Chapter 10
BELLE
He cleared the plates. I watched him do it as if what just happened was completely normal. Like we hadn’t just agreed to get married between bites of roasted chicken. The dining room felt too quiet now. Candles still flickered. Silverware was neatly aligned. My pulse refused to cooperate.
I just agreed to marry a man I barely know . . . for insurance. I pressed my palms flat against the table and closed my eyes. I tried for a deep breath, but my chest was too tight.
What had I just agreed to? There was still time to back out.
Yet as I opened my eyes and looked across the table into his deep brown eyes, I did feel something.
I was just trying to decide what that was.
His eyes were sharp and observant, but not unkind.
Not the eyes of someone with a nickname like the Beast. The rest of him, from the broad expanse of his chest to the beard covering his face, gave beast features, but not his eyes.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m trying to figure out if I’ve lost my mind,” I said honestly.
He didn’t smile. “I’m not impulsive,” he said.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked with a laugh, trying to lighten the tension.
“I would not propose something I hadn’t considered.”
He walked back to the table and remained standing across from me. Not looming. Just . . . present.
“You believe I’m solving this with money,” he said.
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
I lifted a brow. “What do you mean?”
He took a breath. A real one. “I don’t like watching problems I can address remain unaddressed.”
“How very CEO of you.”
“It is not about control.”
“Feels like control.”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t retreat into silence this time.
“It feels,” he corrected, “like prevention.”
I studied him. “You don’t even know me,” I said.
“I know you’re proud,” he said. “And exhausted.”
That landed harder than I expected.
“I know you would rather sleep in a van than accept help.”
My throat tightened slightly.
“I know,” he continued, quieter now, “that you minimize pain.”
Silence. The candles flickered between us.
“That’s a lot of conclusions for a week,” I said.
“I’m an observant man.”
“And a judgmental one.” I crossed my arms over my chest. There were a handful of people in my life who called me out like this. And all of them I could pummel when we put our skates on.
“No.” He held my gaze steadily. “I recognize.”
I shifted in my chair, knee aching in protest. “You think this is simple,” I said.
“No, I don’t.”
“You think I’ll just sign paperwork and everything will be fine.”
“No.”
“Then what do you think?”
He hesitated. Just slightly. “I think,” he said carefully, “that you are used to carrying everything alone.”
My chest tightened.
“And I think,” he continued, “that you don’t have to.”
The words hung there. Not romantic. Not possessive. Just . . . offered.
I looked away first.
“That sounds dangerously close to rescuing,” I said lightly.
“It is not a rescue,” he replied. “It’s just a signature on a line.”
“You really believe that.”
“Yes.”
As I studied him, I got the sense that this was not about a weird savior complex, but I couldn’t figure it out. All I saw was intensity. There was no mockery, but something softer beneath it.
“You don’t get anything out of this,” I said.
He almost scoffed. “That is inaccurate.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
He didn’t look away.
“I dislike people," he said.
That caught me off guard. “What?”
“Yet, I find you tolerable.”
The admission felt dragged out of him by force.
“Wow. Thank you so much for finding me tolerable.”
I watched him, expecting him to bristle at my sarcasm, but that didn’t happen. In fact, I could be mistaken, but I think he may have smiled at me.
“So this is all because you're lonely?” I asked.
His expression shuttered for half a second. Then steadied.
“I’m accustomed to solitude,” he said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Silence. Then— “Perhaps I am.”
The words were quiet. Barely there. My heart did something uncomfortable in response.
“This isn’t about saving me,” I said slowly.
“No.”
“And it’s not about owning me.”
“Not even a little.”
“And it’s not about proving you can fix things.”
He considered that. “ . . . It may be partially about that.”
I laughed despite myself. “Honest.”
“I am attempting to be.”
The smile that had been a mere hint grew. That felt new. It was less Beast, more Raphael. There was something about it that felt right. I leaned back in my chair.
“This is insane,” I said again.
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But it’s also practical.”
“And a little unhinged.”
“You may be correct there, too.”
I shook my head slowly. “You don’t even know if I snore.”
“You will have your own room, so snore away.”
I smiled despite myself. God help me. I stood carefully. The knee flared, but less sharply than before. “Show me the room,” I said.
He stilled. The smile that had been there was gone.
His hand twitched at his side. Was he going to help me down the hall?
I don’t think I could handle that right now.
I don’t think I could handle his arms around me or me holding on to his bicep that pulled his shirt tight.
I gulped, because I also wasn’t sure I could turn him down again.
This time, when he turned toward the hallway, he didn’t feel like a CEO executing a plan. I followed, almost wishing he would offer assistance because my knee was screaming, knowing full well I would decline. Why was I like this?
Raphael opened the door and stepped aside.
I walked in slowly. There was a lush king-sized bed with a soft linen duvet.
It had an actual headboard instead of plywood paneling.
There was even a window that looked out onto the side garden instead of a parking lot.
And, quite possibly the best part, an en suite bathroom with a walk-in shower.
I could almost cry at the thought of no more gym showers. I stared at it longer than I meant to.
“I hope this is suitable,” he said in a voice that sounded almost small.
I crossed the room carefully, testing the floor with each step. The carpet was thick enough to feel forgiving. The bed was enormous. I ran a hand over the duvet. It was soft.
“This is more luxurious than I’ve had in a while,” I muttered.
“I hope it is suitable for recovery,” he said evenly.
I lowered myself carefully onto the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped under my weight in a way that felt supportive. The knee throbbed angrily now that I’d stopped moving.
“I’ll let you get settled,” he said before he turned to leave.
I leaned back slowly, letting my leg extend. The relief was immediate. It'd been months since I’d slept on an actual mattress. My eyes closed for half a second. That was almost my undoing.
A knock sounded at the doorframe. I opened my eyes. Geoffrey stood there, dignified as ever. “Ms. Blythe,” he said, “we have relocated your belongings.”
I sat up sharply. “You what?”
Raphael remained calm. “Your van was unlocked.”
“It was not—”
“It was,” he corrected. “Partially. We secured it.”
Heat flared up my spine. “You went into my van.”
“We retrieved essentials,” Raphael said. “Nothing more.”
“I could have—” I stopped, because the truth was sitting heavily in my knee. I could not have, not without pain, not without hobbling back and forth and making it worse.
Geoffrey stepped inside, carrying one of my storage bins.
Raphael followed with my duffel. They set them carefully near the dresser.
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to say something sharp and defensive about autonomy and trespassing.
Instead, I looked at the duffel bag and toiletries in a room with solid walls.
“I would’ve helped,” I said weakly.
“You’re injured,” Raphael replied.
“I’m not fragile.”
“I did not say you were.” And there it was again, that small smile I’d seen in the dining room. That smile that softened my fight response. That smile that did more to me than I wanted to think about right now.
Geoffrey adjusted the placement of the bin slightly so it wouldn’t block the walkway.
“We will leave you to rest, but if you need anything, we do not need you wandering around in the dark. I don’t want you to injure yourself further. Please call me.” Raphael’s gaze held mine, making it impossible to think straight.
“Okay,” I said.
He pinned me with a look. “I mean it, Belle, please, if you need anything at all. Anything. You have my number.”
I nodded because with the intensity in his eyes, it was all I could manage.
With a nod, he and Geoffrey turned and left.
I leaned back into the pillows again. The mattress swallowed the tension in my spine. The room was quiet.
I watched the storm roll in slowly and theatrically from the bed.
I wished I were in the window seat tucked into the corner of this guest room just as the first line of gray swallowed the river below the bluff.
From up here, I bet the view was spectacular.
The wind picked up in waves, bending the tops of the trees before the rain followed.
I curled carefully into the pillows, stretching my bad leg out in front of me.
The house didn’t creak the way old places usually did. It absorbed the storm and held firm against it. I felt safe.
That word felt foreign in my chest. Safe. Not calculating where to park. Not worrying about someone knocking on the van window. Not bracing for the next invoice while trying to sleep.
The rain intensified, streaking down the glass in silver ribbons. The river churned now, but up here on the bluff, the house didn’t move. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t weathering the storm alone in a metal box.
I thought of Dad at Long Creek. He had his good days and bad ones. If I could just keep him somewhere steady . . . If I could just afford that consistently.
The knot in my chest loosened a fraction, because maybe with this I could.
I reached into the duffel Geoffrey had set by the dresser and pulled out the paperback I’d shoved in there weeks ago. Romance, of course. If I were going to enter a contractual marriage, I might as well read about one with imaginary stakes.
I cracked it open and let the words carry me. Outside, thunder rolled low and deep along the river. Inside, the room stayed warm.
A knock at the door startled me just slightly.
“Come in,” I called.
Raphael stepped inside, holding a wedge pillow and an ice pack in the other. “I researched, and it seems elevation and ice assist with swelling,” he said.
He crossed the room with a wedge pillow in hand.
“You didn’t have to,” I said quietly.
“Take it. It will help.”
I adjusted myself on the bed, and he positioned the pillow beneath my knee. Somehow, an unfamiliar spark of something was louder than the pain as his hand brushed along my leg when he slid the pillow underneath. The relief was immediate. I exhaled without meaning to. He noticed.
“You’re in significant discomfort,” he said with a deep crease between his brows.
“I’ve been worse.”
“That is not the metric.”
I smiled faintly.
“Thank you. For this,” I said, gesturing to the pillow. “Thank you for all of this.” There was so much more I wanted to say, but nothing would come out.
He hesitated, and I almost thought he was going to say something. Instead, he nodded once. “I’ll be in the study.”
When he left, the room felt softer, not emptier.
I arranged the wedge pillow again, settled back, and pulled the comforter over myself. The storm battered the windows as the wind howled across the bluff.
And I let myself be still.
Just for the night.