Trusting the Billionaire

Chapter Seventeen: Dinner

One week had passed since the day Marshall King's legal team filed into Bellamy Trust's largest conference room, flanked by Audrey's own lawyers and a stack of documents thick enough to double as a doorstop.

She still remembered the tension in the room that morning — the low hum of printers, the clink of coffee cups nobody touched, the way both legal teams had gone back and forth over indemnity clauses and equity terms until Audrey's temples throbbed. But when the last signature had been inked — Marshall's bold, slanted scrawl beside her own neater one — something in the room had shifted. The tension broke into something closer to triumph.

King Capital is now officially a major shareholder in Bellamy Trust.

Audrey remembered standing afterward, shaking hands with board members who, only weeks earlier, had been whispering about liquidation. Now they were talking about restructuring timelines and modernization plans like the bank had a future again. She remembered catching Marshall's eye across the room, the smallest curve of satisfaction at the corner of his mouth, quickly smoothed into his usual unreadable calm.

It should have felt like enough. The bank was saved. Her father's legacy was safe. But there was still the matter of the second contract — the one that had no board members, no lawyers reading it aloud, no witnesses beyond the two of them. The one that made her, on paper, Marshall King's fiancée.

In the past week, Audrey had thrown herself into work with a fervor that surprised even Priya. New loan terms to draft, a modernization committee to chair, calls with the central bank to reassure the regulators that Bellamy Trust was stable again. It was easier to bury herself in spreadsheets than to sit with the truth of what she'd agreed to.

Because tonight, that truth had a reservation. Eight o'clock. Oscar's.

Audrey stood in front of her closet with her arms crossed, staring at rows of dresses and blouses that suddenly all looked wrong for the occasion.

She still remembered the look on Marshall's face in that glass conference room when she hadn't fought him on his terms, only added her own. Guarded surprise, like he'd expected a battle and gotten a negotiation instead. She almost smiled thinking about it now. Almost.

She had spent the day before turning the arrangement over in her head, weighing it from every angle before he showed up at her office unannounced, she'd already decided to go with it. That was the only reason she hadn't flinched.

He is good looking, she admitted to herself, pulling a navy dress from its hanger and holding it against her body in the mirror. Powerful too. There were worse things in the world than being seen on the arm of a man like Marshall King. Worse things than being called his girlfriend, or eventually his fiancee, in rooms full of people who mattered.

But being seen with him and spending time with him were two very different things, and it was the second one that unsettled her.

He is overbearing. He walked into a room and expected it to reorganize itself around him, and mostly it did. He was persistent on getting her to agree and had to visit her personally to make sure she agreed.

She set the navy dress aside and pulled out a burgundy one instead.

The plan for tonight was simple enough on paper. A quiet dinner, something low key, meant to start easing them into public view before the engagement was announced properly. Marshall's assistant had sent over the details that morning. A seven o'clock reservation at a five star restaurant, where anyone who was anything is seen.

But it shouldn't be too fancy as Marshall as said.

Nothing fancier than smart casual.

Smart casual. Audrey almost laughed out loud in her empty bedroom. As if there was anything casual about pretending to date a billionaire while your bank's survival depended on his goodwill.

She held the burgundy dress up next. Too much. It looked like she was trying to prove something, and that was exactly what she didn't want. She didn't want to look like she'd spent an hour deciding what to wear for him, even though she had already spent forty minutes doing precisely that.

Her phone buzzed on the bed. it was Tracy.

'Send me pictures of every option before you decide. I refuse to let you leave the house looking like you're going to a board meeting'.

Audrey typed back with one hand while flipping through hangers with the other. 'It's not that kind of date, Tracy. It's fake'

.

'Fake or not, the cameras won't know that. Pictures. Now.'

She sighed and did as she was told, laying three options across her bed and snapping a photo. The navy dress, structured and clean. A soft green wrap dress that skimmed her figure without clinging to it. And a black jumpsuit with a plunging back that she'd bought on impulse two years ago and never once worn.

Tracy's reply came back within seconds. The green one. Obviously. You look like a woman who has her life together and also happens to be devastating. Perfect combination for a man who thinks he's already won.

Audrey stared at the message longer than she needed to. He thinks he's already won. Was that true? She thought back to the handshake in the conference room, the current that had passed between them when their palms touched, she wondered if he felt it even though she'd told herself it meant nothing. Static electricity, maybe, or simple nerves about the stakes of the deal.

She picked up the green dress and laid it out properly on the bed, then went to shower.

By the time she stepped out, hair still damp, her mind had drifted somewhere she hadn't given it permission to go. She kept thinking about his hands. Not in any way she wanted to examine too closely, just noticing that they were the kind of hands that looked capable, sure of themselves, the kind that could either build something or take it apart depending on what he decided to do with them.

She shook the thought loose and reached for her makeup.

Understated was the goal. A little color on her lips, enough definition around her eyes to look intentional without looking like she'd tried too hard. She wanted to walk into that restaurant looking like a woman who happened to be beautiful, not a woman who had rearranged her evening around making sure of it.

Her phone buzzed again.

This time it is a text from Marshall, her heart skipped a beat. She felt overwhelmed with having to spend so much time alone with him without any business discussions.

They had met three times already but all work related and Audrey lived for her work so they never ran out of things to discuss. 'what would they be discussing for an hour?' she thought as she checked the message which informed her the driver will be there in forty minutes.

---

Marshall arrived ten minutes early, which he told himself was simply good business practice — the kind of punctuality that had built King Capital from the ground up. It had nothing to do with the fact that he'd changed his tie twice, or that he'd told the maître d' three separate times exactly which table he wanted, the one tucked near the window but angled away from the other diners' sightlines. Enough privacy to talk. Enough visibility to be seen.

That was the whole point of tonight, he reminded himself. To be seen.

The restaurant murmured around him — low jazz, the clink of crystal, the particular hush of a room full of people who had long since stopped being impressed by money and now only noticed whose money was walking in. Marshall had eaten here more times than he could count, always alone or with investors, never once with the flicker of nerves currently sitting low in his chest.

He told himself it was strategy. Nothing more.

Then she walked in, and strategy left the building entirely.