THE BILLIONAIRE'S BARGAIN BRIDE

WHAT HE SAID TO THE REPORTER

Chapter Six: What He Said to the Reporter

The Cole Foundation's spring dinner was the kind of event Elena had planned a dozen times for other people and never once attended as a guest string quartet, a ballroom full of people who'd paid four figures a plate to be photographed caring about literacy programs, the particular hum of old money trying very hard to look effortless.

She'd almost not come. She'd stood in front of her closet for twenty minutes that afternoon, hand on a plain black dress, half-convinced that showing up anywhere near cameras tonight was a mistake. Then she'd thought of her mother, who'd stopped leaving the house for almost a year after that first story broke, and put on the green dress instead the same one from the photo they'd used against her, may as well make it hers again and gone.

Damian met her at the door of the ballroom, and something in his face, when he saw her, made the whole ordeal of getting dressed worth it.

"You wore green," he said.

"Reclaiming it," Elena said. "It felt petty. I decided I didn't care."

"It's not petty." He offered his arm, and she took it, and if her fingers tightened slightly more than the contract technically required, neither of them mentioned it. "It's the best kind of answer to a headline like that. Just showing up."

The evening went, for the first hour, almost normally. Elena worked the room the way she worked every room charming, observant, quietly cataloging centerpiece choices she'd have made differently, and if people were looking at her a little longer than usual, whispering a little more than a strange fiancée would typically warrant, she made herself not notice.

It was the reporter near the bar who broke the truce.

"Ms. Reyes." A woman with a photographer trailing half a step behind, smile a little too sharp to be friendly. "Cynthia Voss, Metro Weekly. Any comment on this morning's story? Your mother's history with married men …. do you worry people will draw the obvious parallel, given the circumstances of your own engagement?"

The ballroom noise didn't stop, exactly, but the surrounding air went taut, several nearby conversations slowing to eavesdropping speed. Elena felt her pulse in her throat and reached, automatically, for the practiced non-answer she'd used a hundred times over the years .I don't have a comment on that, thank you … but Damian got there first.

"I have a comment," he said, stepping half in front of Elena without quite seeming to mean to, his voice pitched to carry exactly as far as it needed to and not an inch further. "You've written an article implying my fiancée is somehow responsible for a private matter involving her mother, which occurred when Ms. Reyes was a minor and had no bearing on any decision she's made in her adult life, including this one. I'd ask what parallel you think you're drawing, exactly, other than that two women happen to share a last name."

Cynthia Voss's smile faltered, just slightly. "There's clearly a pattern of interest to readers…. "

"There's a pattern of lazy journalism," Damian said, and though his tone never rose, there was something in it now that made the photographer lower his camera without being asked. "Ms. Reyes built a company from nothing after her father died, on a legacy she's spent five years protecting with better integrity than most people in this room manage on their best day. I f Metro Weekly would like a story with actual substance, I'd be happy to have my office set up an interview about her work. Otherwise, I'd appreciate you letting my fiancée enjoy her dinner."

He didn't wait for a response. He simply turned, offered Elena his arm again as though nothing had happened, and steered her gently toward the terrace doors, away from the cluster of overheard conversation and the reporter's stunned silence.

Outside, the night air was cool against Elena's flushed face. She realized, belatedly, that her hands were shaking not from fear this time, but from something closer to shock.

"You didn't have to do that," she said, when she trusted her voice again. "That wasn't in the contract."

"No," Damian agreed, leaning against the stone railing beside her, looking out at the city rather than at her, which she suspected was deliberate giving her room to compose herself without an audience. "It wasn't."

"Then why?"

He was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, it wasn't in the careful, controlled voice he used in boardrooms and phone calls and even most of their earlier conversations. It was quieter than that. More honest.

"Because I know what it's like to have a story written about you that isn't true, and to watch everyone decide to believe it anyway because the false version is more interesting," he said. "I told myself, after the last time, that I wasn't going to get involved in anyone else's version of that. And then I watched that woman say your mother's name like a weapon, and I found I didn't care very much about the promise I'd made myself."

Elena studied his profile in the dim light from the ballroom windows, the sharp line of his jaw, the tension still sitting in his shoulders like he was bracing for a fight that had already ended.

"For what it's worth," she said, "thank you."

"Don't thank me," Damian said, finally turning to look at her, something unguarded in his expression that she hadn't seen from him before, not even at Margaret's. "I didn't do it because it was in the contract, Elena. I did it because it made me angry on your behalf, and I don't know what to do with the fact that a woman I've known for eleven days can make me feel something like that."

The music drifted out through the open terrace doors behind them, and neither of them moved to go back inside.

"That's a very inconvenient thing for you to admit," Elena said softly, "given the terms we agreed on."

"I'm aware," Damian said, and this time, when he almost smiled, it didn't stop halfway.