The Wrong Kind Of Yes.

Terms And Condition

Callum's office was on the fortieth floor, it was beautiful, all glass and silence, it's the kind of room designed to make visitors feel small before they'd said a word. Mara had worn her sharpest blazer for exactly that reason, armor, not fashion.

"You came," he said, not looking up from whatever he was reading. "I half expected you to send a lawyer instead."

"A lawyer can't fake being in love with you."

That got his attention. He set the folder down and studied her the way he had at the gala, cataloguing, calculating. "So you've decided to make me a better offer."

"I've decided to hear your terms first." She sat without being asked, which she suspected annoyed him more than anything she could have said. "You told me to think about what I was offering. I have. Now I want to know what you actually want."

"Control," Callum said simply. "Not of the company, of the narrative. If we do this, the story is mine to write. Where we're seen, what we say, how it ends. You don't get to decide halfway through that it's inconvenient and walk away."

"And if I agree to that?"

"Then I delay the vote. Sixty days. Long enough for your father's company to either find a real buyer or prove it doesn't need one." He leaned back. "But understand what you're agreeing to, Mara. Sixty days of being visibly, convincingly in love with a man you can't stand. Family dinners. Photographs. My mother, who will ask you questions you won't want to answer."

Something in the way he said my mother snagged her attention, a rare c***k in the armor but she filed it away rather than pull the thread. Not yet. Not while she still needed him more than he needed her.

"I can be convincing," she said.

"Can you?" He stood, came around the desk, and for one unbearable second she thought he might actually touch her, test the theory right there in the office. He didn't. He just looked at her, close enough that she could see he hadn't slept much either. "Because the board isn't stupid. Half of them have watched us hate each other since your father hired me to consult three years ago. If this is going to work, it has to be real enough that even you forget it's not, some days." Callum said.

"That won't be a problem," Mara said. "I have excellent boundaries."

"We'll see." Something almost like a smile. "There's one more condition."

"Of course there is." she sharply replied.

"No one finds out. Not your father, not my board, not a single soul until this is over, one way or another, If it leaks that this was ever fake, the deal collapses and takes both our reputations with it. Can you live with that kind of lying?"

She thought of her father across the ballroom, laughing too hard at a joke that wasn't funny. She thought of forty years of his life, sixty days from being carved up and sold for parts.

"I've lived with worse," she said.

Something shifted behind his eyes at that, not quite surprise, more like a recalibration, as if she'd just handed him a piece of information he hadn't been expecting and wasn't entirely sure what to do with yet. He didn't ask what she meant by it. She was grateful for that, at least.

"There's paperwork," he said instead, retrieving a slim folder from the drawer beside him and sliding it across the desk. "Standard non disclosure language, a few clauses specific to the arrangement. Nothing that would hold up in a real court, obviously, given what it's actually protecting, but it'll matter to both of us if either party decides to renegotiate the terms halfway through."

Mara opened the folder and scanned the first page, her eyes catching on a clause near the bottom. "No physical involvement beyond what's necessary for appearances."

"I thought you'd appreciate that one," Callum said, something dry in his tone. "Given the boundaries you mentioned."

"I do," she said, though something in the exchange felt oddly deflating, as if she'd expected an argument and instead received polite, businesslike accommodation. "What counts as necessary for appearances?"

"Hand holding. The occasional arm around the shoulder. A kiss, if the situation genuinely calls for one, cameras, my mother's insistence, that sort of thing." He said it without inflection, like he was listing line items on an invoice rather than describing the physical intimacy she'd apparently just agreed to fake with a man she'd spent three years actively avoiding. "I'll always ask first, when it's not spontaneous. I'd rather you trust the boundary than resent me for crossing it."

"That's oddly considerate," Mara said, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.

"I'm not actually a monster, whatever you've decided about me over the years," Callum said, something almost wounded in the observation despite his even tone. "I negotiate hard. That's not the same thing as being cruel."

Mara didn't have a ready response for that, so she turned back to the folder instead, flipping through the remaining pages with more attention than she'd initially intended to give them. "What happens at the end of sixty days? If the board delays the vote, if I find another buyer, what's the exit?"

"A quiet dissolution," Callum said. "Public statement about growing apart, mutual respect, no scandal attached to either name. I have a communications team that specializes in exactly this kind of thing, as it happens."

"You've done this before?" Mara asked, unable to hide her surprise.

"No," Callum said, something almost amused crossing his face at the question. "But I've cleaned up enough messes for other people that I know how the ending needs to look, regardless of how the middle actually goes."

Mara closed the folder, sitting with the weight of what she'd actually just agreed to. Sixty days. A fake engagement to a man who unsettled her more than she wanted to admit, even now, sitting three feet from him in an office designed specifically to make her feel smaller than she actually was.

"One more thing," she said, before he could move on. "If we're doing this properly, the dinners, the photographs, all of it, I want to know what I'm walking into with your mother. What does she know about you that I should know too'',?

Callum was quiet for a moment, something guarded crossing his expression. "She's sharper than most people give her credit for. Don't underestimate her because she'll be pouring wine and asking about centerpieces. She'll be watching everything."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"It's not meant to be reassuring. It's meant to be accurate." He leaned back against the edge of his desk, arms crossed, something almost like respect in the way he said it. "She raised me alone, after my father left. Whatever instincts she has about people, she earned them the hard way. If you want to survive Friday, don't try to perform for her. She'll see through performance faster than the board ever would."

"Then what do I do instead?"

"Be honest about the parts that don't matter," Callum said. "Your actual opinions on wine, on the weather, on whatever she asks that has nothing to do with us. Save the performance for the parts that do."

Mara considered that, filing it away with the same careful attention she'd given the paperwork. "That's surprisingly good advice."

"I have my moments," Callum said, something almost like warmth briefly cutting through his usual careful control before it disappeared again, tucked back behind the same composed distance he'd maintained since she'd walked in. "For what it's worth, Mara, you'll do fine on Friday. I wouldn't have proposed this arrangement in the first place if I thought you'd fold under a little scrutiny."

"Is that meant to be a compliment?"

"It's meant to be accurate," Callum said, echoing his earlier phrase with the faintest hint of a smile. "Take it however you like."

She closed the folder fully now, decision made. "I'll sign it," she said. "Send it to my email. I'll have it back to you by tomorrow morning."

"Good." Callum retrieved the folder from her hands, tucking it back into the drawer with the same careful precision he seemed to bring to everything, before reaching into that same drawer a second time and producing a small velvet box she hadn't seen him retrieve. "Then we should discuss the ring. My mother's hosting dinner Friday. She'll expect to see it."

Mara stared at the box like it might detonate. "That's fast," she reluctantly replied.

"That's the job," Callum said. "Sixty days doesn't leave room for a slow start."

She opened it despite everything inside her wanting to delay it. The ring inside wasn't what she expected, not showy, not the kind of stone a man like Callum Reyes would buy to make a point. It was simple, Old maybe. The kind of ring someone chose because it meant something once.

"Where did this come from?" she asked.

For the first time since she'd walked in, Callum looked like a man who'd said too much. "Friday," he said again, instead of answering. "Seven o'clock. Wear something that isn't armor."

[End of Episode 2, the ring isn't just a prop, and Callum's reaction gives it away. Episode 3 opens with the dinner, and Mara meeting the mother who might see through the lie before anyone else does.]