MARRIED TO MY ENEMIES SON

THE GALA

## Chapter Four: The Gala

The Lindqvist Foundation gala was, by design, the kind of event where old money came to remind new money of its place, and Fallon had learned in five months how to move through rooms like this without flinching — smile calibrated, spine straight, a glass of champagne she never actually drank held like a prop.

What she hadn't learned was how to do it while Marcus's hand rested at the small of her back like it belonged there, no flash required this time, no photographer directing the angle.

"You're doing that thing," he murmured against her ear as they crossed the ballroom, "where you catalogue every exit in a room before you'll relax."

"Habit."

"You don't need one tonight. I've got you." He said it simply, like a fact rather than a reassurance, and something in her chest loosened despite every instinct telling her not to trust the feeling.

It was going well — better than well — until Diane Aldercott found them near the dessert table, sherry in hand, smile sharp as a paper cut.

"Marcus, darling, and the famous Mrs. Lindqvist." Diane's eyes swept over Fallon with the particular thoroughness of a woman doing math. "Reyes, wasn't it? I do hope the settlement your father's company received was generous enough. Robert always said the Lindqvist legal team could make a lawsuit feel like a mercy."

The words landed like ice water. Fallon felt Marcus's hand go rigid against her back.

"Diane," he said, voice dropping into a register Fallon hadn't heard from him before — flat, precise, dangerous in the way still water is dangerous. "You're confusing my father's business with mine. I'd be careful which Lindqvist you're gossiping about in front of his wife."

Diane's smile faltered, recalibrated, and she excused herself with the particular speed of someone who had just remembered an appointment elsewhere.

Fallon said nothing until they'd stepped out onto the terrace, the night air sharp after the crowded warmth of the ballroom. "Settlement," she repeated. "She said settlement. Not lawsuit. Not case. *Settlement.*"

"Fallon—"

"My father never got a settlement, Marcus. He won the case outright, and it still cost him the company anyway, because by the time the verdict came in there was nothing left of it to save. There's no settlement in any version of that story I've ever been told." She turned to face him fully, the cold air doing nothing to slow the heat rising in her chest. "Unless there's a version I haven't been told."

He didn't answer right away, and his silence told her more than any denial could have.

"You said you'd tell me everything. You said give you time." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she hated that it did. "How much time, Marcus? Because I am so tired of being the only person in this marriage who doesn't know what's actually happening in it."

"I'm trying to protect you from a version of the truth that's going to hurt you no matter when I tell you it." His hands came up like he wanted to reach for her and thought better of it. "I'm not protecting myself, Fallon. I promise you, whatever you're imagining right now — the reality is worse for me, not better."

"Then let me decide that. Not you." She pulled her wrap tighter around her shoulders, putting a foot of distance between them that felt, absurdly, like the widest gap they'd had in weeks. "You don't get to keep making decisions about what I can handle. My father did that. He hid how bad things were until the day he died thinking he was protecting us, and it didn't protect anyone, Marcus. It just meant none of us got to say goodbye to the truth before it was too late to matter."

Something in his face broke open at that — not surprise, but recognition, like she'd accidentally named the exact shape of his own fear.

"Tomorrow," he said quietly. "Not tonight, not in the middle of a gala with Diane Aldercott circling like a shark. But tomorrow, I will tell you everything. All of it. And Fallon — " He caught her hand before she could step back toward the ballroom, and this time he didn't let the moment pass unclaimed. He drew her closer, slow enough to stop, and didn't. His forehead came to rest against hers, and for one suspended second neither of them moved, breath mingling in the cold air, five months of careful distance collapsing into inches. "Whatever you think of me after tomorrow," he murmured, "I need you to know that this part — tonight, this — was never part of any contract. This is just you and me."

Then he kissed her, and it wasn't careful, and it wasn't strategic, and it wasn't anything either of them could have written into a legal document if they'd tried. Fallon kissed him back before her better judgment could catch up with the rest of her, one hand fisting in the lapel of his jacket, the taste of champagne and something more dangerous on his mouth.

When they finally broke apart, his forehead still against hers, he exhaled like a man setting down a weight he'd been carrying too long.

"Tomorrow," he said again, quieter this time, a promise instead of a delay. "I'll tell you everything tomorrow."

She should have made him tell her that night. She would think that, later, more than once — that the kiss had bought him one more night of her not knowing, and that he had known exactly what he was doing when he used it that way. But standing on that terrace, still breathless, still half-undone by five months of wanting something she'd refused to name, Fallon let herself believe, just for a few more hours, that tomorrow would be simpler than tonight.

She was wrong.