THE BILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS LIE

Chapter Three

Zarah’s POV

My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing.

I woke tangled in my blanket. Light slanted through the window, and the radiator clanked the way it always did. The screen kept lighting up and shaking across the nightstand until it slid off and hit the floor.

One hundred and forty-three notifications.

I sat up slowly. The first headline stopped my breath.

BLACKWOOD ENGAGED: THE MYSTERY WOMAN BEHIND NEW YORK’S COLDEST CEO.

Under it was a photo of me from the gala, wet coat, chin up, caught mid-turn. Someone had cropped out the guards. It looked like a woman choosing to stand alone.

I kept scrolling. A gossip site had already found my name. Another had found Marlowe’s Bakery. Mrs. Marlowe had texted four times in capital letters. Aria had sent a single message: Call me when you wake up. Please.

Strangers were arguing about me in the comments. Gold digger. Cinderella. She looks tired. She looks real.

I put the phone face down and breathed. Yesterday nobody in this city knew who I was. Now everybody did. I had signed that contract with my eyes open. I just hadn’t known it would feel like being pushed onto a stage in front of the whole world.

Someone knocked on the door.

Lucien Blackwood stood in my doorway. Black coat, dark suit, snow on his shoulders. Behind him, my neighbor’s door was open exactly one inch.

“You’re not ready,” he said.

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“The event is at eleven.” He held out a garment bag. “Wear this.”

Inside was a cream wool coat, soft, lined with silk. I touched it, then stopped. “I have a coat.”

“Yours has been damp since last night. It has no lining.” He looked at my arms, crossed tight over my chest. I was holding myself because the cold had gotten in. “You’ll shiver on camera. They’ll say you’re nervous.”

“Maybe I am nervous.”

“Then they’ll say that, and they’ll be right.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Put it on, Miss Cole.”

I put it on. It was warm, and it fit.

* * *

In the car, he sat close to me, and I could smell cedar and cold air. His assistant, whose name I hadn’t caught, sat in front beside the driver.

“Three rules,” Lucien said. “Stay next to me. If a question is too personal, look at me and I’ll answer. If you want to leave, squeeze my hand twice.”

“And if I don’t know what to say?”

“You come up with something.”

“That’s your advice? Come up with something?”

“Yes.” He handed me a paper bag with a warm croissant inside. “Eat. You shouldn’t go this long without food or rest. Not with...”

He stopped.

“Not with what?”

“A schedule like this.”

I looked at him a moment longer than I meant to, then at the croissant. I ate it.

His gaze dropped to my hands. I had been tucking my left thumb under my fingers without noticing, a habit I’d had since I was a child. His eyes stayed there for more than a second. Then, without a word, he took my hand and held it still.

My heart jumped. His palm was warm and steady.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“No.”

“Your hands say otherwise.”

“Ignore my hands.”

“I should,” he said quietly, and let go.

I looked out the window and counted snowflakes.

The skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza had been strung with white lights and red ribbons. About a hundred reporters crowded the barricades. The second our car stopped, the noise hit the windows like a wave.

“Smile,” Lucien murmured. “Not too much.”

He stepped out first, then turned and offered his hand. Cameras began to click. I stepped onto the icy pavement and my heel slid sideways. Before I could even gasp, his arm was around my waist, firm, as if he had known I would slip.

“I’m here,” he said, low enough that only I could hear.

The flashes turned everything white.

“Mr. Blackwood! Over here!”

“Is it true? You’re engaged?”

“Miss Cole, how does it feel?”

Lucien’s hand tightened on mine. I looked at him, and he nodded slightly.

“Overwhelming,” I said, and smiled at the reporters. “But kind of wonderful.”

I wasn’t sure it was the right answer. It was only what came to my head.

“Mr. Blackwood,” a woman in a red coat called. “Everyone thought you’d never get engaged. What changed?”

“I did,” Lucien said. “It took the right person.”

“How did you meet?”

“She walked into my gala in a snowstorm carrying a cake nobody had thanked her for.” The crowd made a soft, happy sound. “She stood her ground, and I knew she was mine. I’ll tell the full story very soon.”

I turned to look at him. Nothing in his face gave away that he had just lied to every person there. He ought to consider a career in Hollywood.

I smiled and kept it steady. I had known from the start this wouldn’t be as easy as Lucien made it sound.

“And why her?” another reporter called. “You could have anyone.”

Lucien’s thumb moved once across my knuckles. “She isn’t after my money,” he said. “She never asks for help. She carries everything herself, even when it’s too heavy.”

His eyes found mine. The reporters sighed, cameras clicked, and my throat went dry.

How did he know that?

His phone chimed, and he glanced at it. “Our stock is up four percent since noon. Damien Peters released a statement an hour ago. He sounds worried.”

“Is that good?”

“That’s very good.” He put the phone away.

“You should check yours.”

I unlocked my phone and my jaw dropped.

The internet had a lot to say already. #BlackwoodBride was trending. A clip of him catching me on the ice had been watched eleven million times. Under it, people wrote things like He actually smiled?? and She melted the Ice King. One commentator called me “the warmth Lucien Blackwood never knew he was missing.” Mrs. Marlowe had texted that the bakery was flooded with orders, and she was crying and baking at the same time.

The car moved through the snow. The city slid by in gold and red. I looked at my hands and saw they had finally stopped shaking.

“Thank you,” I said.

He turned. “For what?”

“Today. The questions. I would have fallen apart without you.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I almost did.”

“No.” His voice was low. “You’ve always been brave. You lift your chin and walk straight through everything.”

The car went quiet.

I stared at him. “Always?”

His face didn’t change, but his jaw tightened. He looked like a man who had said something he shouldn’t have.

“I meant today.”

“You said always.” My heart had begun to beat very fast. “Lucien. Have we met before?”

The silence went on long enough for the streetlights to pass over his face twice. He was looking out the window, and his hand sat motionless on his knee.

“No,” he said at last. But he had paused first.

I turned back to the window. The cream coat was soft on my shoulders, and his cedar scent still clung to the wool. Snow kept falling outside, and I realized something.

There was something about Lucien Blackwood that I didn’t understand, and I was beginning to fear it had to do with me.