Chapter5
1332 Words
Maya's Pov
"How bad?" I asked.
"Bad enough that my PR team has been up since five this morning." He kept his voice low. "The photographs are clear. Our faces, the officiant, the certificate. One of them caught the moment we signed it."
I leaned back against the corridor wall and stared at the ceiling for a moment. "Who sold them?"
"We don't know yet. Someone at the venue. Could have been staff, could have been a guest." He paused. "It doesn't matter right now. What matters is that by tomorrow morning every major outlet will have picked up the story and we have about eighteen hours to get ahead of it."
"Get ahead of it, how?"
"We released a statement tonight confirming the marriage. Brief, controlled, nothing that invites questions. Then we make one public appearance together in the next forty-eight hours. Somewhere visible but not staged. It has to look natural."
I looked at him. "Nothing about this is natural."
"I know that. They don't need to." He straightened his jacket, a small automatic gesture. "My PR director wants to meet with you this afternoon. She'll walk you through what to expect, what not to say if anyone approaches you directly."
"I'm a nurse. Nobody's going to approach me directly."
"You're my wife. As of tomorrow morning, everyone will know that." He said it plainly, not cruelly, just as a fact that needed to land. "Your colleagues will see it. Your friends will see it. Anyone who knows your name will see it."
I hadn't thought about that part. I'd been thinking about tabloids and headlines as things that happened at a distance, in a world I wasn't part of. I hadn't connected the story to my actual ward, my actual coworkers, the people I worked beside every day who would come in tomorrow morning and open their phones.
"Lena," I said quietly. My best friend whose bachelorette party had started all of this. Who had no idea any of this had happened because I hadn't found a way to tell her yet.
"If there are people in your personal life who should hear it from you before they read it, you should contact them today."
He was right and I hated that he was right.
"What time is the PR meeting?" I said.
"Three o'clock. I'll send a car."
"I can get there myself."
He looked at me for a beat. "The office is in Midtown. Forty-second floor. Ask for Diana Walsh when you arrive." He handed me a card with the address on it, already prepared, like he'd known I'd agree. "Dress like yourself. Diana will tell you if anything needs adjusting."
I took the card. "What does that mean, dress like myself?"
"It means don't try to look like something you're not. You're a nurse, not a socialite. That's actually better for the narrative. It's more likeable."
I stared at him. "I'm writing a narrative now."
"You've been narrating since yesterday morning," he said, without apology. "I'm just trying to make sure it's one we control."
He went back into George's room and I stood in the corridor holding his PR director's card and feeling the ground shift steadily beneath me.
******************
I called Lena from the hospital car park at noon.
She answered on the second ring, already mid-sentence about the bachelorette party cleanup, and I waited for her to finish before I said, "I need to tell you something and I need you to stay calm."
She did not stay calm.
"You're married?" Her voice went up sharply. "Maya. Maya, what do you mean you're married? To who? When did this how did you even"
"Thursday night. After the second bar."
Silence. Then, "To a stranger?"
"Not exactly a stranger. You know who Dominic Hale is."
Longer silence. "The Dominic Hale."
"Yes."
"Maya." Her voice had dropped to something between shock and a kind of horrified awe. "That man is on the cover of Forbes every other year."
"I'm aware."
"How are you this calm right now?"
"I'm not calm, I'm just out of panic. There's a difference." I pressed my back against my car and looked up at the grey sky. "There are going to be photos in the tabloids tomorrow. I needed you to hear it from me first."
"Photos of the wedding?"
"Yes."
"Oh my God." A pause. "Oh my God, Maya, this is my fault. This happened at my party."
"It didn't happen because of you. It happened because I apparently made a decision I can't remember making and now I have to live with it for six months."
"Six months? Why six" She stopped. "What aren't you telling me?"
I closed my eyes. Lena had been my friend for nine years. She could read the gaps in what I said as well as she could read the words.
"There's a situation with his grandfather," I said carefully. "It's complicated. I'll explain properly when I see you. But I need you to know that whatever you read tomorrow, I'm okay. I'm handling it."
"You're handling being accidentally married to a billionaire."
"Yes."
"Alone."
"I'm not alone. I have you."
She exhaled. "You're going to tell me everything. In person. Soon."
"Soon," I agreed.
I hung up and sat in the car for three minutes doing nothing. Then I drove to Midtown.
******************
Diana Walsh was exactly what I expected from someone whose job was to manage how the world saw other people. She was efficient, precise, and looked at me the way a sculptor looks at unworked marble.
She wasn't unkind about it. She just saw what needed to be shaped.
We sat in a glass-walled office with the city spread out below us and she walked me through the statement Dominic had already approved. Two sentences. The marriage was confirmed. The couple appreciated privacy during this personal time. That was it.
"If anyone asks you directly," Diana said, "you say you're happy and that you'd prefer to keep your personal life private. Nothing else. Don't elaborate, don't explain, don't fill silences."
"I know how to not fill silences," I said.
She smiled briefly. "Most people don't, actually. Under pressure they talk." She slid a folder across the desk. "There's a benefit gala on Wednesday evening. It's been on Dominic's calendar for three months. Attending together will be your first public appearance as a couple. It needs to look comfortable."
I opened the folder. Inside was a schedule, a guest list, and a photograph of the venue.
"I don't have anything to wear to a gala," I said.
"That's already being arranged. Someone will come to you tomorrow with options."
I looked up. "You move fast."
"We don't have the luxury of moving slowly." She folded her hands on the desk. "Maya, I want to be straightforward with you. Dominic's world is not gentle to people who aren't prepared for it. There are people in his circle who will not be happy about this marriage and they won't express that unhappiness politely." She held my gaze. "I've worked with him for six years. I've watched people try to get close to him for every reason except the right ones. The scrutiny you're about to face is not comfortable even for people who are used to it."
I kept my face steady. "I'll manage."
"I believe you," she said. "But managing and being prepared are different things." She closed the folder on her side of the desk. "One more thing. There's a woman named Cara Whitfield. She'll likely be at the gala on Wednesday." A pause, measured and deliberate. "She and Dominic have a history. She's been publicly linked to him twice in the past four years and she doesn't accept certain realities gracefully."
I kept my voice even. "What kind of history?"
Diana looked at me with the expression of someone who had already said as much as she intended to.
"The kind," she said carefully, "that doesn't consider itself finished."
- Writer
