Claimed as the Wrong Bride

Chapter 10 Part 1: First Catch

She should have seen him coming.

That was the part that bothered her afterward, walking fast through the grey zone with the cold air cutting through her jacket and the specific residue of annoyance that came from being caught off guard by something she should have anticipated. She had clocked his people in the booth. She had gone out the back. She had taken three different routes to the gym over the past week and varied her timing and done everything that her working knowledge of not being found suggested she should do.

She had not accounted for him coming personally.

It was eleven-forty-five when she came out of The Meridian's back exit, gym bag over one shoulder, backpack over the other, the night cold and clear and the alley behind the club empty in the way alleys behind clubs at this hour were usually empty. She turned left toward Crane Street.

He was leaning against the wall at the end of the alley with his hands in his jacket pockets, which was a cashmere jacket and therefore an objectively poor choice for a November night in Tripicity, but he did not appear to have noticed this. He was looking at her with those pale composed eyes that did not warm up when they found her and she stopped walking for exactly one second before she started walking again, toward him, because there was nowhere else to go and she was not going to turn around.

"You used the back exit," he said.

"I use the back exit every night."

"You've been using the back exit every night since the gallery." He pushed off the wall, fell into step beside her as though this was a thing that had been arranged. His pace matched hers exactly, which was either natural or deliberate and she suspected deliberate. "I came through the front."

"How long have you been out here."

"Not long." A pause. "The materials arrived safely."

"They did."

"The gold leaf is the correct grade."

"It is." She turned onto Crane Street, which was wide and lit and populated even at this hour, the night market long gone but the bars still running and the foot traffic still present. She moved into it. He moved with her, unperturbed. "Your man this morning was good. I almost missed him."

"He mentioned you almost missed him." Another pause. The particular quality of a pause that was not awkward because only one of them was finding it awkward. "He also mentioned the industrial block."

"I'm familiar with the grey zone."

"I'm beginning to understand that."

His hand found the small of her back.

Not grabbing. Not restraining. Just there, the same light proprietary contact he had used at the gallery before she had understood what kind of evening it was going to be, his palm warm through her jacket, steering her slightly around a group of people coming the other direction on the pavement. She moved around them. His hand stayed.

She looked down at it.

"No," she said.

"You're about to walk into that lamppost," he said.

She looked up. There was no lamppost. There was a clear pavement ahead of her and his hand still at the small of her back and the specific infuriating warmth of it moving through the fabric of her jacket in a way that her body was registering with rather more interest than the situation warranted.

She stepped sideways, out of reach.

He let her go without comment.

She looked at him. He was looking at the street ahead, completely composed, his hands back in his jacket pockets.

"I told you no," she said.

"You stepped away," he said. "I noticed." A beat. "I'm not going to pretend I don't find you interesting to be near, Octavia. You can decide what to do with that information."

She stared at him.

"The warehouse," he said, as though he had not just said that. "The probate dispute on the building has been running for three years. The primary claimant is a property holding company registered in the Alderton district. The secondary claimant is a family trust based in Caelveth."

She kept walking. She focused on the street ahead and the cold air and not on the residual warmth at the small of her back where his hand had been.

"The dispute is likely to resolve within the next four to six months," he said. "When it resolves the building will be sold. The estate will accept the highest offer."

She said nothing.

"The commission gives you the number. But you would need to move on it quickly. With the legal infrastructure in place to make an offer before the sale opens to the broader market."

"I'm aware of the timeline."

"Are you aware that contesting the marriage voids the commission, which voids your ability to make the offer, which means the building goes to whoever bids highest at open market, which at that price point in that district will almost certainly not be you."

"I'm aware of that too."

"Then you understand that we have a shared interest in the marriage remaining intact for the period required."

She stopped walking.

Not because she had decided to stop. Because something in the specific framing of what he had just said required her to be stationary while she processed it, and she had processed it, and it was the most infuriating thing anyone had said to her in recent memory including the marriage certificate itself.

She turned and looked at him.

He was looking back with those composed pale eyes in the specific expression of someone who had made a point and was waiting for it to land. He reached out as she turned, unhurried, and pushed a strand of hair back from her face where the wind had moved it.

She caught his wrist.

He stopped. Did not pull away. Just looked at her with that same composed attention, his wrist in her grip, waiting.

"Don't," she said.

"All right," he said.

She released his wrist. The specific warmth of the contact lingered against her palm in a way she was not going to think about.