THE BILLIONAIRE'S BARGAIN BRIDE

MEETING MARGARET

Chapter Four: Meeting Margaret

"She's beautiful," Margaret Cole announced, the moment Elena walked into the sunroom, before anyone had bothered with introductions. "Damian, why didn't you tell me she was beautiful? You made it sound like a merger."

"Grandmother." Damian's voice carried a warning that Margaret pointedly ignored.

Elena liked her immediately.

Margaret Cole was seventy-four, silver-haired, and dressed like she was perpetually on her way to either a garden party or a boardroom coup sometimes both. She rose from her chair with the help of a cane she clearly didn't need and clasped both of Elena's hands the way you'd greet an old friend rather than your grandson's contractual fiancée.

"Sit, sit. Damian, get the tea. The good kind, not the tea bags you think I don't notice."

Damian, CEO of a multi-billion-dollar hospitality empire, went to get the tea without argument. Elena filed that fact away for later amusement.

"So," Margaret said, once they were alone, fixing Elena with eyes so sharp they made the coffee-shop negotiation feel like a warm-up. "Tell me the truth. How much is he paying you?"

Elena blinked. "I…. that's between…"

"Oh, don't look so scandalized, dear, I wrote the clause. I know exactly what kind of arrangement my grandson is capable of proposing ….I raised the boy to negotiate before he could tie his shoes." Margaret's smile softened, something wistful moving behind it. "I didn't put that condition in my will to trap him into a transaction, you know. I put it there because that boy has spent two years building walls so high he's forgotten what it feels like to let someone in. I was hoping the deadline might force his hand toward someone. I didn't expect him to hire a stranger to get around actually feeling anything."

"With respect, Mrs. Cole…."

"Margaret."

"Margaret. I'm not trying to fix your grandson. I'm trying to save my business. This is a job for me, same as it's a transaction for him."

Margaret studied her for a long moment, and Elena had the distinct sense of being weighed on a scale only the old woman could see.

"Mm," Margaret said, finally, in the tone of someone who'd decided not to argue a point she was confident time would prove for her. "We'll see."

Damian returned with the tea, and something in the set of his shoulders eased slightly at the sight of them still sitting together and, presumably, not at war.

"She's lovely, Damian," Margaret said, patting the seat beside her for him to sit. "Practical, sharp-tongued, entirely unimpressed by you. I approve."

"This isn't about your approval, Grandmother. It's about the terms of the will."

"Everything is about my approval," Margaret said serenely, "I wrote the will." She turned back to Elena, eyes twinkling in a way that made Elena distinctly nervous. "Now. Tell me about this venue your father built. Damian mentioned it, in that clipped way he mentions things he's actually thought about a great deal."

Elena glanced at Damian, surprised he'd said anything about her at all, and found him very deliberately looking at his tea.

"It's…. it was his dream," Elena said slowly. "A converted warehouse, exposed brick, this incredible skylight he installed himself over about a year of weekends. He always said a wedding venue should feel like it was built by someone who believed in the thing being celebrated. He died four years ago. I've been trying to keep it running ever since, but this year's be…." She stopped herself, unused to saying this much to anyone who wasn't Priya.

"Difficult," Margaret finished gently.

"Yes."

Margaret reached over and patted her hand, and it felt, absurdly, like being seen by someone who mattered for the first time in longer than Elena wanted to admit.

"Well," Margaret said, straightening, all business again in the space of a breath. "We'll need to announce the engagement by Friday if we're to satisfy the board before their quarterly meeting. I'll have my stylist call about the ring. Damian, you'll need to actually hold her hand in public convincingly, please, you look like you're handling a hazardous package whenever you touch anything that isn't a spreadsheet."

"Grandmother."

"I'm simply managing expectations." Margaret rose, cane tapping smartly against the floor, and paused at the doorway to look back at the two of them … Damian, rigid with the particular discomfort of a man being teased by the one person alive who could get away with it; Elena, still holding her teacup like a shield. "For what it's worth," Margaret said, "I think this is going to work out very differently than either of you expects."

She left before either of them could ask what she meant.

Damian cleared his throat into the silence that followed. "She's... a lot."

"I think she's wonderful," Elena said, and meant it.

Something shifted, briefly, in Damian's expression surprise, maybe, that Elena had liked the one person in his life who refused to let him hide.

"Friday, then," he said. "The engagement announcement. Are you ready?"

Elena looked down at her bare left hand, thought about the venue with seventeen days on its clock, thought about the way Margaret had looked at her like she already knew how this ended.

"Ask me Friday," she said, and Damian, for the second time since she'd met him, almost smiled.