Chapter Four
He had known that she would see his way of thinking.
He felt immensely triumphant. She had come around to his way of thinking easily enough, and he had expected slightly more of a fight than she had given, if he were honest. But then, it was a good idea, and what he was offering her was generous. So what was there to argue about?
He decided that the wedding would be in one month’s time, and when he sent that missive to Verity, she crashed through his office door not five minutes later.
“Yes, Cricket?”
If she had been a cat, he was quite certain that her fur would’ve stood up on end. “A month?”
“Yes. I don’t see any point in dragging this out.”
“You expect me to plan a wedding in a month?”
“I’m a billionaire, Cricket. If you need resources, you can buy them.”
“I’m aware of that, but you know venues and...”
“We have to capitalize on the momentum of all of this. Have you seen the sheer volume of stories coming out just in the last couple of days?”
She stomped over to his desk. “Of course I have. They’re impossible to ignore. Everyone is obsessed with you being in love. This is the most PR you’ve ever gotten, good or bad. It’s...overwhelming.”
“Perhaps for you. But I’ve never cared what people said about me.”
She blinked, then huffed. “Then why are you doing all of this?”
“I don’t care what other people think about me, but the board does. Investors do. That’s my problem. This is all strictly business, and none of it’s personal to me.”
“Has anything ever been personal to you?” He had the feeling that it was a loaded question, but he didn’t really know why it would be. He didn’t know why she would care.
“I enjoy our lunches,” he said, because he had the feeling that was what she was getting at.
“But not so much that you think of me as a whole person. Because you wouldn’t just announce the engagement between yourself and someone who was equal to you without checking with them.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because that’s not what people do.”
“That’s what I do,” he said. “And I’m the same no matter who I’m dealing with.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she sat down in the chair just in front of his desk, a blond curl falling down at her face, and he felt the urge to brush it away, though he didn’t do it.
Because he didn’t cross that boundary with her.
Ever. Of course, it would be a necessity, to an extent.
When they were seen out in public together, they would have to touch.
The very idea of it made a strange, unwanted sort of heat unwind itself in his stomach, made him feel like he was at the mercy of something. And he didn’t do helpless. Not these days.
So he pushed it down. Ignored it. Pushed forward.
“That isn’t really true,” Verity said softly. “You have always been nicer to me. I suppose that’s why I thought maybe you would treat me differently than you do the other people around you.”
“How do you think I treat the people around me?”
“Like pawns on a chessboard. Like conveniences or inconveniences, but not really like people, and I thought that there was something more to you, Alex, I really did. After two years of taking lunch with you every day, of talking to you about the weather and TV, and...life. I thought that we were friends.”
The word sat uncomfortably in his chest, like a brick, and he couldn’t grasp why that would be.
He had never thought of Verity as a friend, but then, he had never thought of anybody as a friend.
But maybe she was right. The way that they had interacted was perhaps something like friendship.
And yet, he was still... He still felt as if there was a wall between himself and her. As there was with him and everyone.
A necessity as a child who was never allowed to have attachments, and a matter of course as a man who had never learned any other way.
“I don’t have friends,” he said.
He regretted it the moment the words left his mouth, because she looked wounded. Like he had slapped her, rather than simply speaking a simple four-word truth.
“It isn’t personal,” he said. “I don’t know how to have friends. I don’t have family. I never have. I assume you know I was raised in foster care—that much is public knowledge on the open internet.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. I do know that. But I’m not allowed to ask you about it, it’s in my folder.”
“Then I will tell you,” he said. “I never stayed in one home longer than six months. I have never understood the attachment that people have to one another. Because there has never been anything remotely permanent in my life, nor has there ever been an expectation of it. I never knew my parents. I never will. I don’t know why my mother gave me up, I don’t know why my father wasn’t involved.
There is a great, dark void there, and it’s one I stopped looking into a long time ago.
I’m not sad about it. But it is what made me.
That’s why we were having lunch together. ”
“I thought I was sort of...coaching you or...?”
“It was just to get some idea of what it might be like. Of why people do it. How to look like I do it. Whatever I needed to do to bolster the sales of the company.”
“So none of it was actually for you? None of it has been to try and...fix...?”
“I’m not going to be fixed. Handily, I’m not broken.
You cannot miss what you’ve never had, little Cricket.
I don’t miss my mother because I didn’t know her.
I don’t miss my father because I’ve never had one.
I created this company and it has been my life.
It is what gives me purpose. It’s why I wake up in the morning.
It is, I suppose, the one connection that I have truly on this entire planet, and I will do whatever I must to make it all that it can be. ”
She looked stunned. He had never told anyone all of this before, because why would he?
It wasn’t anyone else’s business, and he didn’t like the pity that he could see in her eyes.
He didn’t need pity. He was successful. He was a man who had overcome.
A man who had transcended his circumstances, and he didn’t need pity from anyone.
And here was this little thing looking at him as if he was a wounded animal. She didn’t speak, though. That made him even angrier, because she always had something to say, and the fact that she was being careful spoke to the depth of how much she felt sorry for him.
No one was connected to him enough to feel sorry for him. He didn’t want it. And it was unearned.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I am still your boss.”
“My fiancé,” she said softly.
“Employed to be my fiancée,” he said. “And so I’m still your boss.”
“And not my friend.”
“I’m sorry if that hurts you. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Of course not. Why would it? There’s nothing personal about any of this, is there?” She stared at the wall behind him, her expression as angry as he’d ever seen it. “Why did you choose me?”
There were reasons. But it was hard to take the shape of those reasons, those feelings, and put them into words. He knew them, but he didn’t know how to lay them out to her. And so, he didn’t. “You were the first person I interviewed.”
The unspoken truth was that he was impatient, overly efficient, at the cost of anything else.
His words made her shrink.
But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. He needed to establish the boundaries here.
Because while he was pleased that she had agreed to his plan, he could see that this might become difficult for her.
Marriage meant nothing to him. It was as theoretical as all other connections, those mystical bonds he couldn’t access, and didn’t want to anyway.
She claimed she didn’t plan on getting married but she was twenty-four years old, and the truth was, he didn’t believe her.
She didn’t think she wanted to get married, but most people around him seemed to want it, seemed to fall for it in the end, as feelings of loneliness and inadequacy, and swiftly passing time overtook them.
She might think she felt that way now, but he doubted she would feel that way always.
“Well, I suppose that answers that question.” Something in her demeanor shifted, there was a sort of distance that came over her and she straightened her shoulders.
“If we only have thirty days then we need to begin making appointments. I feel like you and I need to be seen together. There needs to be ample media fodder, because if we’re going to do this then we need to do it right.
I’m going to need a ring, a dress and various other bridal accessories.
We need a venue, flowers, music. Food. A guest list.”
“Normally I would put you in charge of several of those things, but you’re correct. We need to do the forward-facing work as much as possible. I will have someone in administration handle the venue, music, food and the guest list.”
“Acceptable. I will find the best places for you and I to shop for some of these other things together. And I will present you with a modified schedule.”
“A modified schedule?”
She nodded. “Yes. This is your priority now. It has to be. That’s simply the only way this is going to work.”
“I find that to be extremely heavy-handed of you.”
She stood up, and she shot him a narrow glance. “Do you? What’s good for the Cricket is good for the devil, ponder that.”
And then she swept out of his office without a backward glance, and he would never admit it to her, but he did ponder that.