Claimed as the Wrong Bride

Chapter 10 Part 2: First Catch

"A shared interest," she said.

"The marriage benefits you materially. It benefits me politically. The twelve months is a defined period with a clear end point. I am not suggesting anything beyond the terms of the documents you signed."

"The documents I signed thinking I was selling a painting."

"Yes." He said it without flinching. "I understand that the circumstances of the signing were not what you believed them to be. I understand that's not a small thing. I am not asking you to pretend otherwise." A beat. "I am asking you to consider that the arrangement, despite its origins, serves your interests as well as mine."

She looked at him for a long moment. The grey zone street moved around them, a group of people spilling out of a bar two doors down with the loose laughter of a good night finishing.

"The warehouse," she said. "Even if I accept that premise. You're asking me to spend twelve months as your wife."

"I'm asking you to spend twelve months as the legally registered spouse of a man you have already spent one evening with, during which you formed your own assessment of his company."

She stared at him.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. That architecture of a smile. "I am not unaware of the irony," he said.

"There's also the matter of The Meridian," he said, before she could respond to that.

She looked at him. "What about The Meridian."

"Document four. Subsection seven. The spousal conduct clause." He said it the same way he said everything, level and without inflection. "It specifies that neither party will engage in professional activities that materially damage the other's public standing or reputation. The clause includes a non-exhaustive list of examples." A pause. "Exotic dancing at a licensed adult venue is on the list."

She stared at him for a long moment.

"You don't have the right to tell me what to do," she said.

"Legally," he said, "for the next eleven months and three weeks, the contract gives me a specific and limited set of rights. One of which, as it happens, is this one."

The infuriating thing was that he said it without satisfaction. Without the cruelty of a man enjoying the leverage. He said it the way he said everything, as a fact being delivered, as information that existed whether or not either of them had feelings about it.

She hated it more than if he had been smug about it.

"No," she said.

He looked at her.

"No," she said again. "I'm not quitting my job because a contract I signed by accident has an opinion about where I work. You can add it to the list of things about this situation that are not my problem."

She turned and walked directly into the group of people coming out of the bar, slipping between them with the practiced ease of someone who had spent years navigating crowds, her small frame and her knowledge of the city's human traffic working together in the specific way they always worked together when she needed to disappear.

By the time the group had sorted itself out she was half a block away, moving fast, her footsteps lost in the general noise of Crane Street at midnight.

She did not look back.

She also did not think about his hand at the small of her back or the warmth of his wrist in her grip or the specific way he had said I find you interesting to be near as though it were a simple observable fact and not something designed to sit in her chest for the rest of the walk home.

She was absolutely not thinking about any of that.

The list was growing. The marriage certificate. The commission she couldn't touch without losing the warehouse. The contract clause about The Meridian. His hand at the small of her back. His voice saying interesting to be near like it meant something he had already decided.

She walked faster.

The list could keep growing. She had been managing lists her whole life. One more item was not going to be the thing that stopped her.