The CEO's Convenient Stranger

CHAPTER 2 WHAT SHE HEARD

She told him in four minutes.

Not everything. The important parts. The photograph. The date stamp. The registry office. The hand on the small of the back. The blue ticks on the message he had read and not replied to. She gave him the facts in the order they had arrived and she did not add emotion to them because emotion was for later and she did not have time for it now.

He listened without interrupting. This was the first thing she noticed about him. He did not try to fill the silence or offer expressions of sympathy or make the sounds people made when they were processing someone else's crisis. He simply listened, and when she finished he was quiet for a moment, and then he said:

"How much do you know about inheritance law."

She blinked. "What."

"It's relevant. Give me thirty seconds."

She looked at him. He did not look like a man who was joking. He looked like a man who had just received a complex piece of information and was already three steps ahead of it, working through implications she had not yet reached.

"My name is Dominic Hale," he said. "I am thirty-four years old. I own Hale Capital Group. My grandfather, who controls the largest single bloc of shares in the company, has a clause in his will that transfers full voting control to me on my thirty-fifth birthday — which is in twenty-two days — provided I am legally married by that date." He paused. "I am not currently married."

She stared at him.

"My grandfather is eighty-one and has opinions about the institution of marriage that belong to a different century. He believes a man who cannot commit to a woman cannot be trusted to run an empire. I have spent three years trying to get that clause removed and my lawyers have spent two years telling me it cannot be removed."

"Why are you telling me this."

"Because you need a husband and I need a wife and we are standing in a hotel corridor with approximately eleven minutes before someone comes looking for you." He looked at her with the direct, entirely unromantic attention of a man proposing a business transaction. "I am not suggesting anything permanent. I am suggesting a legal marriage, a separation agreement signed simultaneously, and a quiet annulment in twelve months. In exchange, I will cover whatever financial complications arise from your current situation, including any visa issues."

She said nothing.

The corridor held its warm light around them. Somewhere below, in the courtyard she could see from the window, the white chairs were waiting in their perfect rows.

"You looked up my visa status in the thirty seconds you asked me to give you," she said.

"I looked at your name badge in the elevator on the way up. I know who works in this hotel. Your name is on the project team for the Meridian extension. Your H-1B is tied to your employment status and renewal is due in ninety days." He paused. "I am thorough."

"You're insane."

"Possibly. The offer stands."

She turned back to the window. Down below, one of the staff was adjusting the flower arch. A woman in a purple dress was arriving early, being guided to a seat in the front row. In approximately fifty-five minutes, one hundred and thirteen more people were going to sit in those white chairs and wait for Adaeze Mensah to walk down an aisle toward a man who had a wife she did not know about.

She thought about her father's face at the rehearsal dinner.

She thought about her mother in the next room.

She thought about Kevin reading her message and not calling back and what that silence meant, which was that he had known this morning was coming and had decided to simply let it arrive rather than warn her, which was the most cowardly thing she had ever heard of and also, she realized now, completely consistent with who Kevin Addo actually was when you removed the charm and looked at the structure underneath.

She turned back to Dominic Hale.

"Twelve months," she said.

"Twelve months."

"Separation agreement signed before we leave this building."

"My lawyers can have it drafted in twenty minutes. I have them on call."

"I want my own lawyer to review it."

"Reasonable. Give me a name and I'll have them contacted in the next ten minutes."

She looked at him for a long moment. He looked back at her with the same expression he had worn throughout this entire conversation, which was the expression of a man for whom this situation was unusual but not unmanageable, as though he had simply encountered a complex problem and was applying the same methodology he applied to all complex problems.

"Why me," she said. "You don't know me."

"I know enough. You're intelligent, composed under pressure, and you have nothing to gain from this arrangement except what I've offered. That means your incentives are aligned with mine." He paused. "Also you were the only person in this building in a wedding dress standing alone at a window doing strategic planning instead of crying. That tells me something."

She almost laughed. Almost.

"What about the guests downstairs," she said.

"That's your announcement to make. I'll follow your lead."

She looked at him one more time. Then she held out her hand.

He shook it.

"Chiamaka is going to lose her mind," Adaeze said.

"Is that your sister?"

"Yes."

"She'll adjust," he said. "Practical people usually do."

Chiamaka did not lose her mind.

She lost it briefly, for approximately ninety seconds, in the bathroom of the bridal suite while Adaeze explained what had happened and what was happening next, and then she pressed both hands against the sink and breathed and looked at her sister in the mirror and said:

"You are absolutely certain."

"About Kevin? Yes."

"About the other man."

Adaeze thought about it for exactly three seconds. "It solves the immediate problem."

"Adaeze. That is not an answer."

"It's the only answer I have right now. Are you with me or not."

Chiamaka looked at her for a long moment. Then she straightened up and turned around and said: "Tell me his full name so I can look him up while you change out of that dress."

"I'm not changing out of the dress."

"You are not walking into a different wedding in your—"

"I'm not walking into a different wedding. I'm walking into my own." She looked at her sister. "We are going to go downstairs and I am going to find a justice of the peace and we are going to do this correctly. And then I am going to face one hundred and fourteen guests and tell them the truth."

Chiamaka stared at her. "Which truth."

"That Kevin Addo has been married for two years and that I found out this morning and that I will not be requiring the arch or the white chairs." She paused. "I may require the food. I didn't eat breakfast."

Her sister looked at her for a very long moment.

Then she picked up her phone and started typing.

"His net worth is fourteen billion," Chiamaka said. "As of last quarter."

"That's not relevant."

"It is a little bit relevant."

"Chiamaka."

"I'm just saying." She kept typing. "Hale Capital. Tech and infrastructure. Family company, third generation. His grandfather is—" She stopped typing. "Adaeze. His grandfather is Clarence Hale."

"I don't know who that is."

"He owns this hotel."

The room was very quiet for a moment.

"He owns this hotel," Adaeze said.

"And the one across the street. And four others in this city." Chiamaka looked up from her phone. "You are about to marry the man whose family owns the building you're standing in."

Adaeze looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then she looked at her sister.

"Are you still with me," she said.

Chiamaka put her phone in her bag. She straightened her bridesmaid dress. She picked up Adaeze's bouquet from the dressing table and held it out.

"I'm always with you," she said. "Let's go find your husband."