Convenient lie

Harvey’s POV

The car door shut and the noise of the ballroom died like someone had cut a wire.

Daisy sat in the opposite corner of the back seat, crimson silk pooled around her, the slit fallen open showing off her thick smooth thighs. She had not looked at me since we left the steps. She had not moved away either. That was the only reason I had not already apologized for the hand I put on her waist in front of half the city’s money.

I had told them we were dating.

And I had not asked her first.

The driver pulled into traffic. Rain streaked the glass. For three blocks I let the silence stand, because didn’t want to say anything too soon.

Her eyes came to me, dark and unreadable. “You told them we were dating.”

“Yes I didn’t like the things they were saying and I saw an opportunity”.

“You didn’t ask”.

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

She seems so different from the Daisy I knew and was no longer the intimated woman I once knew.

“Seth will not stop,” I said. “Neither will Beth. What they did in there was not more than a scene if was an opening move. By morning the story will be that you threw yourself at me, or that I picked you up to embarrass him. Either version leaves you standing in it alone.”

Daisy’s fingers tightened in the silk over her knee. “And your solution is a lie.”

“A public one.” I kept my voice level. I did not reach for her. “We stay act it then and fake if. Appearances, events, Enough truth in the room that they cannot peel you out of it and name you whatever they want.”

She studied my face like she was looking for the trap. She was right to.

There was one. It was me.

“A fake relationship,” she said.

“Yes.”

The word sat between us, ugly and useful.

“It would not only serve you.” I looked at the rain so I would not look at her mouth. “There is a story that follows me. That I do not bring women anywhere because I am afraid of them. Afraid of being tied to one. Afraid of wanting anything I cannot control. My father has used it Partners have used it. Amara Hale was supposed to kill it with a merger and a smile.” I let out a breath. “I told him no. The rumor did not die with that. If you stand beside me in public, it dies. They can call it whatever they want after that. They cannot call it fear.”

Daisy was quiet long enough that I heard the turn signal, the wet hiss of tires, the faint sound of her breathing.

“So I get a shield,” she said. “And you get a rumor buried.”

“Yes.”

“And Seth gets to watch.”

I did not pretend that part did not please me. “Yes.”

She turned toward the window. The passing lights moved over the bare line of her shoulder, the place the dress had left uncovered on purpose. I had put my hand on her waist in that room because Beth had looked at her body and tried to make it worthless. I had not thought I just claimed. That was the problem.

“If we do this,” she said, still facing the glass, “what are the rules?”

I had already made them in my head on the stairs, while Seth was still inventing names for her.

“Public only. I do not touch you in ways you do not allow. You do not owe me explanations in private. You do not give up the job, the hours, or the life you just started. If Seth comes near you, you tell me. If Beth starts a story, we end it with facts, not begging. And when you want it finished, it finishes. That part is yours.”

She looked back at me then. “What do you get besides the rumor?”

The honest answer was everything I had wanted for years and been too much of a coward to take.

I gave her the answer she could live with.

“I get to stand where I should have stood the first time.”

Her brows pulled together. “The first time.”

Careless. Too close to a life she was not supposed to know I remembered.

“The first night I watched him treat you like a convenience,” I said, and made it smaller than the truth. “I did nothing. I will not do nothing again.”

The car stopped at a light. Neither of us moved.

“You put your hand on my waist,” she said.

“I did.”

“Was that for the… or for you?”

I could have said the room. It would have been cleaner. It would also have been another lie, and I was already asking her to live inside one.

“Both.”

Color rose under her skin. She did not look away.

“Beth told me no man would want this body,” she said, quiet. “You answered her in front of everyone. If this is fake, you do not get to do that whenever it suits you. You do not get to hold me like I belong to you and then call it strategy.”

“Then I will ask,” I said. “Every time. In public I will look like a man who chose you, because that is the only version of this that protects you. In private, I will not take what you have not given.”

The light changed. The car moved. The city slid past, wet and bright and indifferent.

Daisy sat back against the seat. The red dress made her look like she had walked out of a different life than the one that had ended on marble. Maybe she had. I had. We were both pretending this was only about Seth.

“How long?” she asked.

“As long as they are a threat. Or until you say stop.”

“And if people believe it?”

“They will.” I held her gaze. “That is the point.”

She was silent again. I watched her weigh it the way she weighed numbers risk, return, the cost of being seen.

Seth Ford had called her a bitch in a room that ate reputations for breakfast. Beth had put fat and unwanted in the same sentence and smiled when she did it. A fake relationship would not undo that. It would only make the next strike more expensive for them.

It would also put Daisy Reed in my life every day I could invent a reason.

I knew which part I wanted more. I was not going to say that either.

“You can say no,” I said. “I will still handle Seth. The difference is whether you have to handle the story alone.”

Daisy looked down at my hand, resting empty on the seat between us, the same hand that had held her waist like the argument was already over.

Then she looked up.

“If we do this,” she said, “you do not get to fall in love with the lie I’m done being under a man”.

Too late.

I nodded once, because the alternative was telling her I had been in love with her through one death already and I would not survive wasting the second.

“Do we have an agreement?” I asked.

The car slowed in front of her building. Rain tapped the roof. Daisy’s answer sat on her mouth, not yet spoken, and the whole second life seemed to lean in and wait with me.