CHAPTER 5: The Woman Who Doesn't Know My Name

The smell of coconut.

That was the first thing I remembered when I woke up on Sunday morning in Miami. Not her name, not the chapel, not the ring. Just coconut and something sweeter underneath, like vanilla, clinging to the pillow next to mine.

I opened my eyes and looked at the woman lying beside me. Her braids were spread across the white sheets like dark ribbons, and her skin glowed bronze in the morning light. She was on her stomach, one arm hanging off the edge of the bed, her face soft and peaceful in sleep.

She was beautiful. Not in the way I was used to. Not the polished, calculated beauty of the women who circled my life like sharks smelling money. This was something different. Something warm. Something real.

I sat up slowly and rubbed my face. My head was pounding and my mouth tasted like regret. I looked around the penthouse and tried to piece together what had happened. Clothes everywhere. A champagne bottle lying empty on the bathroom floor. My wallet on the dining table next to her phone, both dead.

Then I saw the ring on my finger.

Gold. Simple. A wedding band.

I stared at it for a full minute before reaching over to the nightstand and picking up the piece of paper lying there. Marriage Certificate. My name, signed in handwriting so sloppy it looked like a child had done it. And next to mine, her name. Lara Emmanuel.

I put the paper down and walked to the window. The Miami skyline stretched out below me, and I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes.

What the hell did you do, Xander?

I wasn't this person. I didn't drink until I blacked out. I didn't fly women to other cities on a whim. I didn't marry strangers. My life was controlled, ordered, scheduled down to the minute. Benjamin always joked that I was the only man he knew who could make spontaneity look like a spreadsheet. My entire existence was built on discipline and structure; two things that had kept me sane after Casandra tore my life apart a year ago.

Three years I had spent with that woman. Three years of thinking she was the one, only to walk in on her in my own bed with a man whose face I still couldn't forget. She didn't even have the decency to apologize. She just smiled and said, "You were never home anyway, Xander."

After that, I shut it all down. The feelings, the vulnerability, the openness. I buried myself in work, turned Williams Group into the most profitable year in its history, and made sure that no woman ever got close enough to touch me again. I had a system. I'd go out when Benjamin dragged me, have a drink or two, leave with whoever caught my eye, and be gone by morning. No names. No numbers. No second meetings.

And then Lara happened.

I picked up my phone from the table and called Franklin. He answered on the third ring, his voice thick with sleep.

"Mr Williams? Everything okay?"

"Franklin, is a marriage in Miami legally binding?"

Silence. Then, carefully, "Do you have a marriage certificate?"

"Unfortunately."

"Send me a photo."

I snapped the picture and sent it. A moment later, Franklin cleared his throat in that way he does when the news is bad. "This is a legitimate document. The marriage is legal."

I closed my eyes. "Find me a way out of it. Annulment. Whatever it takes."

"I'll look into it right away. We should be able to annul on the grounds of intoxication. Give me a few days."

"Fine." I hung up and turned around. Lara was still sleeping, and I let myself look at her for a moment longer than I should have.

I didn't remember much from the night before. Just pieces. Her laughter, loud and free and completely unbothered by who I was or how much money I had. The way she'd dragged me to a pizza shop at one in the morning and told me I hadn't lived until I'd had their pepperoni slice. The way she'd looked at the jet like it was a spaceship and said, "I've never been anywhere," and the way those four words had hit me in a place I thought I'd sealed shut.

She didn't know who I was. Not really. I had given her my middle name, which I always did when I went out. Vincent. It kept things simple. It kept the gold diggers and the socialites and the tabloid reporters at a safe distance. But Lara hadn't asked about my money, my job, or my name. She had asked me what made me laugh, and when I couldn't answer right away, she had looked at me with those olive-green eyes and said, "That's sad, Vincent. Everyone should know what makes them laugh."

Nobody had said anything like that to me in years.

After she woke up and the reality of the situation hit us both, I handled it the only way I knew how. Efficiently. I ordered clothes, booked the flight, called Franklin, and got us back to New York. She was quiet on the plane, and when she fell asleep on my shoulder, I let her stay there. Her shampoo smelled like coconut, and I memorized it without meaning to.

I dropped her off at her building in Brooklyn and gave her my card. She read it, and the color drained from her face. She looked up at me with those eyes and said, "You're the CEO of Williams Group."

At the time, I didn't understand why that mattered so much to her. I figured she had just put together who I was and was processing the fact that she had married someone famous.

It wasn't until Monday morning, when Mirabel walked into my office with a woman in a burgundy blouse and said, "Mr Williams, this is your new executive assistant, Lara Emmanuel," that I understood.

She was standing there, in my office, looking at me like the ground had opened up beneath her feet. And I was looking at her, and the only thought running through my head was: Of course. Of course it's her.

My father had hired her while I was away. He had interviewed dozens of people and chosen her, and knowing my father, he had his reasons. The old man had a talent for reading people that bordered on supernatural.

After Mirabel left and the blinds were closed, Lara tore into me with a fury that was equal parts terrifying and impressive. She was smart, sharp, and completely unafraid of me, which was something I was not used to. Most people tiptoed around me. Lara walked straight at me and poked holes in every argument I tried to make.

And when she said she wanted to quit, my chest tightened in a way I didn't expect.

"You're not quitting," I told her, and I meant it.

She set her ground rules, and I agreed to all of them because they made sense. Professional. Secret. Temporary. Easy. Clean.

Then Franklin called.

"Xander, we have a problem." His voice was careful in the way that meant the problem was not small. "I reviewed the Williams Family Trust this morning. Specifically, Section Twelve, Clause Four."

"English, Franklin."

"Your grandfather's trust states that full controlling shares of Williams Group transfer to the eldest male heir upon his thirty-first birthday, provided he is legally married at the time of transfer."

I went cold. "What?"

"If you are not married on the date of your thirty-first birthday, the shares revert to the board and are distributed among minority stakeholders. You turn thirty-one in three months, Xander."

I gripped the phone so tight the plastic creaked. My grandfather, God rest his soul, had been a traditional man who believed that a married man was a stable man, and a stable man was the only kind who should run a company. He had written this clause into the trust decades ago, and no one had thought to challenge it because my father had already been married when he took over.

"Are you saying that if I get this annulment, I lose my company?"

"I'm saying it's complicated. Very complicated. I need time to find a workaround, but in the meantime, any dissolution of the marriage could trigger the clause."

I put the phone down and looked at Lara, who was standing by the door, watching me with wide eyes.

"What's going on?" she asked. "What did he say?"

I thought about lying. I thought about telling her it was just a small delay, something procedural, nothing to worry about. But she was looking at me with that same direct, unflinching gaze she'd had on the rooftop bar when she told me she wasn't the kind of girl who drank fancy cocktails.

She deserved the truth.

"There's a complication," I said. And then, because I had no idea how to say what I needed to say, I told her to close the door.

She closed it. And she stood there, waiting, and I realized that for the first time in a very long time, I had no plan. No strategy. No spreadsheet.

Just a woman I barely knew, a marriage I couldn't escape, and a company worth billions hanging in the balance.

I needed to ask her something impossible. Something that would change both our lives.

And I had no idea if she would say yes.