Her Terms

# Chapter Four: Her Terms

Harriet Voss's office at ten a.m. looked different than it had the day before — not the room, which was exactly as glass and quiet as Ivy remembered, but the energy in it, which had shifted from *interview* to *machinery already in motion.* There was a folder on the desk with Ivy's name typed on the tab. There was a second chair pulled up beside Harriet's, occupied.

Julian stood when Ivy came in. He was in another slate-colored suit, or possibly the same one — she suspected he owned several identical to avoid the burden of choosing — and he looked, for just a moment, like he hadn't fully expected her to actually show up.

"Ms. Reyes," Harriet said, gesturing her into the chair across from both of them. "I understand congratulations are premature, but I do believe we should discuss terms in detail before either of you signs anything. This isn't the sort of document either of you should feel rushed through."

"I have some changes," Ivy said, before she'd fully sat down, because if she didn't say it immediately she suspected she'd talk herself out of it.

Harriet's eyebrows rose, delighted rather than annoyed. Julian's expression didn't change at all, which Ivy was starting to recognize as its own kind of tell — the stillness he retreated to whenever something actually interested him.

"I'm listening," he said.

Ivy pulled a folded piece of notebook paper out of her bag — she'd written this out at two in the morning, crossed things out, rewritten it twice, and it showed, but she wasn't embarrassed by that. She'd rather show up with something real than something polished.

"The compensation schedule," she said. "You had it structured across the full two years, milestone payments. I need the first payment — enough to cover my sister's surgery — released at signing, not staggered. Her transplant window is four to six months. I'm not waiting on a schedule that assumes I have time I don't have."

"Done," Julian said, immediately, without so much as glancing at Harriet. "I should have structured it that way from the start. That was an oversight, not a test."

Ivy blinked, thrown slightly by how easily that one landed, and pressed on before she lost her nerve.

"Second. You said separate bedrooms. I want that in writing, specifically, not just implied — and I want it to say I retain full control over what I do with my own time when we're not required to be seen together. My job. My friends. My life outside whatever performance this requires." She glanced up. "I'm not disappearing into being your wife for two years. I'm still going to be myself the entire time, or the deal's off."

"Agreed," Julian said. "Harriet, add language specifying autonomy over employment, personal relationships, and time not designated as a public appearance. I'd rather over-specify than leave room for either of us to feel cornered later."

Harriet was already typing, faster than Ivy would have expected from someone dressed like she billed four figures an hour.

"Third," Ivy said, and this was the one she'd rewritten the most times, because it was the one that mattered to her more than the money, more than almost anything else on the page. "I have a business plan. A restaurant. I've been building toward it for three years — I have a location I'm scouting, a concept, a plan. I want it written explicitly into this contract that nothing about this arrangement, or any money attached to it, gives you or your company any claim, stake, or say in that business, now or after this ends. It's mine. It stays mine. Full stop."

For the first time since she'd walked in, Julian looked genuinely surprised — not thrown off-balance exactly, but recalibrating, the way someone does when a piece of information doesn't fit the picture they'd already assembled.

"You have a business plan," he said.

"I have a business plan," Ivy confirmed. "I've had one since before Harriet called me. This isn't something I'm doing because your money's going to fund it. I'd have gotten there eventually with or without you. I just need you to understand — clearly, on paper — that whatever this arrangement is, it doesn't buy you a piece of the one thing that's actually, entirely mine."

Julian studied her for a long moment, and something in his face shifted — not quite a smile, but close enough to its neighborhood that Ivy noticed it and filed it away without knowing yet what to do with it.

"Harriet," he said, "make sure that clause is airtight. I want it to survive audit from anyone — the board, the trust, anyone who ever tries to claim otherwise. Ms. Reyes's business is not, and will never be, an asset of this arrangement."

"Already writing it," Harriet said, not looking up.

"Anything else?" Julian asked. There was something almost like genuine curiosity in the question now, like he'd expected to be negotiating a set of practical logistics and had instead stumbled into something more interesting.

Ivy hesitated on the last item on her list, because it was the one she'd debated crossing out entirely.

"An exit," she said, finally. "A real one. Not just the two-year term ending naturally — I want language that says if either of us needs out before then, for any reason, there's a mechanism that doesn't leave the other person stranded. I've seen what it looks like when people get trapped in arrangements they can't get out of. I'm not doing that. Not even for three hundred and forty thousand dollars."

The room went quiet in a different way than it had been quiet before — Harriet's typing paused. Julian's jaw tightened, fractionally, and Ivy wondered, not for the first time, what exactly he'd seen that made a line like that land the way it clearly just had.

"That's fair," he said, after a moment, his voice lower than it had been. "More than fair. Harriet, add a mutual early-termination clause — reasonable notice, prorated compensation through the termination date, no penalty to either party for invoking it in good faith." He looked back at Ivy. "I'd rather you trust that you can leave than have you stay because you feel like you can't."

"That's not what I expected you to say."

"You said you looked me up," Julian said. Not quite a question.

"I did."

"Then you already know I meant what I said yesterday. I don't have the patience to maintain something dishonest for two years. That includes pretending I don't understand why you'd want an exit built in before you ever consider walking through the door."

Harriet finally looked up from her laptop, glancing between the two of them with an expression Ivy couldn't quite read — something that might have been satisfaction, or might have been the particular look of a woman watching a plan she'd set in motion begin working exactly the way she'd hoped it would.

"I believe," Harriet said, "that covers the major points. I'll have a full revised draft by end of day. Ms. Reyes, I'd encourage you to have independent counsel review it before signing — I can recommend someone if you don't have one, someone with no connection to this firm or to Mr. Cade, purely to protect your own interests."

"I'd like that," Ivy said. "Thank you."

"One more item," Julian said, and something in his tone changed — quieter, more deliberate, the way it had sounded the evening before right as he'd started to explain the part of the contract he clearly liked least. "There's a condition I mentioned yesterday that isn't part of what we've just discussed, because it isn't negotiable in the same way. I want to go over it again, properly, now that you've had time to think it through — not just have it be something you signed because it was the last line on a page."

Ivy sat back, and felt the temperature of the room shift again, the way it had when he'd first said it: *neither of us can develop feelings for the other.*

"Clause 7.1," she said.

"Clause 7.1," Julian agreed, and for a moment, before he continued, Ivy watched him choose his next words the way she imagined he chose everything — carefully, deliberately, like a man laying out ingredients before he trusted himself to start cooking.