MARRIED TO THE BILLIONAIRE IN A COMA

Chapter 5

Emily POV

The building was the kind that made you feel underdressed just by walking through the front doors. Marble floors. A ceiling so high it made my footsteps sound small and far away. I sat in a waiting area with chairs that looked more expensive than any piece of furniture I owned, holding my bag in my lap like it might get taken from me if I set it down.

A woman at the front desk had already looked me over twice since I sat down, in that quick, polite way people do when they are trying to figure out if you belong somewhere.

I was starting to wonder the same thing myself.

Eleanor Cross had told me only that someone would meet with me to explain the details. She had not told me it would happen here, in an office that smelled like money and quiet air conditioning, or that I would be waiting alone.

After twenty minutes, a door opened, and a man stepped out. He looked to be in his fifties, sharp suit, sharper eyes, the kind of face that gave away nothing at all.

"Miss Hart," he said. "Thank you for waiting. Please, come in."

I followed him into an office with a desk large enough to seat six people comfortably. He sat on one side. I sat on the other. Between us, he placed a folder thick enough that just looking at it made my stomach tighten.

"My name is Everett Kane," he said. "I handle legal matters for the Cross family. Mrs. Cross asked me to walk you through the terms of the arrangement."

"Is she not coming?"

"Not today," he said, opening the folder without looking up. "She felt it would be better for you to hear the details from someone with no emotional stake in your decision."

"That is one way to put it," I said.

He almost smiled. Almost.

He slid several pages across the desk toward me. "I will summarize, and you can read the full document at your own pace afterward. In exchange for entering into this marriage, you would receive a settlement paid in full at the time of the ceremony, a monthly allowance for the duration of the arrangement, and housing provided by the family for as long as the marriage remains active."

I looked down at the numbers on the page. They were even larger written out formally like this than they had sounded spoken out loud on my doorstep.

"And in exchange," I said slowly, "I do what, exactly?"

"You would take on the role of Mrs. Cross's daughter-in-law in every public and legal sense," he said. "Attend events as required. Maintain the appearance of a genuine marriage to outside parties. Cooperate with certain company matters as they arise."

"What kind of company matters?"

He turned a page, tapping one line with his pen. "There is a clause here regarding identity verification for specific business transactions. Nothing unusual. Standard language for a spouse with any level of involvement in family assets."

He moved on before I could ask him to explain further, and something about how quickly he moved past it made me want to slow him back down, though at the time I did not fully understand why.

"What about him?" I asked instead. "Your client's son. Do I meet him before any of this becomes official?"

Kane's pen paused for just a moment over the page. "That will not be necessary."

"Not necessary," I repeated. "I am marrying the man. Meeting him seems like a fairly basic part of that."

"The circumstances are unusual," he said. "Mrs. Cross will explain the specifics to you in due time. For now, my role is simply to walk you through the legal terms."

"Then walk me through why I am marrying a man I am apparently not allowed to meet."

He set his pen down, folding his hands in front of him, and for the first time since I sat down, he looked at me directly instead of at the pages between us.

"Miss Hart, I understand this is unusual. I would ask that you trust the process for now, and allow Mrs. Cross to address the parts of this that fall outside my responsibility."

"That is not really an answer."

"No," he admitted. "It is not."

I sat back in my chair, looking at the folder full of clauses I did not fully understand, feeling more and more like I was being handed a puzzle with half the pieces missing on purpose.

"Fine," I said. "Then tell me this. Is he aware this is happening? Does he know a stranger is about to become his wife?"

Kane hesitated. It was small, barely a flicker, but I had spent my whole life reading rooms that did not want to be read, learning which pauses meant nothing and which ones meant everything.

This one meant something.

"He is currently unresponsive," Kane said, and the moment the word left his mouth, something shifted in his expression, as he realized too late he had said more than he meant to.

The word sat there between us on that enormous desk.

"Unresponsive," I repeated slowly. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Kane said, choosing his next words with visible care, "that he is not in a position to participate in these discussions himself."

"That is not an answer either. That is just the same word dressed up differently."

He closed the folder in front of him, a small, deliberate motion, like he was closing a door he had accidentally left open. "I have said more than I am authorized to say on the matter. Mrs. Cross will explain the rest herself."

"Is he sick?" I asked. My voice had gone quieter, though I had not meant it to. "Is that why I am not meeting him? Is something wrong with him?"

"Miss Hart..."

"You said unresponsive. Not unavailable. Not busy. Unresponsive. That is not a word you use about someone who is just difficult to schedule a meeting with."

Kane looked at me for a long moment, and for the first time since I had walked into his office, I saw something almost like sympathy behind the careful blankness of his expression.

"I think," he said slowly, "that this is a conversation you need to have with Mrs. Cross directly. Sooner rather than later."

"That sounds like a yes."

He did not answer that either. He simply slid the folder back toward me, along with a pen, exactly the way Eleanor Cross would slide a different folder toward me weeks later beside a hospital bed, though neither of us knew that yet.

"Take the documents home," he said. "Read them fully. Call Mrs. Cross when you are ready to discuss the parts that concern you."

I looked down at the pen sitting on top of the folder, and then back up at him.

"I have a feeling," I said quietly, "that the parts that concern me have not even been written down yet."

Kane did not disagree with me. He simply stood, signaling that our meeting had reached its end whether or not I felt ready for it to.

I gathered the folder into my bag with hands that were not quite steady, and walked out past the woman at the front desk who was still trying to figure out where I belonged, feeling more certain than ever that I did not fully know the answer myself.