Married to a Scandal

~CHAPTER III~

Selene's POV

He was twenty minutes late, which told her exactly nothing, and somehow still felt like information.

Selene had built her career on reading rooms before people finished walking into them — posture, pace, the half-second flinch before a lie. So when Luca Kensington finally strolled into the conference room like he owned the building, she studied him in the time it took him to sit down.

An expensive suit worn like pyjamas. A smile that appeared before there was any reason for it to. The kind of relaxed attitude that suggested a man was either completely open or had become really good at keeping secrets.

She was betting on the second option. She just hadn’t figured out why yet.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding it. "Manhattan traffic."

"You live four blocks from here."

"Bad traffic." He dropped into the chair across from her, loosening a cufflink, and glanced at the folder between them. "So. Are we doing this the fun way or the boring way?"

"There's no fun way to draft a marriage contract."

"That says more about your contracts than mine."

Selene didn't smile. "Let's start with the basics. Public appearances. I'll need final approval on anything photographed."

"Bold of you to think I plan things that far in advance."

"I don't think that. I think you plan things exactly far enough in advance to make it look like you don't." She watched his face for the flinch. There wasn't one, just a faint, unbothered tilt of his head, like she'd said something mildly interesting at a party. "Final approval," she said again. "Non-negotiable."

"Fine. What else?"

"Separate quarters within your penthouse. I'll need my own floor."

"Floor." He uttered the word as if he were testing it out. "You say that like this is a hotel and not an apartment with delusions of grandeur."

"It's eleven thousand square feet across two levels, Mr. Kensington. I checked."

"Did you?" A fleeting emotion flickered in his eyes, maybe amusement or a moment of deep thinking. It irritated her that she couldn't figure it out. "Your own room, not an entire floor. Is there anything else, or should I just guess what you've already decided before I got here?"

"There's a difference between decided and reasonable."

"Is there? From where I'm sitting, they look identical."

This time she did let herself react, one eyebrow, barely. It was the smallest concession she planned to make all afternoon. "Financials," she continued. "My firm remains entirely independent of Kensington Group. No investment, no partnership, no appearance of one. Apex is mine."

"Possessive."

"Earned."

"I didn't say it was a criticism." He leaned back, and for the first time since he'd sat down, something in his posture actually settled. "You built your firm from nothing. I read the file."

"You read a file on me."

"Don’t you have a file on me? My father's assistant put together a folder. I assumed it would be dull. It wasn't." He said it lightly and shrugged.

"Flattering but irrelevant," she said, "And in the meantime, whatever either of us brings into this stays separately owned. Apex included. No shared assets, no shared debt, no complications later."

"Practical," he said, and something in his voice suggested he meant it as a compliment. "Fine. Done."

"One more thing," Selene said. "No public affairs. Whatever you do in private is your business until it becomes mine. But nothing photographed. Nothing that requires me to clean up a headline every three weeks."

For the first time, he actually laughed, like she had said something genuinely funny rather than genuinely serious. "That's optimistic. I can’t promise that."

"It's a condition."

"It's optimistic," he said again, "because you've clearly read the same tabloids everyone else has, and you're assuming the version of me in them is the whole picture." He tilted his head, studying her the way she'd been studying him, and she had the sudden, unwelcome sense of being read back. "You're cuter when you're threatening me, by the way. Most people go red. You just get quieter."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"It absolutely was."

"I don't need your commentary on my negotiating style."

"No," he agreed easily, infuriatingly. "But you're getting it anyway. Consider it a preview of married life."

She held his gaze a moment longer than necessary, mostly to prove to herself that she could. His eyes stayed steady, unlike most people's, which shifted under intense observation. He simply looked back, calm and slightly amused, as if he had all the time in the world and no need to show it.

She realised it was the first time all afternoon that she felt like she was being assessed instead of being the one doing the assessing.

"Tonight, we'll draft the language," she said, taking the initiative to address the issue first. Someone had to speak up, and she didn't want her pride to be the reason for holding back. "My lawyer will send it to yours by morning."

"Perfect." He stood, buttoning his jacket with the same unhurried ease he'd walked in with, like the entire conversation had cost him nothing. Maybe it hadn't. "Pleasure doing business, Mrs. Kensington."

"I’m still Kang Selene."

"Right," he said.

He left without saying anything else, and Selene sat alone in the conference room for a full minute afterwards, running back through the last twenty minutes the way she'd run through a hundred negotiations before this one, looking for the tell she always found by now.

She didn't find one.

That was the problem. Every point she raised, he matched it with an ease that suggested he already knew exactly where the conversation was going before she finished the sentence. A man who couldn't be bothered to show up on time had somehow negotiated every term as cleanly as a man who'd rehearsed it.

Selene had spent six years learning to spot exactly one kind of person: the ones who were smarter than they wanted anyone to know.

She was beginning to suspect she had just met one.