Under the Lawyer's Obsession

Chapter 2: The offer

"Excuse me?"

He didn't blink. "I'm offering to marry you."

Same words. Same tone. Like he was repeating a clause in a contract rather than the most absurd sentence anyone had ever said to her in a professional setting. Rose stood at the door and stared at him and waited for the part where he told her he was kidding.

It didn't come.

"You're joking," she said.

"I don't joke." The frown that crossed his face was brief but genuine — like the suggestion itself offended him. "Sit down, Ms. Calloway. Let me explain."

"I think I'll stand."

"Suit yourself." He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and looked at her with the focused patience of a man who had already decided how this conversation ended.

"The arrangement benefits us both. You get the building. The clause is satisfied and your cousins won't have any grounds to contest."

Rose said nothing. Which he apparently took as an invitation to continue.

"For my part," he paused, choosing the words with the precision she was already starting to recognize as just how he talked. "there are senior partners at this firm who place considerable weight on a certain image. Married and Settled. Trustworthy in the way that apparently only a wife can confirm." Something moved briefly across his face. "A marriage — even a temporary one — would be professionally useful to me."

Rose looked at him for a long moment. "You're insane."

"I've been called worse."

"My cousins will never believe this." She shook her head. "I broke up with my ex weeks ago. I'm supposed to show up engaged to a man I — what, met this morning? They'll laugh me out of the room."

"Then don't explain it to them." His voice was even. "You don't owe them an explanation."

"That's easy for you to say."

"It's also true."

"They won't believe it."

"That," he said, "is not your problem to solve. You just have to convince them you're in love with me. The rest I'll handle."

Rose opened her mouth. Closed it. Then: "I don't even know your name."

"Cassian," he said. "Cassian Wolfe."

The way he said it did something to her she was completely unprepared for. His voice dropped just slightly on his own name. Low, unhurried and she felt it move through her like a current, settling somewhere in her stomach before she could stop it.

She looked at him. Really looked, for the first time since she'd walked in.

Angular jaw, dark eyes that had not once stopped being direct, a mouth that sat in a firm line that made you wonder what it looked like when it wasn't. Broad shoulders under a suit that hadn't come off any rack. The kind of man that a room noticed before he said a single word.

She realized she was staring and looked away.

"Cassian Wolfe," she repeated, and something clicked. "You're the owner of this firm."

"Yes."

"You own—"

"That's not the point." He cut her off smoothly, standing now, and somehow the standing made the room smaller. "The point is whether we have an agreement."

"I need to think about it."

"Think about it then."

She blinked. "Thank you, I—"

"You have about ninety seconds to do so. Your cousins are waiting."

"What?" She stared at him. "You want me to decide ‘now’?"

"I want you to decide before we walk into that room, yes."

"That's not — you can't just—" She pressed her fingers to her temple. "They're never going to believe I'm in love with you. We just met. I don't even — we've been in the same room for fifteen minutes."

He moved.

Not quickly — that was the thing about it. He came around the desk slowly, with the kind of unhurried certainty that made the movement worse somehow, and crossed toward her. Rose held her ground.

She told herself she was holding her ground.

He stopped in front of her. Close. She could feel the warmth coming off him, could smell that cologne again — clean and dark and completely unfair — and her breath did something embarrassing before she could regulate it.

Then he raised his hand and pushed a strand of hair from her face. Slow. Deliberate. His fingers barely grazed her jaw and it moved through her like something electric, coiling low and tight, heat flooding places she had absolutely no business feeling heat right now.

He bent slightly, his mouth near her ear, and when he spoke his voice was a low murmur that bypassed every reasonable thought in her head and went straight somewhere else entirely.

"All you have to do," he said, "is call me by my first name. I'll handle everything else."

Rose didn't move. She couldn't, quite. Her heart was doing something loud and inconvenient and she was suddenly, acutely aware of her own body in a way that made no sense — the tightening in her chest, the heat pulled taut low in her stomach, the way her n*****s had hardened against the thin fabric of her blouse like they had no respect for the situation whatsoever.

She stared straight ahead and tried to remember how to be a person.

Then he turned his head and his lips brushed hers.

Barely. The softest possible contact — less than a kiss, more than an accident — just the warm press of his mouth against hers for a single, suspended second.

Rose stepped back.

Her heart was going. Her lips felt like they'd been lit. She pressed them together and looked at him with wide eyes and tried to locate her dignity somewhere in the immediate vicinity.

Cassian straightened slowly. He brought two fingers to his own mouth, almost thoughtful about it, like he was still feeling her there. Then he cleared his throat.

"It won't be difficult," he said, his voice returned to its usual measured tone. "Given that you're already attracted to me."

Rose's eyes widened. "I'm not attracted to you."

"No?"

"I was startled. By your — you were very close."

"I was."

"That's not—" She stopped. His eyebrow had risen in the way of a man who had cross-examined enough people to know exactly when someone was lying but was too composed to say so directly.

It was the most infuriating thing she'd ever seen on a human face.

She turned to the window. Outside, the city went about its business without any awareness of what was happening seventeen floors up.

She thought about the building. The counter she'd already drawn twelve versions of on napkins. The morning light that came through the front windows at the angle she'd walked past a hundred times and always stopped to look at. Her uncle, who had believed in this enough to put it in writing.

She turned back around.

"You're insane," she said.

He said nothing.

"I'm insane." She walked toward him and extended her hand. "And this is completely insane."

He took her hand. His grip was firm and warm and she felt it travel st

raight up her arm.

"Yes," Cassian said. "Do we have a deal?"

She looked at their joined hands. Then at him.

"We have a deal.”