She held it out to me, and I didn't need to open it to know what it was. I'd seen the original once, years ago, in my father's study, back when I was too young to understand what it meant that two families had decided my future for me before I could vote.

"Our engagement contract," she said. "Signed by both our fathers when we were fourteen. Never formally dissolved."

"It's not valid anymore, Chloe."

"Says who?"

"Says the fact that I'm married." I kept my voice level, though I wanted nothing more than to end this conversation and go find Megan before whatever she'd seen in that hallway calcified into something I couldn't undo. "Whatever that paper meant twenty years ago, it means nothing now. I have a wife."

"A wife who signed a business arrangement," Chloe said, folding the paper back up with deliberate care. "Not a marriage. Not really. I wonder how the board would feel if they knew the truth. I wonder how your father would feel."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's an observation." She smiled, tucking the paper away again. "For now."

She walked off toward the powder room without another word, leaving me standing in the hallway with a cold knot in my stomach that had nothing to do with the contract she'd just waved in my face and everything to do with the look I'd caught on Megan's face before she'd disappeared.

I found her upstairs a few minutes later, her door not quite shut, light spilling out into the hallway. She was sitting on the edge of the bed when I knocked and let myself in, arms crossed, already looking at me like she'd rehearsed exactly how this conversation was going to go before I'd even arrived.

"Megan..."

"Don't," she said, before I could get any further. "You don't owe me an explanation. This is a business arrangement. Isn't that what you told me? No expectations beyond what's written down."

"It's not what it looked like."

"I didn't ask what it looked like." Her voice was flat, controlled, the same careful composure she'd used on Reeves in the boardroom, except this time it was aimed squarely at me, and it landed considerably harder. "I'm tired, Arian. It's been a long night. I'd like to go to bed."

"Megan, just let me explain. ..."

"There's nothing to explain," she said, standing, walking past me toward the door she clearly wanted me on the other side of. "You don't owe me your history. I don't owe you my questions about it. That was the deal, wasn't it?"

I stood there for a moment, searching for something that would actually reach her, and coming up empty. Whatever I'd wanted to say about Chloe, about the contract, about the fact that none of it meant what she seemed to think it meant, dissolved somewhere between my chest and my mouth. It occurred to me, too late to be useful, that I'd never once in my life struggled this much to find the right words for anyone, and I didn't particularly like what that realization might mean about tonight, or about her, or about the growing list of things between us that no longer fit neatly inside the terms of a contract.

"Goodnight," she said, holding the door open, leaving me no version of this conversation except the one where I walked through it.

I did.

I made it three steps down the hallway before I saw her, Chloe, standing near the top of the staircase, close enough to Megan's door that there was no reasonable explanation for her being there at all. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at Megan's closed door, a small, satisfied smile playing at the corner of her mouth, the kind of expression that belonged to someone who'd just finished doing something they were rather pleased with.

"Chloe."

She turned, unbothered, the smile smoothing itself away into something more neutral. "Just looking for the powder room. This house is enormous, you know."

She was gone before I could ask anything else, disappearing down the stairs with the same easy confidence she'd walked in with hours earlier, and I stood there in the empty hallway with a growing, uneasy certainty that whatever had just happened between Megan and me tonight, I'd only been shown half of it.

I stood outside Megan's door a moment longer, debating whether to knock again, before deciding against it. Whatever Chloe had wanted from those few unaccounted-for minutes, I had a sinking feeling I was going to find out exactly what it was a lot sooner than I would have liked.