IN YOUR ARMS

RULES OF THE ARRANGEMENT

Ashford arrived at eleven the next morning with a folder and announced that Roman would be joining them to discuss the "operational details" of the arrangement.

"That's a very corporate way to describe pretending to date someone," Amara said.

"Mr. Kane finds precision reassuring."

While they waited, Amara asked the question she'd been carrying since the gallery.

"Does he know I saw the catch?"

Ashford didn't pretend not to understand.

"He knows you saw something. Whether he knows how much, I couldn't say. Whatever you ask him today, ask plainly. He respects plain questions."

The buzzer sounded.

Roman arrived dressed more casually than he had at the gallery. He set his folder beside Ashford's and went straight to business.

"Rules," he said. "I'd rather lay them out now than have either of us discover them in front of a camera."

Public appearances would be scheduled in advance. If his mother, Vivian, invited Amara somewhere directly, she was to check with him before answering.

"You don't discuss the gala," he continued. "Not the attack, not the man who was arrested, nothing beyond what's already public. If a reporter pushes, redirect. If they push harder, end the conversation."

"Fair enough."

"You're never photographed alone at an event we're both attending."

Amara studied him. "Anyone specific you're worried about?"

"It's a policy that exists because general policies are easier to maintain than specific worries."

It wasn't an answer.

Ashford slid another page across the table. Most of it covered approved photographers, upcoming events, and compensation. Then Amara reached the bottom.

Ms. Bennett will not, under any circumstance, remove or examine the ring Mr. Kane wears on his right hand, nor draw attention to it in photographs or conversation.

She looked up.

"That's oddly specific."

Roman went still.

"It was my grandmother's before it was mine," he said after a pause. "It has sentimental value. I'd rather it not become a subject for the press."

"That's not really an answer."

"It's the answer I'm giving."

His tone stayed calm, but something beneath it had shifted. He wasn't managing a publicity problem. He was guarding something.

"Anything else?"

"One more." Roman's voice tightened. "If anything happens to me in public an injury, an accident, anything visible you don't react the way most people would. No questions. No phone. No drawing attention to it. You simply move on."

The room went quiet.

"You're asking me to help you hide something."

"I'm asking you to trust that some things are safer left unremarked."

His gaze held hers. For the first time, his request sounded almost like a plea.

"And if I say no?"

"Then I'd understand. We'd need to decide whether this arrangement can work. I'd rather you say no now than agree and resent it later."

Amara looked at the two rules the ring and the reaction.

The knife. The wine glass. The impossible speed.

Whatever she'd agreed to three days ago, this was no longer simply about pretending to date Roman Kane.

She was deciding how much of a secret she was willing to keep.

"Fine," she said. "I won't react. But I'm not going to stop noticing things. I'm just going to stop saying them in front of cameras."

Relief eased his shoulders.

"That's more than I asked for."

At the door, Roman paused.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I'm keeping a list."

A real smile briefly crossed his face before the door closed.

Amara stayed at the kitchen table, staring at the typed rules. Ashford had told her to ask plainly, but Roman's answers only raised more questions.

She'd told herself the arrangement was temporary and containable. Now she wasn't sure containment was possible.

The rules protected something. The ring protected something. His impossible reflexes protected something.

And she'd just promised to help keep it hidden.

Roman continued as though the page held nothing unusual.

"If an event includes my mother, you stay close to me. If she asks you to go somewhere with her, you don't agree without checking with me first."

"Your mother really needs her own rule?"

"She needs several."

The answer was dry enough to make Amara smile, but his expression stayed serious.

He went on. There would be no unscheduled appearances, no private statements to reporters, and no improvising if a situation turned uncomfortable.

Their public affection had to stay convincing, but nothing was to happen without both of them knowing what had been planned.

It was the kind of structure Amara understood. Her career had taught her that every public moment could become a headline.

What she didn't understand was why so many of Roman's rules seemed built around things other than publicity.

The ring bothered her most.

She looked at the page again.

"Why can't I even examine it?"

Roman's eyes dropped briefly to the ring.

"Because I said so."

"That sounds suspicious."

"It's meant to be a boundary, not a mystery."

"But you made it mysterious."

His jaw tightened.

"My grandmother wore it. There are reasons I don't want people asking about it."

"Family reasons?"

"Always."

She let the question go, but the answer stayed with her.

Then came the final rule.

"If you're hurt," Amara said slowly, "I have to pretend I didn't see it?"

"Only in public."

"Why?"

"Because people notice reactions. If you react to something that shouldn't be possible, they start asking why."

The words settled heavily.

Amara remembered the gala.

He'd been cut. She'd seen blood. Then there had been nothing.

"You're asking me to lie."

"I'm asking you not to expose something you don't understand."

The distinction felt thin.

Still, she agreed.

After Roman left, she reread the page several times. The ordinary clauses about schedules and compensation were easy enough to follow. The strange ones felt like pieces of a larger story.

She began to wonder whether the fake relationship was the least dangerous part of the agreement.

If someone was watching Roman closely enough to make these rules necessary, then pretending to be his girlfriend might put her closer to danger than she'd realized.

And yet, when she thought about saying no, she remembered the way he'd looked at her when he asked for her trust.

That was the part she couldn't explain.

She looked toward the door after he left, then back at the page.

The strange part was that Roman had given her a chance to refuse. He could have ordered her, could have buried the rules in legal language, could have made the arrangement impossible to question.

He hadn't.

He had asked for trust.

That made the decision harder.

Amara had spent enough time around powerful people to know that trust was often another word for surrender.

But Roman's expression when he asked hadn't looked like a man demanding surrender. It had looked like a man who'd run out of safer choices.

She hated that she could tell the difference.

She hated even more that she cared.

She picked up her phone and typed a message to Maya: I think the rules are the least honest part of this whole arrangement, and I think I just agreed to keep his secrets anyway.

Her thumb hovered over send.

Then she deleted it.

For reasons she wasn't ready to examine, she felt safer keeping Roman's secret than sharing her suspicions.