Chapter 7 - You Owe Me

Ailsa stared at Callum.

“You’re getting me out of this position.”

Behind him, the receptionist made a tiny sound. Ailsa pointed toward her office.

“Inside.”

Callum went first, as if being ordered into rooms was an inconvenience he could tolerate only briefly.

Ailsa shut the door.

“What position?”

“My father and Malcolm Campbell have decided the failed wedding still requires a marriage.”

For one beat, she thought he meant Eilidh.

Then she saw his expression.

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

Despite herself, Ailsa almost laughed.

Callum’s eyes narrowed. “I’m glad this is entertaining.”

“It isn’t. But there’s a certain symmetry.”

“I noticed.”

“Who?” Ailsa asked.

“Iona Campbell.”

Ailsa knew the name. Lachlan’s sister. Campbell money, Campbell standing, another person being fitted into the space Eilidh had emptied.

“And does Iona want to marry you?”

“She’s willing to discuss a strategic marriage under circumstances she chooses.”

That checked Ailsa’s first reaction.

“Then her choice is her business.”

“Thank you for the philosophical clarity.”

“You came here,” Ailsa said.

“I came because I need an alternative my father can’t dismiss as a temporary refusal.”

Ailsa leaned against her desk. “And somehow that became my problem.”

“You helped create the situation.”

The respect she had managed to feel for him yesterday survived approximately three seconds.

“No.”

Callum exhaled. “Eilidh walked out of a wedding. The Campbell alliance collapsed. I backed her. Now the family obligation has landed on me.”

“Everything you just said is true except the part where any of it becomes a debt I owe you.”

“You made her departure possible.”

“That was my job,” Ailsa said.

“And I’m dealing with the consequences.”

“So is Eilidh. So is Lachlan. So am I, considering my company is now being discussed as if we run bridal extraction teams.” She pushed away from the desk. “Consequences don’t prove wrongdoing.”

“I didn’t say what you did was wrong.”

“You said I owe you,” Ailsa said.

“I said you helped create the situation.”

“By giving your sister an option,” Ailsa said.

“An option that detonated a wedding.”

“An option she chose.”

Callum’s jaw tightened.

Ailsa stepped closer. “You asked her yourself. She said no to Lachlan before me, with me, and after me. You know the difference between enabling a choice and causing it.”

His silence told her the argument had landed.

“What is this alternative?” she asked.

Callum looked at her for a moment too long.

Then he said, “You.”

Ailsa blinked.

“No.”

“I haven’t explained it.”

“You don’t need to,” Ailsa said.

“Ailsa.”

“No,” Ailsa said.

“A public engagement to someone outside the Campbell structure would end the replacement discussion.”

The sentence arrived with the calm precision of a man presenting a solution he had already tested.

Ailsa stared at him.

“You want to get out of an arranged marriage by pretending to marry me.”

“Pretending to be engaged to you.”

“No,” Ailsa said.

“It would be temporary.”

“No,” Ailsa said.

“There would be terms.”

“Still no.”

His voice sharpened. “You are refusing before you know what I’m offering.”

“I know the part where I become publicly attached to a billionaire family two days after Exit helped his sister leave a wedding. That alone is enough.”

“I can protect Exit from the fallout.”

Ailsa gave him a flat look.

He stopped.

At least he had learned something.

“You can’t solve Exit by attaching more Sinclair power to it whenever something becomes uncomfortable,” she said. “And you can’t make me your fake fiancée because you’ve decided the cleanest escape route has my name on it.”

“It is the cleanest route.”

“For you,” Ailsa said.

“For Eilidh too. If the family has another credible public future, pressure stops circling back toward her.”

Ailsa hated that this was not entirely self-serving.

Callum moved closer to the desk but did not crowd her. “The Campbells want restoration. My father wants stability. A commercial substitute wasn’t enough. If I’m publicly committed elsewhere, they lose the simplest marriage solution.”

“And I gain what? Photographers?”

“You gain whatever makes the arrangement worth doing.”

“I already said no,” Ailsa said.

“Because you think I’m asking for a favor.”

“You are,” Ailsa said.

“No. I’m asking for a transaction.”

That made her pause.

Callum saw it.

He had stopped trying to move her with guilt.

“Name your price.”

Ailsa studied him.

He meant money. Personal compensation. A number large enough to make inconvenience feel rational.

Instead, a different possibility took shape.

“You want a transaction?”

“Yes,” Ailsa said.

“Then nothing goes to me.”

His expression shifted.

“Exit.”

“Ailsa—” Callum said.

“Future economic support for Exit. Structured. Documented. Not a gift slipped into my account, not a favor you can withdraw when we stop pretending to like each other.”

“We don’t have to pretend to like each other,” Ailsa said.

“Excellent. One less clause.”

Something almost happened at the corner of his mouth, then vanished.

Ailsa continued. “Sinclair support has to survive the fake engagement. It cannot be conditional on romantic performance beyond whatever public obligations we agree to. Your family doesn’t get governance rights, operational control, client access, or the ability to turn funding into a veto.”

“You’ve thought about this quickly.”

“I run a company built around making sure money doesn’t become captivity.”

His gaze held hers.

The room went quieter.

“How much support?” he asked.

They settled the principle before the number: Sinclair support would be corporate, meaningful to Exit, and impossible to revoke because the engagement ended. Callum refused an undefined blank check; Ailsa refused money that could become romantic leverage.

Callum stood across the desk.

“If the lawyers can put that into enforceable language, you’ll do it.”

Ailsa looked at him.

This was absurd.

It was reputationally dangerous. Personally invasive. It placed her inside the social machine she had spent two days criticizing.

It could also give Exit resources that remained after Callum Sinclair no longer needed her.

Choice was having a real yes and a real no, then accepting the cost of whichever one you used.

“Yes,” she said.

Callum went still.

“Yes?”

“I’ll fake an engagement to you under the terms we just discussed.”

He nodded once, already recalculating.

Ailsa lifted a hand.

“One absolute condition.”

His attention returned to her.

“There will never be a wedding.”

No smile. No promise to change her mind.

Callum simply said, “Good.”

She frowned.

“The entire point,” he added, “is to avoid one.”

For the first time since he had entered Exit, Ailsa had no immediate argument.

Callum held out his hand.

Not to lead her anywhere this time.

To close the deal.

Ailsa placed her hand in his.

His grip was firm, brief, and released when hers did.

No romance.

No surrender.

Just two people agreeing, very clearly, to lie to everyone else.

Outside the closed office door waited Exit, the Sinclairs, the Campbells, and a city that already thought it understood what she had done.

By tomorrow, they would all have a new story.

She only hoped she and Callum could control which parts of it became true.