The Understudy Bride

CHAPTERFOUR

The phone rang at eight the next morning. Mia was still on the hotel bed. Still in yesterday's makeup. Staring at nothing.

"Conference room. Forty minutes." A woman's voice, fast and sharp. "Mr. Cole's lawyer wants to talk before anything gets filed."

Mia didn't ask which Mr. Cole. Only one of them would have a lawyer calling before nine.

She put on the clothes Jo had dropped off the night before. Jeans. A plain sweater. Nothing that belonged to Bianca. She washed her face with water and forgo make-up. There wasn't time. She was not concerned with her appearance at all now.

After forty minutes, she found herself climbing the walls of a glass elevator that rose up into a building whose air was rich with the scent of coffee and money. Everyone hustled around the lobby, heads down, phones out. No one paid her any attention. A receptionist guided her into a room that had a long table and a view of half the city.

Damian was already there. Jacket on. Tie straight. Nothing left of the man from the car last night. Next to him sat a man Mia didn't know. Gray hair at the temples. A smile that stopped at his mouth.

"Miss Alvarez." He half stood and held out a hand. "Vincent Cole. Damian's uncle. I handle the family's legal work."

"Sit down, Vincent," Damian said. He didn't look up from a folder in front of him.

Vincent sat. Mia took the only open chair. She pressed her hands flat on the table so they wouldn't shake.

"I assume you know I've had my team draft an annulment," Damian said. He looked at her now. "I imagine you won't fight it."

"I won't."

"Good. Then this should be simple."

"There's a complication," Vincent said.

Damian turned to him. "What a complication."

Vincent slid a folder across the table. Not to Damian. To Mia.

"The merger contract between Cole Hotels and Alvarez Properties has a clause," he said. "Your father signed it eighteen months ago. It's meant to stop exactly this. A wedding falling apart at the last minute."

"What clause," Damian said.

"If this marriage ends within twelve months, by annulment or divorce, the whole deal reverses. Alvarez Properties owes Cole Hotels four hundred million dollars. Due in ninety days," Vincent said it flat, like he was reading a menu. "Your father-in-law doesn't have four hundred million dollars, Damian. He barely has four."

Nobody spoke. Mia could hear the air vents humming above them.

"I never signed off on language like that," Damian said.

"You didn't need to. Your father did, before he died. I just kept the file moving." Vincent's smile didn't move. "I assumed you read the whole contract before the wedding."

"I read your summary."

"Then read the real thing next time," Vincent looked at Mia. "I know this isn't what you expected. But I don't think either of us wants to bankrupt your father over an honest mistake."

"It wasn't a mistake," Mia said. "It was a decision he made without telling me the details."

"Same thing," Vincent said.

Damian hadn't moved. He stared at the folder like it might change if he looked long enough.

"Get me the full contract," he said. "Not the summary. The real thing."

"Of course," Vincent stood in his seat. "But the clock doesn't care who reads what. File that annulment and the penalty hits right away. If you want your father-in-law to survive this, I'd hold off."

"You buried a four-hundred-million-dollar penalty and called it routine."

"I ran this family's contracts for thirty years the way your father wanted. Sorry if that's inconvenient now." For a second, something cracked behind Vincent's calm face. Not guilt. Irritation. The look of a man who wasn't used to being questioned.

Damian closed the folder. When he spoke again, his voice dropped lower. Mia was already learning that quiet, from him, meant something worse than shouting.

"Leave."

"Damian—"

"Leave, Vincent."

Vincent stood up. He buttoned his jacket, unhurried. He picked up a second folder from the table and walked toward the door. Nothing about him looked shaken. At the door he stopped and looked back. Not at Damian. At Mia.

"For what it's worth," he said, "you handled yesterday well. Most people would have fallen apart."

Then he was gone. The door clicked shut.

Mia let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.

"He's lying," she said.

Damian looked up, surprised. "About what."

"I plan weddings for a living. I've seen a hundred fathers smile through a toast while they're furious underneath it. I know a fake smile when I see one." She held his gaze. "That was fake."

Damian studied her for a long time, as if he found something in her that he wasn't anticipating. He didn't say anything right away.

Immediately, he replied, “I'll be getting the real contract today.” With one hand, he rubbed his jaw, he said finally. He rubbed his jaw with one hand. For a second she saw something under control he was wearing, like armor. Tired. Just tired. "It looks like we can't end this marriage without ruining your father. Which means we need to talk about what is happening now."

Mia's stomach dropped again.

"What are you saying?"

He looked at her across the table. The city sat gray and quiet behind him through the glass.

"I'm saying," he said, "we're about to be married a lot longer than either of us planned."

Mia sat back in her chair. She thought about her apartment. Her job. The life she had before yesterday morning, back when her biggest problem was picking between two dresses.

None of that felt real anymore.

"How much longer," she said.

"Twelve months. Maybe more, if this contract has other surprises, Vincent forgot to mention it." He said it like a fact. It landed like a threat anyway.

Mia didn't answer. She looked out at the city and wondered how she'd gotten so far from the life she woke up to yesterday.