Trusting the Billionaire

Chapter Ten: Condition II

Marshall...

Marshall had given the dare with Donald some thought.

At first it seemed simple enough. He would call one of his exes, someone he had spent less than a month with, and offer her a role. Any one of them would be thrilled to be with him again, and even more thrilled at the chance to be seen in public with him. But the length of time this thing would require, weeks stretched out in front of cameras and family dinners, was long enough to plant ideas in a woman's head. Ideas about permanency. About what came after.

Nancy the Model might understand. She was practical that way, had never once brought up the question about where things were going even when he took her to two galas in a row. Or maybe Danielle, except Danielle had mentioned once, lightly, like it was nothing, that she would love to have his kid someday. He had let that comment die in the air between them and never called her again after that week.

He would figure something out eventually. He always did.

His secretary's voice came through the intercom, telling him Miss Bellamy had arrived. He told him to send Audrey in.

The door opened and she stepped through it, and his head lifted from the document he had been pretending to read for the last ten minutes. She wore her usual office armor, the fitted blazer, the skirt that stopped just above the knee, hair pulled back in a way that should have looked severe and instead looked deliberate, controlled, like everything else about her. She looked good. She always looked good.

He thought of the woman at the bar again, the one who never knew he was watching from across the room, the way the club lighting had done something different to her, loosened something in her that the boardroom never allowed. She had not seen him that night. He had made sure of it. But he remembered.

Good looking and professional. It was a rare combination, one that made a man's mind wander places it had no business going during a business meeting.

"Miss Bellamy."

"Mr. King."

He thought, not for the first time, that if he could find someone with her level of composure to play along as his girlfriend for the next few weeks, Donald's dare would stop being a problem. Someone who wouldn't crumble in front of his mother or misread every gesture as an invitation to something real.

Then the thought turned itself over in his head. Why not her.

He let the idea sit there while he began the part of the meeting he had actually prepared for. He told her that his team had completed its review, that the numbers checked out, that everything was in order. He watched something ease in her shoulders as he said it, the tension she had walked in carrying starting to loosen.

Kings Capital had decided to partner with Bellamy Trust.

He let that land for a second before he added the condition, and even as he did it, the idea from a moment ago was still working itself out in the back of his mind, testing its own weight. There is one condition, he told her.

He watched her go still. Not surprised exactly, more like she had been braced for this from the moment she sat down, like ten days of waiting had prepared her for a blow of some kind. He would have bet everything he owned that whatever she was steeling herself for, it was nothing close to what he was about to say.

His eyes moved over her face while he decided how to say it. The line of her jaw. The way her mouth pressed thin when she was concentrating. He had noticed all of this before, in their first two meetings, but he let himself notice it properly now, the way a man notices a painting he's about to buy.

Then it came to him fully formed, the initiative he had all but written off weeks ago because he assumed his profile alone was enough to secure it. The federal committee reviewing bids for the public private lending framework had made it known, quietly, through channels that mattered, that they favored leadership with roots. A man with something to lose outside the boardroom read as steadier option than one who answered to nothing.

Good move, Marshall, he told himself. This solved two problems with one condition, and the second problem was sitting three feet away from him in a navy blazer.

He explained it to her slowly, watching her face the entire time, half convinced his own subconscious was trying to memorize the shape of it. The way her eyes narrowed slightly when she was working through an idea before she had all the pieces. The stubborn set of her chin.

Finally he said it outright. He needed a fiancée, someone to play the part for as long as it took to close the initiative and secure the deal.

He had braced for outrage. He had, if he was honest with himself, half expected her to stand up and walk out, folder and all, and leave him to find some other way to satisfy the committee and Donald. Instead she sat back in the chair across from him and asked him, quietly, to repeat what he'd just said.

He told her she'd heard him correctly.

She folded her arms over her chest, a small defensive motion, the kind of thing people did without thinking when they needed a second to catch up to their own feelings. It pushed her chest up slightly, gave him a clearer look than he'd gotten that night at the bar, close enough now that there was no pretending not to notice. He noticed anyway. Then he made himself stop noticing. He needed to focus.

She sat with that stillness for a moment, arms crossed, spine straight, the same armor she'd walked in wearing now doing double duty. He watched as understanding came to her, continued to watched the disbelief settle into something closer to insult, and braced for whatever came next.

"Mr. King, I came here for an investment," she said finally. "Not a role in a play."

He almost smiled. Almost. Because underneath the insult in her voice there was something else, something that told him she hadn't said no yet, not really, and a woman who hadn't said no yet was a woman who could still be convinced.

He leaned back in his chair and let the silence stretch, giving her the room to fill it if she wanted to. She didn't. She just watched him, waiting, arms still crossed, chin still lifted, and he thought, watching her sit there refusing to be the first one to blink, that Donald was done for. He would find a way to convince her because she is the right candidate for the job. Hell, he doesn't mind paying her for that particular role. But this was going to take some convincing.