THE BILLIONAIRE'S BARGAIN BRIDE

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Chapter Three: Terms and Conditions

"You cannot be seriously considering this," Priya said, for the fourth time, pacing a groove into the office rug.

"I'm seriously considering the seventeen days we have before the bank takes Dad's venue," Elena said, staring at the number on her laptop screen like it might change if she glared hard enough. "Six months of Damian Cole's money covers the loan, the staff, the lease. It saves everything."

"It also means marrying a man you've met twice."

"Fake-marrying," Elena corrected. "There's a contract. It's a job, Priya. I plan fake love for a living I've built entire wedding aesthetics around couples who couldn't stand each other by dessert. This is just the same thing with better compensation and worse tabloid coverage."

Priya sat down across from her, some of the fight going out of her posture. "And if it comes out? About your mom?"

Elena's jaw tightened. "Then it comes out. It was going to eventually, in this industry. At least this way I get to choose the terms."

She called Damian back the next morning with a legal pad full of conditions.

They met at a small, unremarkable coffee shop three blocks from Cole Tower his choice, which surprised her, until she realized it was precisely because no one who mattered would think to look for him somewhere with mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu.

"I have terms," Elena said, sliding into the seat across from him without preamble.

"I'd be concerned if you didn't." Damian was in a dark sweater instead of a suit, and it did something unfair to his whole demeanor made him look like a person instead of a headline.

"One. My business stays mine. My name stays on the door. This arrangement doesn't touch Reyes Events beyond the settlement."

"Agreed."

"Two. No physical requirements beyond what's necessary to be convincing in public. Hand-holding, dancing, the occasional photograph. Nothing else, and nothing without asking first."

"Agreed," he said, and if she wasn't mistaken, some of the tension in his shoulders eased at the clause, like he'd been bracing for her to ask something else entirely.

"Three." She hesitated. "If… if things come out. About my family. I need you to not use them against me. Whatever this becomes, or doesn't become, I need to know you won't weaponize it."

Something shifted in his face not pity, which she would have hated, but a kind of quiet recognition. "What happened?"

"That's not one of the terms."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't." He didn't push, and she found she was grateful for it in a way that unsettled her more than the question would have.

"Four. When this ends, it ends cleanly. No lingering obligations. No pretending afterward for the sake of appearances."

"Agreed," Damian said, and then, after a pause: "Though I'd add one condition of my own, if you're taking suggestions."

"I'm listening."

"Honesty. Not about everything I'm not asking you to hand me your diary. But whatever we tell each other, in private, is true. I've had enough of people performing sincerity at me. If we're going to fake a marriage convincingly, I'd like the two of us, at least, to be real with each other."

Elena looked at him for a long moment really looked, past the tailored sweater and the careful stillness, to the man underneath who'd just admitted, without quite admitting it, that he was tired of being lied to.

"Okay," she said. "Deal."

They shook on it, right there over lukewarm coffee, and Elena told herself the flutter in her chest was just nerves about the paperwork.

She was, it would turn out, spectacularly wrong.