All Chapters of The Playboy's Forced Bride: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Nobody looked at me and I needed it to stay that way. I was shown to my seat, offered water, given a polite smile by the assistant who set up the room, and then the moment Adrian sat down at the table it felt like I stopped existing to everyone there. The board members shook their hands, settled into their chairs, and opened their folders. Nobody glanced my way twice. That was good. I crossed my legs, put my hands in my lap, and arranged my face into the expression I had practiced for this moment, soft and attentive, mildly interested in a way that showed I was proud to be here and following about half of what was happening. I was following all of it. The first thing I noticed, before Fitch opened his mouth, was that Adrian was not watching the presentation. He was watching me, not obviously, not in a way anyone else in the room would have caught. I kept my eyes on the screen and filed it away. The first meeting was on quarterly projections. Eleven people were around a long ta

I noticed the files first. His office door was half open, the way it usually was when he was working through something. I was heading to the kitchen and I glanced in without thinking and saw his screen. Old financial records and pre-acquisition documents from the look of them, the kind buried in old archive folders that nobody pulled up in the normal course of business. Three windows were opened. A legal notepad beside the keyboard was covered in his handwriting. He heard my footsteps slow down and he closed the laptop quietly. I looked away, walked to the kitchen, and put the kettle on. I stood there while it boiled and thought about what I had just seen. The questions he had asked at the second board meeting, the ones I had noticed and filed away as careful and precise, I understood them differently now. He was focused and strategic, looking for something specific. He had gone into that room already knowing which thread he wanted to pull. The calls he took in his office with th

He started talking on the drive home. I knew right away this was different. Not the careful version of Adrian who weighed every word. This came from somewhere deeper, like the evening had loosened something inside him that needed to come out. “Her name was Lena,” he said. “Not Helena. She hated that name. She said it sounded like a woman who died before the story got good.” I turned toward him a little and stayed quiet, letting him speak. “She laughed at everything. Not the polite kind you hear at parties. Her laugh burst out before she could stop it and filled up the whole room. She found joy in small silly things that most people walked right past. A sign with a spelling mistake. The way a pigeon tilted its head. It didn’t take much to set her off, and she was never embarrassed by how loud it got.” The city lights moved across his face as he drove. He kept his eyes on the road, but his voice stayed soft. “Books filled every corner of our house. They sat on tables, chairs, and ev

I almost walked past. Then, I noticed the gallery door was open and the light was switched off. Something made me slow down and I looked in and stopped. He was sitting on the floor, just right in the middle of the room, cross-legged, in front of the unfinished painting. Arms resting over his knees. Just looking at it. The city light came through the windows behind him, that low constant glow that lets you see partially. He hadn't moved toward a switch. He just came in here and sat down in the almost dark room with that painting and whatever was going on within him. I stood in the doorway and looked at him for a moment. I thought about the letter on the kitchen table this morning. The way he sat with it next to his coffee, not opening it, just keeping it close. The way his eyes looked different when he glanced up at me. Something had shifted in him overnight and still hadn’t settled. He had carried what his mother wrote to him all day. And when the day was over, he came here. I

I stood up. I knew I should have stayed in my room. The evidence files waited on my laptop. Daniel’s deadline was closing in. Everything I had worked for sat right there, ready. The smart, and professional move, would have been to open that laptop and finish the job I came here to do. Instead, I walked out the door. The hallway stretched ahead, dim and quiet, soft amber lights glowed along the walls. The whole house felt still. I stopped outside the gallery door. A thin line of light showed underneath. He was still there. I waited, thirty seconds, maybe longer. My feet ached from the heels. The little champagne I had drunk buzzed softly in my head. I kept thinking about Nathaniel’s worried face, Cecily’s cool stare, and the way Adrian had covered my hand on the lamp switch earlier. How he had said goodnight and walked away. I thought about all the things I had not said that night. But I wanted this anyway. I lifted my hand and knocked. A moment passed, then the door o