The Art of Almost

Chapter Four

The Art of Almost

Wren's phone rang at exactly 7:58 the next morning, four minutes after she had finally made her decision and forty seconds after she had started regretting it.

"I need terms," she said, by way of hello, sitting on the edge of her bed in yesterday's clothes because sleep had apparently been optional.

"If we're doing this insane thing, I need actual terms, in writing, signed by the both of us in the presence of our lawyers, because I refuse to let you improvise your way through my personal life the way you improvise press statements."

A pause on the line. She could practically hear him deciding whether to be offended.

"I don't improvise press statements."

"You called my line loud on live audio."

"That was true, not improvised."

"Need the terms, Adrian."

Another pause, this time, it was longer, and something about the way he exhaled told her he had also been up as long as she had.

"Fine," he said. "My office then. Ten o'clock. Bring whatever list you have already prepared, because I know you already have one."

She did, in fact, already have one like he had predicted, written on the back of a sketch of a coat she still hadn't figured out how to finish, and she hated him a little for knowing that about her before she even said a word.

—---

His office was exactly what she expected and somehow still managed to annoy her.

It had floor-to-ceiling windows, a desk clean enough to perform surgery on, not a single personal object in sight except a single black-and-white photograph of an older woman she didn't recognize, positioned where he could see it and no one else could.

"Your terms," Wren said, dropping into the chair across from his desk and pulling out her list before she even sat down fully. “Was expecting you to turn up with your lawyer."

“For starters, this is not real. I need you to understand that going in, because I have seen the way you flirt with reporters when you think it will get you a favorable headline, and I need this to stay professional."

"That is a malicious lie, I have never had to flirt with reporters."

"You ‘charm’ them, which is worse, because at least flirting is honest about what it's doing."

The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close enough that she filed it away against her will.

"Continue," he said.

"Two, there will be no touching without warning. If we are at an event and you need to put a hand somewhere, you ask first, quietly, or you don't do it at all."

"Reasonable."

"Three. No one finds out. Not your assistant, not my assistant, not Priya, not your father…"

"My father will not find out," Adrian said, and something in his voice went flat enough that she glanced up. Whatever was behind that sentence, she decided not to ask. Yet.

"Four," she continued. "This act we are about to start putting up ends the day the contract is signed. Not a day later. We don't linger, we don't 'ease out of it publicly,' we end it clean the moment we don't need it anymore."

Adrian was quiet for a moment, studying her with an expression she couldn't quite place. Something that looked, uncomfortably, like he was cataloguing her the way she'd catalogue fabric, searching for the flaw in the weave.

"I have listened to all your terms and I agree to all four," he said finally.

"Just like that?"

"You wrote a list. I have no interest in negotiating terms designed to protect both of us. That would be counterproductive. We just need to do what needs to be done to savage this."

"You're doing the thing," Wren said, narrowing her eyes.

"What thing."

"The thing where you agree to everything so calmly it's genuinely more suspicious than if you'd argued."

"Would you prefer I argue?"

"I'd prefer to understand what you are getting out of this that you're not saying."

Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone, the same flash she had caught at the gala, the one that made her chest do something she refused to name. He didn't answer the real question.

"All that matters is the fact that I am getting a company saved," he said instead. "The same goes for you."

It wasn't a lie, exactly. She just wasn't entirely convinced it was the whole truth either.

Before she could push further, his phone lit up on the desk between them: Camille Dubois, the screen read, and beneath it, a second notification that made Wren's stomach drop before Adrian had even turned the phone to read it properly.

Camille Dubois: “Change of plans. Thursday's test is now tonight's official launch dinner. The press has already been invited, seating for 120 has been prepared. My board wants proof, not promises. Don't disappoint me.*

Wren stared at the message, then at Adrian, then back at the message, doing math that came out wrong no matter how many times she ran it.

"Tonight," she said. "Does she actually mean tonight? Tonight as in a few hours away from now?"

Adrian was already standing, already reaching for his jacket, already moving with the particular controlled urgency of a man recalculating an entire plan in real time.

"We have approximately six hours from now," he said, "to become a convincing couple in front of a hundred and twenty people and every fashion journalist in the city."

Wren stood too, heart hammering somewhere in her throat.

"Adrian."

"What?"

"I don't even know your middle name or any serious thing about you."

He was already at the door, and he paused just long enough to look back at her with an expression that was, for the first time since she'd met him two years ago, almost, almost afraid.

"Neither do most people," he said. "We are going to have a great deal to learn about each other in the next six hours, Ms. Collins. I suggest we start now.”