Chapter 5

I gave myself one night to wallow and one morning to be furious. Then I wasted four more days pretending I still had names left to try. I did not. Arthur had reached every last one of them before I could dial.

By Saturday morning I had two days left on Victor's clock and a twelve million dollar notice sitting in my desk drawer and one very plain thought. Pride looks lovely on a woman but it does not pay a board of directors and it certainly does not stop Arthur Kane from looking at me as if I already belong to him.

So I got dressed.

I chose white this time because I wanted to look like someone who had not been broken even though I was mostly held together by hairspray and spite.

Patricia was at the front desk when I arrived. It was a Saturday which told me everything I needed to know about working for Aziel Richards. She looked me over and wore the same pity she had worn the last time.

"Ms. Grant."

"Patricia."

"He's in a meeting. It will be longer than last time."

"I brought a book."

I had not. I grabbed a business magazine from the waiting area and spent the next two hours and ten minutes reading the same page eleven times. I now have opinions about warehouse software that nobody asked for. At some point Patricia brought me coffee and I accepted it with the gratitude of a woman abandoned in the desert.

When she finally came to get me my palms were damp. I wiped them on my skirt when she was not looking.

"Good luck," she whispered.

I almost asked whether she meant with Aziel or with the rest of my life but I suspected I would not like the answer.

He was at his desk reading. He signed a page and set down his pen and only then lifted his eyes as if I were a package he had been expecting sometime that afternoon.

"Ria."

"Aziel."

"You came back."

"Apparently I enjoy suffering."

Nothing in his face moved. "I thought I had been clear."

"You were."

He waited. I stood in front of his desk with my hands folded because I did not trust them loose. A smarter woman would have turned around right then. But I kept seeing Victor in my father's chair and Arthur's eyes crawling over me and that notice lying in my drawer with Arthur's company printed at the bottom.

So I swallowed what was left of my pride.

"I'm not here to fight. I'm here to ask again."

He said nothing.

"Please."

The word scraped its way out of my throat. I hated how small it sounded and I hated that I had to say it to him of all people. Most of all I hated that he was the only one who could give me what I needed without asking me to surrender everything else.

"Please Aziel. If I'm not married by Monday everything my father built goes to the people tearing it apart. I only need a year. I'll pay you. I'll give you whatever you want. Just name it."

"You think this is about money."

"I don't know what it's about." My voice cracked and I could have bitten it in half. "I only know I'm standing in front of the one person I swore I would never ask for anything and I'm asking. I'm begging you. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

He leaned back in his chair and studied me with the same flat calm that had nearly driven me insane the last time. There was no smugness and no satisfaction and not the slightest sign that my humiliation had made any impression on him. I would almost have preferred a smirk. At least then I could have hated him for something specific.

"Sit down," he said.

I sat. He took a folder from his drawer and slid it across the desk.

"One year. A legal marriage. You will be my wife in public."

For a moment I honestly wondered whether grief had finally broken something in my brain.

"You're agreeing?"

"Read the document."

The terms were simple. One year of marriage and separate bedrooms and separate personal lives and no interference in each other's affairs. It was almost exactly what I had asked for. Then I reached the last condition.

"Affection in public," I read aloud.

"Yes."

"How much affection?"

"Enough to make the marriage convincing."

"Fine. I can do that."

"Can you?"

I closed the folder. "I've smiled through a funeral and a three hour meeting about tax law. I think I can handle one husband."

"Show me."

"Show you what?"

"That you can look like a woman who is in love with her husband."

He said it exactly the way a person says pass the salt. I laughed because he had to be joking. Then I stopped. His face had not moved a muscle and I had seen more expression on a parking meter.

"You're serious."

"If you can't manage it in here you won't manage it in front of a boardroom."

I want it on record that I considered leaving. I even counted the eleven steps to the door. But eleven steps was also eleven steps closer to my uncle's smirk so I stood and smoothed my skirt and walked around the desk like a woman approaching her own firing squad.

He stayed seated. I stopped beside him and softened my face and tilted my head and gave him the sweetest and most adoring look I had ever given anyone in my life. I even rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Darling," I said in a voice dripping with honey. "I missed you."

He looked at me for a long flat moment.

"You look like you're about to kill me."

I froze.

"Your acting is poor."

I slowly removed my hand from his shoulder. He turned back to his desk and picked up his pen.

"Go home and practice in front of a mirror."