Chapter One: The phone call

The eviction notice was taped to the door at eye level, so Ivy would not miss it.

As if she could miss it. As if the last four months had not already told her this was coming, one unanswered email at a time.

She peeled it off carefully, like the paper itself might still change its mind, and let herself into the apartment she was no longer allowed to call hers past the end of the week.

Boxes everywhere. Half her life folded into cardboard, the other half still hanging in the closet because some part of her had refused to believe it would actually come to this.

Her phone rang while she was wrapping her mother's old plates in newspaper.

Unknown number. Chicago area code. She almost let it go to voicemail.

She answered because rent did not pay itself and neither did pride.

"Is this Ivy Reyes?"

"Speaking."

"My name is Priya Malhotra. I'm calling from Cross Industries. I know this is unexpected, but I'm hoping you have a few minutes."

Ivy set the plate down. "I don't work for Cross Industries."

"No," Priya said. "Not yet."

Something in the way she said it made Ivy sit down on one of the boxes.

"I'll be honest with you," Priya said. "This is an unusual call. I remember you from the Hartwell scholarship cohort, six years ago. You gave a presentation on adaptive reuse in commercial buildings that I still think about. I've kept an eye on your work since."

"That's flattering. It doesn't explain why Cross Industries is calling me on the day I'm being evicted."

A pause. Not an awkward one. A considering one.

"I have an opportunity," Priya said. "It's unconventional. It pays well. And I think you might be exactly the right person for it, for reasons that have nothing to do with architecture."

Ivy almost laughed. "I don't have the bandwidth for unconventional right now."

"It solves the eviction problem," Priya said. "Among other things."

That got her attention in a way she resented.

"I'm listening."

"Not on the phone. Can you come in tomorrow? Ten o'clock. I'll have a car sent."

"I don't need a car."

"Ten o'clock," Priya said again, gently, like she already knew Ivy would come.

The Cross Industries tower took up an entire block of the Loop, glass and steel rising so high that Ivy had to tilt her head back on the sidewalk just to lose the top of it in the clouds.

She had worn her one good blazer. It still smelled faintly of the storage unit.

Priya met her in the lobby, warm in a way Ivy had not expected from a voice on the phone, sharp eyes that missed nothing, a handshake that meant business.

"Thank you for coming," Priya said, already walking. "He's going to be direct with you. I want you prepared for that."

"He."

"Mr. Cross."

Ivy's stomach dropped, just slightly, the way it did before a job interview she badly needed to go well.

Damien Cross's office took up the entire top floor, floor to ceiling windows on three sides, the kind of view that made a person feel like they were standing above the rest of the city's problems instead of inside them.

He did not stand up when she entered.

He looked at her the way she imagined he looked at a set of blueprints. Assessing. Not unkind. Simply thorough.

"Ms. Reyes," he said. "Sit down."

She sat.

"I'll be brief," he said. "My company is facing a hostile takeover attempt led by my uncle and a coalition of shareholders. Part of their argument is that I am unstable, unattached, too consumed by work to be trusted with long term decisions. It is not a fair argument. It is, unfortunately, an effective one."

"I still don't see where I come in."

"I need to be engaged," he said. "Publicly. Convincingly. For approximately six months, until the shareholder vote is behind us."

Ivy stared at him. "You want to pay me to pretend to be your fiancée."

"Yes."

"That's insane."

"It is a business arrangement," he said, unbothered. "You would be compensated significantly. Housing would be provided for the duration. There would be a clean, contractual end date, and a clause allowing you to exit at any point if the terms are not honored."

"Why me?"

"Because Priya trusts your judgment, and I trust hers," he said. "Because you have no ties to my industry, no media profile, nothing for anyone to dig up and use against either of us. And because, unlike most people I have met in this city, I do not think you would enjoy pretending to like me for an audience."

That, at least, was honest.

Ivy looked at the offer sheet Priya slid across the desk. The number on it was enough to cover rent for a year twice over. Enough to actually breathe.

"I have terms," she said.

Something shifted in his expression. Not surprise exactly. Interest.

"I'm listening."

"Fixed six months. Not a day longer unless I agree to it. If this becomes something I can't walk away from safely, I walk, and you don't fight me on it. And I keep my own apartment search going the entire time, because I am not staking my future on your shareholder vote."

Damien studied her for a long moment; the kind of silence that in another room might have felt like a test, but here felt more like recalculation.

"Agreed," he said.

He stood then, finally, and came around the desk to shake her hand, the way he would with anyone he had just closed a deal with.

His hand closed around hers, and he did not let go quite as fast as a handshake required.

"One more thing," he said. "Since we will apparently be engaged."

"Yes?"

"I don't share what's mine," he said. "Even temporarily."

Ivy pulled her hand back, unsettled by how much that sentence did not sound like it belonged in a business arrangement at all.