His contract wife - His regret

Chapter Three

Brian's POV

She was going to say yes.

I knew it the moment she stopped walking toward the door. That half second where her hand tightened on the portfolio case and her shoulders didn't quite relax, that was the moment the calculation happened.

I'd seen it before, in boardrooms, across negotiating tables, in the eyes of men twice her age who thought they were better at hiding it. That brief, involuntary pause when the number lands and the mind starts doing what minds do.

She needed money. Urgently. The kind of urgency that doesn't come from ambition, but from fear.

I didn't know what she was afraid of losing, I didn't need to.

I closed the Geneva file on my desk and pulled up Edwin's contact on my phone. I didn't call him yet. I'd wait until the paperwork was signed. Until it was real and documented and there was nothing provisional about it.

Edwin Holt had not built forty years of wealth by accepting anything provisional and neither had I.

My intercom buzzed.

"Your twelve-thirty is here, Mr. Germount," Clara said.

"Push it," I said.

A pause. "Sir, it's the structural team for the Monaco project. They've been waiting since…."

"Push it to two," I said. "And get Marcus on the phone."

Marcus Weil had been my legal counsel for six years. He was precise, discreet, and completely incapable of being surprised by anything I asked him to do, which was the primary reason I kept him.

He picked up on the second ring.

"I need a contract drawn up by three-thirty," I said.

"What kind of contract?"

"A marriage contract," I said. "A six month term and clean dissolution clause at the end. Let it have standard NDA provisions, and a compensation structure — five hundred thousand, split into two equal tranches. First on signing, second on termination."

A beat of silence. Not shock. Marcus didn't do shock. Just processing.

"Mutual termination or unilateral?" he asked.

"Mutual, with a penalty clause if either party exits before the term without cause."

"Cause defined as?"

"Breach of the NDA or public sabotage of the arrangement," I said. "I'll send you a full brief in the next thirty minutes. I need it clean, Marcus. And airtight."

"I'll have a draft to you by three," he said. "Do I get to ask who?"

"No," I said.

He made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Three o'clock," he said, and hung up.

I worked through lunch, I always worked through lunch. My housekeeper, Rosa, had stopped leaving food on my desk two years ago after I let three consecutive meals go cold without touching them. Now she left coffee and said nothing, which was an arrangement that suited us both.

At some point around one-thirty I found myself looking at the chair she had sat in.

Lilian Derk.

Twenty-six, according to the brief my assistant had pulled together when she was first scheduled. Freelance art consultant, previously exhibited at two mid-size galleries, strong portfolio reputation in emerging luxury design circles. No significant industry contracts yet and no corporate clients.

She'd walked into that boardroom like someone who was trying very hard to look like they belonged somewhere, and she'd pulled it off well enough that only I could see the effort. Most people in Edwin's position wouldn't have noticed. Edwin himself certainly hadn't.

That composure was what made the decision easy.

I needed someone who could perform under pressure without being coached through every situation. Someone with enough intelligence to read a room and enough self-control not to react visibly when something unexpected happened.

Most people, when publicly introduced as someone's fiancée without warning, either laughed or looked horrified or made the whole thing immediately obvious.

She had sat down, crossed her ankles, and folded her hands on the table.

I pulled my eyes off the chair and went back to the Geneva file.

At exactly 3:47, Clara's voice came through the intercom again. "Miss Derk is in reception, sir."

Thirteen minutes early, interesting.

"Send her up," I said.

I closed my laptop and stood. I was at the window when she came in, same as this morning, and I heard the door open and close behind her and the soft sound of her footsteps stopping in the middle of the room.

I turned around. She had changed. Same blazer, but she'd done something different with herself. She looked a little more settled, and a little more deliberate. She was holding her bag in front of her with both hands and she was looking at me with an expression that had clearly been prepared in advance.

"I have conditions," she said, without sitting down.

"You mentioned," I said.

"Beyond what I said this morning," she clarified. "Additional ones."

I moved to my desk and sat down. "Go ahead."

She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She'd written them down, of course she had.

"We will maintain separate bedrooms," she said, unfolding it. "Always."

"Fine."

"I'll attend events with you when required but I get an advance notice of at least forty-eight hours. I won't be pulled into situations without preparation time."

"Reasonable."

"My name does not appear in any press materials related to your company without my prior approval."

"Agreed."

"And if at any point I feel that my personal safety or dignity is being compromised, I can exit the arrangement immediately without penalty and keep the first part of the compensation."

I looked at her. She was looking back steadily, her chin lifted just slightly, that piece of paper held between both hands.

"That last clause is one-sided," I said.

"Yes," she said simply. "It is."

I held her gaze for a moment. She didn't look away.

"Accepted," I said.

Something crossed her face, not quite relief, but close to it. She folded the paper carefully and put it back in her bag.

"My legal counsel has the contract ready," I said. "We can go over it together before you sign."

"I'd like that," she said.

I stood, reached for my jacket on the back of the chair, and shrugged it on. Then I picked up my phone and keys.

"My car is downstairs," I said. "The courthouse closes at five. We'll go over the contract in the car."

She blinked. "The courthouse."

"We need to file today," I said. "I told you, Edwin flies out tomorrow morning."

"I thought … I assumed the courthouse would be a separate…"

"It's one trip," I said, moving toward the door. "Contract review, signing and filing. Two hours at most."

She stood very still in the middle of my office. I stopped and looked back at her.

"Miss Derk."

"Lilian," she said quietly. Then she seemed to catch herself. "If we're doing this, you should probably use my name."

I looked at her for a moment.

"Lilian," I said. It was the first time I'd said it and I noted, with some detachment, that it sat differently in the mouth than most names. "Are you ready?"

She took a slow breath and looked around my office briefly, at the window, the city, the clean empty surfaces, like she was memorizing something or saying goodbye to a version of the morning that no longer existed.

Then she looked at me. “Yes," she said.

The car was quiet as we rode to the courthouse. Marcus had sent the contract as a PDF and I handed my phone to her so she could read it properly.

She read carefully. She didn't rush through it the way people did when they were nervous and just wanted to get to the end. She went line by line, occasionally scrolling back up to re-read something, her expression focused and unreadable.

My driver, James, kept his eyes on the road. He was good at that.

"Clause eleven," she said, without looking up.

"What about it?"

"It says that either party may request cohabitation adjustments with seven days written notice." She looked up at me. "What does that mean exactly?"

"It means if either of us needs to renegotiate the living arrangement," I said, "there's a formal process. It's a protection clause. For both of us."

She looked back down at the contract. "You wrote this fast."

"Marcus is efficient."

"Has he done this before?"

"No," I said. "But he doesn't ask unnecessary questions."

She almost said something to that. I saw the thought move across her face and then stop. She went back to reading.

Outside the window, the city slid past in its afternoon light. I watched the buildings and thought about Edwin and the Geneva timeline and the two other deals sitting behind it, and I told myself this was a clean solution to a logistical problem and that was all it was.

"Okay," she said finally. She handed my phone back.

"Any other concerns?"

"No," she said, then paused. "One."

"Go ahead."

She looked at me directly, and there was something in her eyes that hadn't been there this morning, something that had moved past nervousness into something quieter and more serious.

"Don't make me regret this," she said.

The car slowed at the courthouse steps.

I looked at her for a moment. The afternoon light was coming through the window and it caught the side of her face and I noticed, with that same

detachment, that she was quite striking when she wasn't trying to hold herself together.

"I won't," I said.

I opened the door and stepped out.

I almost believed it when I said it.