Chapter 11 - First Performance

Callum had faced hostile shareholders with less preparation than the communications team wanted for one ten-minute interview.

“No private jokes you can’t explain,” his chief of staff said.

Across the holding room, Ailsa looked up from the briefing notes. “What if they’re funny?”

“They won’t be.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

Callum stopped himself from smiling.

Outside the door, an audience applauded as the previous guest left the stage. The interview had been attached to a Sinclair Group public event weeks ago. Before yesterday, Callum was supposed to discuss investment and expansion. Now every outlet in the room wanted the same thing.

His fiancée.

Ailsa closed the folder.

The ring caught the light.

“You remember the cover?” he asked.

“We met privately through mutual professional circles. We kept seeing each other because arguing was cheaper than litigation. You proposed in private. No date set.”

“That is not exactly what we agreed,” Callum said.

“It’s more believable.”

His chief of staff pointed at Ailsa. “That. Less of that.”

Ailsa rose. “You brought me because I’m supposed to look like myself.”

“I brought you because refusing to appear together after announcing an engagement would make the story worse,” Callum said.

“Romantic.”

“Deeply.”

The stage manager opened the door.

They went out together.

The first questions stayed where the communications team wanted them. Sinclair Group. The Campbell speculation. Whether the engagement had any bearing on business.

Callum answered those.

Then the interviewer turned to Ailsa.

“You founded Exit to give people practical options when relationships become difficult to leave. Does becoming engaged to one of Scotland’s richest men complicate that message?”

Ailsa did not look at Callum before answering.

“Only if you think having choices means never choosing anyone.”

A low sound moved through the audience.

Callum watched the interviewer recalibrate.

“So Exit isn’t anti-marriage?” Callum asked.

“No.”

“And you?”

Ailsa smiled without warmth. “I’m engaged. Apparently that’s enough personal disclosure for one morning.”

A few people laughed.

Good.

The interviewer looked at Callum. “You knew what she did before you started seeing her?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t worry you?”

“What part?” Callum asked.

“That she runs a company designed to help people leave.”

Callum glanced at Ailsa.

“It would worry me more if she ran one designed to stop them.”

This time the laugh was louder.

Ailsa’s eyes flicked toward him.

Approval, perhaps.

He found he liked earning it more than he should.

The interviewer leaned forward. “You two are surprisingly good at this.”

“At interviews?” Ailsa asked.

“At sounding like a couple who’ve been arguing for years.”

“That part came naturally.”

Callum almost turned toward her.

The interviewer saw it.

“Who made the first move?”

The communications briefing had an answer: Callum.

Simple. Harmless.

He gave it.

“I did.”

“How?”

There was no approved answer.

Callum could feel his chief of staff somewhere offstage regretting every decision that had led to this moment.

“I asked her to spend time with me.”

Ailsa’s expression changed.

Barely.

But Callum saw it.

The interviewer did too.

“That isn’t how you remember it?”

Ailsa looked at Callum.

He could correct the question. Redirect to privacy. End the line cleanly.

Instead he waited.

“He thought he was making an offer,” she said.

The audience quieted.

“I thought he was issuing instructions.”

Callum understood what she was doing.

Their real beginning, emptied of the parts no one could know.

The interviewer smiled. “And which was it?”

“A terrible offer,” Ailsa said.

Callum leaned back. “She still accepted.”

“Eventually.”

“How many times did you say no?” Callum asked.

“Three.”

Not quite the number he remembered, but close enough to the truth to feel dangerous.

He followed her lead.

“The fourth conversation was more productive.”

The interviewer laughed. “So persistence won?”

“No,” Ailsa said.

Callum knew the wrong answer before the silence finished forming.

If he said yes, he turned their fake romance into the exact story she would hate: a powerful man wearing down a woman’s refusal until she gave in.

The interviewer looked at him.

Callum said, “Terms did.”

Ailsa’s eyes sharpened.

He continued. “I stopped trying to convince her that my reasons should matter to her. I asked what would make spending time with me worth choosing.”

That was true too.

Stripped of money, Exit, and the fake-engagement premise, it sounded intimate.

Too intimate.

The room reacted like it was.

Ailsa crossed one leg over the other. “He negotiates everything.”

“You negotiated the clauses.”

“Because yours were bad.”

“They were standard,” Callum said.

“They were bad.”

The interviewer laughed again.

Callum did too before he could decide whether he should.

Ailsa looked at him, and for several seconds the audience ceased to be the most interesting thing in the room.

Not because he wanted to kiss her.

He did not.

Because she had seen a problem form and solved it beside him without waiting for rescue, permission, or instructions. She had not protected him from the question. She had handed him a version of the truth and trusted him to recognize it.

He had.

The interviewer shuffled her cards.

“Last one. We asked your teams separately for one small detail about the other.”

Callum’s attention returned to the stage.

That had not been in the briefing.

“Ailsa’s team says she takes tea, no sugar,” the interviewer said. “Callum, what’s her coffee order?”

“Black.”

Ailsa’s eyes moved to his.

Wrong.

The interviewer caught it. “That face says otherwise.”

Callum had already opened his mouth to correct himself when Ailsa laughed.

“That’s his order. He keeps assuming the rest of humanity needs coffee simply because he does.”

The answer landed before the mistake could.

The interviewer looked at Callum. “So she doesn’t drink it?”

He followed Ailsa instead of fixing the story his own way.

“She drinks tea. No sugar. And treats coffee as a character flaw.”

“I treat your coffee as a character flaw.”

The audience laughed.

The contradiction disappeared inside the argument.

The interviewer turned to Ailsa. “Then what does he order when he’s had a bad day?”

Ailsa did not hesitate.

“Work.”

Callum shook his head.

“Unfair,” Callum said.

“Incorrect?”

“No.”

The interviewer looked back at him. “What does Ailsa do when she’s angry?”

He knew several possible answers now.

Argue.

Get quieter.

Reach across a table and stop his hand before he made her problem his.

He looked at her.

“She gets precise.”

Ailsa’s smile disappeared.

Not because he was wrong.

Because he was not.

“She stops wasting words,” he continued. “If she tells you exactly what the boundary is, you’ve already had your warning.”

The room was quieter when he finished.

The interviewer looked between them and smiled.

“That may be the most convincing answer either of you has given.”

Ailsa recovered first.

“That’s because he’s finally learning.”

The applause carried them offstage.

The moment the door shut behind them, Callum’s chief of staff exhaled hard enough to qualify as a medical event.

“You ignored half the briefing.”

Ailsa handed her the folder. “And yet civilization continues.”

Callum checked his phone.

The first clips were already spreading. None focused on the Campbell match. None accused Ailsa of using Eilidh.

For the first time since the announcement, the performance had done what it was supposed to do.

His mother had sent a message.

Family dinner tomorrow. I want to meet her properly. Your father wants her there too.

A second message followed before he could answer.

And Callum? If you rehearse her, Alistair will know.

He showed the screen to Ailsa.

She read it.

“Harder audience?”

“Yes.”

Ailsa handed the phone back.

“Good.”

She was already walking toward the exit, as if surviving one performance had made her more interested in the next problem rather than less.

He followed.

That, too, felt unexpectedly convincing.