Thirty Days to Prove Them Wrong

Chapter 3

The Reluctant Bride

Vivian Whitmore's reaction to the news was, according to the muffled shouting I could hear through two closed doors when I arrived at the Whitmore estate the next evening, exactly as bad as her mother had predicted.

I stood in the marble foyer with a staff member who clearly didn't know what to do with me, listening to a voice, sharp, furious, unmistakably in charge of the argument despite being outnumbered, carry all the way from what I guessed was a study upstairs.

"I am not marrying a stranger because Dad's lawyer wrote one badly-worded clause into a will eight years ago!"

Diane's voice, calmer, more controlled, answered something I couldn't make out.

"I don't care what happens to the shares! Let the cousin have them if that's what it takes to not do this!"

More murmuring. Then, clearer, colder: "Fine. FINE. But I want to meet him myself before anything gets announced, and if he's as pathetic as I'm assuming, this is over before it starts."

Footsteps on stairs, fast and hard. I had approximately four seconds to prepare myself before Vivian Whitmore rounded the corner into the foyer and stopped dead at the sight of me.

She was not what I'd pictured. I don't know exactly what I'd pictured: someone soft, maybe, someone who'd let her mother run every part of her life without a fight. This woman looked like she could run a company by herself and had probably been doing exactly that for longer than anyone gave her credit for. Sharp eyes, hair pulled back like she didn't have time for anything decorative, a blazer that looked like it belonged in a boardroom rather than her own home at eight in the evening.

She looked me over the way you'd inspect something you'd been forced to buy at a garage sale.

"You're the fiancé."

"Apparently," I said.

"How much is she paying you?"

I hesitated, and that hesitation was clearly answer enough.

"Right." Vivian crossed her arms. "So you're a stranger my mother hired off some list to save her own reputation, and I'm supposed to smile next to you at parties for a month like this is normal."

"I'm not thrilled about it either, for what it's worth."

"I doubt that very much," she said. "I doubt you have anywhere near as much to lose as I do."

I thought about Walt's test results, still pending, still unknown, and the thirty-day countdown ticking down on the loan, and decided this wasn't the moment to compare who had more at stake. She didn't know anything about my life, and I had no intention of handing her ammunition on our first conversation.

"Look," I said instead. "I get that this is humiliating for you. I'm not here to make your life harder than your mother's already making it. I'll do what I need to do in public, and otherwise I'll stay out of your way."

Something in her expression flickered: not quite surprise, but close to it, like she'd expected me to argue and didn't know what to do with someone who didn't.

"That's it? You'll just... stay out of my way?"

"That's it."

"And if I decide to make this as unpleasant as possible for you? Push you to quit before the thirty days are up?"

I almost smiled at that, which was clearly not the reaction she wanted. "You can try. I've had worse bosses than you're probably capable of being."

For a second, just a second, something like reluctant respect crossed her face before she shut it down completely.

"Don't get comfortable, Mr. Ashford," she said. "This ends the moment the will clause is satisfied, and I intend to make sure my mother never forgets how much I hated every second of it."

"Understood."

She turned to leave, then stopped, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Why did you actually say yes to this? People don't usually agree to something like this for money alone. Not people who look like they mean what they say, anyway."

It was the first genuinely curious question she'd asked, and it caught me off guard enough that I almost told her the truth: Walt, the hospital, the loan, all of it. I stopped myself just in time.

"Family emergency," I said instead. "That's all you need to know."

She studied me a moment longer, like she was deciding whether to push, then apparently decided it wasn't worth the effort tonight.

"Someone will show you to the guest house," she said. "Don't touch anything in the main house you don't have to. Don't talk to the staff about anything personal. And whatever you do, don't embarrass me in front of my mother's friends, because trust me, she will make both our lives miserable if you do."

"Noted."

She left without another word, disappearing up the same stairs she'd stormed down minutes earlier, and I was left standing in a foyer bigger than Walt's entire warehouse office, wondering exactly what I'd agreed to.

The guest house was nicer than any place I'd ever actually lived, which felt like its own kind of insult. I'd barely set my bag down when my phone rang. Walt.

"Hey," I answered. "How'd the tests go?"

There was a pause just a beat too long. "They want to run a few more. Nothing to worry about yet."

"Walt."

"I mean it, Dean. Focus on whatever you're doing to help with the loan situation. I heard from Marisol you're staying somewhere fancy tonight."

I hadn't told him the details yet: the engagement, Diane, any of it. I wasn't sure how to explain that I'd agreed to pretend to marry a stranger to keep his company from collapsing, especially not while he was dodging questions about his own health with the same evasive energy.

"It's a long story," I said. "I'll explain when I see you. Just take care of yourself tonight, okay? Actually rest."

"I always rest."

"You never rest. That's the problem."

He laughed, which turned into a small cough that he tried to cover, and something in my chest tightened at the sound of it.

"I love you, kid," he said, unexpectedly, the way he only did when he was more worried than he wanted to admit. "Whatever you're doing over there, be careful. Rich people don't play by the same rules the rest of us do."

"I know."

"Do you, though?"

I thought about Diane's cold satisfaction when I'd agreed to her terms, about Rex's easy cruelty, about the way Vivian had looked at me like I was a problem to be managed rather than a person. Walt wasn't wrong. I didn't fully know yet, not really, what kind of rules these people played by.

I was about to find out.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I said. "Promise me you'll actually rest tonight."

"I promise," Walt said, in the tone of a man who had no intention of keeping that promise, and hung up before I could argue.

I sat on the edge of the guest house bed for a long time after that, staring at my phone, thinking about the name saved in my contacts that I hadn't touched in seven years. TRILLIONAIRE GRANDPA, I'd saved it as, half joke, half bitter reminder, back when I was eighteen and angry enough at the world to think I'd never need it.

I didn't call. Not yet. I told myself the money from Diane would be enough, that I wouldn't need to go further than this, wouldn't need to open a door I'd spent seven years keeping shut.

I had no idea, that first night in the Whitmore guest house, just how wrong I was about to be proven: about the money, about Vivian, and about how long I could keep that door closed before it got kicked open from the outside instead.