His contract wife - His regret

Chapter one

Lillian's POV

I had been sitting in this same plastic chair for forty minutes, staring at the same crack in the wall across from me, turning my phone over and over in my hands.

The screen kept lighting up. Notifications from my bank. I stopped opening them two days ago.

"Miss Derk."

I looked up. Dr. Harlow was walking toward me with a clipboard pressed to his chest and that expression doctors wore when they were about to say something they'd practiced. I stood up too fast and my bag slipped off my shoulder.

"How is she?" I asked.

"She's stable," he said, stopping in front of me. "For now. But Lilian, we've talked about this. The surgery cannot wait much longer. Another two, maybe three weeks and we're looking at irreversible damage to the cardiac muscle."

"I know." I pulled my bag back up. "I know, I just…. I need a little more time."

"You've been saying that for a month."

"I have a meeting today." I straightened up and looked at him directly. "With Brian Germount. He's looking for an art consultant for his new hotel project. If I land the job, the deposit alone covers most of the balance. I just need today to go well."

Dr. Harlow looked at me for a moment, not unkindly. "How much are you short?"

"A hundred thousand."

He exhaled slowly through his nose. "I'll see what I can do about pushing the pre-op window by a few days. But Lilian…"

"I'll get it," I said. "Please just give me a few more days."

He nodded once and walked away.

I stood there until he turned the corner, then I let out the breath I'd been holding since I walked into this building.

My hands were shaking slightly. I pressed them flat against my thighs and looked down at my outfit — black trousers, a white blouse I'd ironed three times this morning, and the one blazer I owned that didn't have paint on it.

I looked fine. I had to look fine.

I went to see my mother before I left.

She was awake, which was both a relief and a quiet devastation, because when she was awake she could see my face and my mother had always been able to read me like a sentence.

"You didn't sleep," she said the moment I walked in.

"Good morning to you too, Mum." I sat on the edge of her bed and took her hand. It was cool and dry and smaller than I remembered hands being. "I slept fine."

"Lilian."

"Mum."

She looked at me with those steady brown eyes and I looked back and neither of us said anything for a moment.

"The meeting is today," she said finally.

"Yes."

"And you're nervous."

"I'm not nervous," I said. "I'm prepared. There's a difference."

She almost smiled. "What time?"

"Ten o'clock, at the Germount Tower." I smoothed the blanket over her legs. "I put together the portfolio last night. It's good, Mum. My best work. If he's serious about the hotel concept he described in the brief, I know exactly what he needs."

"And if he says no?"

"He won't."

She was quiet for a moment, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite hold. "You don't have to carry all of this yourself, you know."

"There's nobody else," I said simply.

She squeezed my hand. "Come back and tell me how it goes."

"I will." I leaned down and kissed her forehead. "I love you."

"I love you more," she said. "Go. Don't be late."

I was nearly late.

The cab took twenty minutes longer than it should have because of a delivery truck blocking an entire street downtown, and I spent the whole ride with my portfolio case balanced on my knees, running through my presentation in my head, rearranging talking points, second-guessing my opening line.

Germount Tower was the kind of building that made you feel small on purpose. All glass and steel, rising fifty floors above the street, the lobby alone wider than my entire apartment. I walked in at three minutes to ten and went straight to the reception desk.

"Hi, I'm Lilian Derk, I'm the art consultant." I said. "I have a ten o'clock with Mr. Germount."

The receptionist typed something. She frowned slightly and typed again.

"You're on the list," she said. "Forty-second floor. Take the elevators on your left, follow the corridor and it's the first set of doors on your right."

"Thank you."

I rode the elevator up with two men in suits who didn't look at me. I adjusted my blazer in the reflection of the elevator doors. My portfolio case had a small scuff on the handle I hadn't noticed until now.

The doors opened and I followed the corridor exactly as she said — left out of the elevator, first set of doors on the right.

I could hear voices through the doors, low and multiple, and I thought nothing of it because conference rooms always sounded like that before a meeting settled.

I pushed the door open and walked in.

It was not a small consultation room.

It was a full boardroom with floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the entire length of the far wall with the city spread out below them.

A long mahogany table stretched down the center of the room with at least fourteen people seated around it, all of them in suits, all of them turning to look at me at exactly the same moment.

I stopped. At the head of the table was a man I recognized from the company website. He had dark hair, sharp jaw and the kind of face that looked like it had never arranged itself into anything warmer than composed.

It was Brian Germount and he was looking at me with an expression I couldn't immediately read.

"I'm so sorry," I said quickly. "I think I have the wrong room. I was looking for…"

"There she is."

His voice was low and smooth and it cut across mine so cleanly that my sentence just stopped existing. He stood up from his chair at the head of the table, straightening his jacket, and looked at me with an expression that had shifted into something that looked almost like warmth. Almost.

"Gentlemen," he said, his eyes still on me, "this is my fiancée."

The room shifted. Fourteen sets of eyes moved between me and him. An older man near the far end of the table sat forward with visible interest.

I stood completely still in the doorway.

"Come in," Brian said, and there was something in his voice and it was not a request.

My legs moved. I didn't tell them to but they moved and I walked the length of that room with my portfolio case in my hand, my heart slamming against my ribs and fourteen strangers watching me.

Brian came around the side of the table unhurriedly and when I reached him he placed one hand lightly at the small of my back.

I felt the warmth of his hand through my blazer like a brand.

"She prefers to keep a low profile," he said casually to the room, as though he were explaining why I'd come in through a side entrance at a party. "I apologize for the interruption, gentlemen. We'll have her join us for the last portion of the agenda."

He guided me to a chair beside his at the head of the table and I sat down because there was absolutely nothing else I could do.

A man across from me smiled politely. Another returned to the document in front of him.

I set my portfolio case down at my feet and stared at the table. My mind was running very fast and arriving nowhere useful.

I kept my face completely neutral, crossed my ankles and folded my hands on the table in front of me the way I'd seen professionals do in films when they needed to look like they belonged somewhere.

Brian returned to his seat beside me and continued the meeting as though nothing unusual had just happened. His voice was even, authoritative, and unbothered.

He talked about acquisition timelines and investor returns and a property deal in Geneva and I understood none of it and smiled when someone glanced at me and nodded exactly once when the older man at the end of the table looked my way.

Forty minutes later, the meeting ended.

People stood, gathered papers, shook hands. The older man, the one who had sat forward when Brian introduced me, came around the table and extended his hand to me.

"It's wonderful to finally meet you," he said warmly. "Brian has been very private about his personal life. We were beginning to think he didn't have one."

"He's very focused," I said, and I was amazed at how steady my own voice was.

The man laughed. "I like her," he said to Brian. "Hold onto this one."

"I intend to," Brian said.

The room cleared out quickly and then it was just the two of us.

I turned to look at him and he was already looking at me, standing with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, as if he hadn't just introduced a total stranger to his board of directors as the woman he was going to marry.

"So," I said, very carefully. "Would you like to explain what just happened?"

He looked at me for a moment.

"My name is Brian Germount," he said.

"I know who you are." I kept my voice level. "I had a meeting scheduled with you this morning. An art consultation and I apparently walked into the wrong room."

"I know," he said.

"So you decided to tell fourteen people I was your fiancée."

He said nothing.

"Why?" I asked.

He looked at me for just a moment longer than was comfortable, then reached inside his jacket, pulled out his phone, and glanced at the screen.

"I have another call in four minutes," he said. "My assistant will see you out.

" He walked toward the door.

"Wait…" I stood up so fast my chair scraped back. "That's it? You just…"

He paused at the door without turning around.

"Leave your portfolio at reception," he said. "I'll have someone look at it."

And then he was gone.