His Secret Luna

Chapter2

I wore my best blazer. It was the only thing I owned that still looked like I had my life together, which I did not, but the blazer did not know that.

Hale Tower was the kind of building that made you feel the distance between yourself and the people inside it before you even touched the door. All dark glass and clean lines, climbing up into the morning sky. I stood on the pavement outside and told myself I was not intimidated and then walked in before the lie had time to fall apart.

The lobby was made of marble and silence and light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The woman at the front desk had the kind of face that gave nothing away, and she looked at me the way expensive places always look at people who do not belong in them. Polite. Patient. Slightly waiting for you to realize your mistake and leave.

'Seraphina Blake,' I said. 'I have a nine o clock with Mr. Hale.'

She checked her screen and nodded and picked up her phone, and a few minutes later a woman in a grey suit appeared who introduced herself as Diana Marsh and shook my hand firmly and led me to a private elevator without explaining anything else.

Forty fourth floor.

The doors opened into quiet. Diana knocked on a set of double doors and pushed them open and said 'Miss Blake, sir' and stepped back, and I walked through.

He was standing at the window.

The whole city was behind him, laid out small and bright in the morning light, and he had his back to the door and his hands in his pockets and he was very still. I had a strange half second of thinking that this was probably how he always stood.

He turned around.

And there it was again. That same thing I had felt in the parking garage at two in the morning. That sense of looking at someone who took up more space than their body actually occupied. His face was the same as in the photo but sharper in person, more real, the kind of face that photographs never quite got right because photographs could not catch the way he looked at you.

Like he was paying attention in a way most people never bothered to.

He looked at me and something moved behind his eyes. Fast. There and gone before I could name it.

'Miss Blake,' he said. 'Sit down.'

No "please". Just sit down, the way someone speaks when they have never really had to ask.

I sat down.

He moved behind his desk but did not sit. He stood with one hand resting on the back of his chair and looked at me with the kind of focus that made me want to straighten my spine, which I did, which I was a little annoyed about.

'I'll be direct,' he said. 'I know about your situation. Your father's debts, your sister's medical costs, where you work and how many places you work. I know about the third notice.'

The heat came up in my face fast. 'You've been looking into me.'

'Yes.'

'That's not okay.'

'Probably not,' he agreed. Not sorry about it at all. 'I needed to understand who I was dealing with before I came to you with this. I don't make offers I haven't thought through.'

I stared at him. He held my gaze without any difficulty whatsoever.

'We met before,' I said. 'The parking garage on Clement Street. Four nights ago.'

Something happened in his expression. Not surprise exactly. More like acknowledgment. Like he had been waiting to see if I would bring it up.

'Yes,' he said.

'Is that why you called me? Because of one conversation through a booth window at two in the morning?'

He was quiet for a moment. 'You were not what I expected,' he said. Which was not really an answer, and I thought he knew that, and I thought he said it deliberately anyways.

He reached into his desk and placed a document on the surface between us. Thick. Bound. My name on the cover.

'I need a wife,' Sebastian Hale said. 'For one year. A contract arrangement. In exchange your father's debts are cleared immediately, your sister's treatment is fully covered for as long as she needs it, and you receive a personal payment of two hundred thousand dollars when the year ends.'

The room went still. Or maybe that was just me.

'A fake wife,' I said slowly.

'A contractual one. The distinction matters legally.'

'Why,' I said. 'Why do you need this. A man like you.'

He looked at me steadily. 'Business reasons. There are people I deal with who respond better to a man who appears settled. It is a strategic move, nothing more.'

It was not the whole truth. I would understand that later. Right then I was too busy staring at the document with my name on it and doing the math that I had been doing for eighteen months, the math that never added up, and feeling it suddenly, terrifyingly, add up.

'Take it home,' he said. 'Read it. All of it. I want you to understand every term before you sign anything.'

I looked up at him. 'And if I say no?'

He held my gaze. 'Then you say no,' he said simply. 'I don't force people into things, Miss Blake.'

I picked up the document.

It was heavier than I expected.