Chapter 2 #2
“I’d challenge him on this, we’d fight, and then he’d apologize and blame stress from work or a hundred other things.
He’d buy me expensive gifts and act like that perfect guy again until the cycle repeated itself.
After he proposed and I stupidly said yes, things got a lot worse.
He began isolating me from my friends, from the life I had, and started demanding that I quit my job.
It became too much, too stressful. I was always on edge, waiting for the next event to drop on me, and I knew what was happening.
Being a nurse and a midwife, I knew where situations like that could eventually lead, and I wasn’t blinded by love enough to overlook it.
I had to get out, and about two months before the wedding, I told my parents I was leaving him. ”
Lenox tilts his head, appraising me with quiet observation, though the hard glint in his eyes and the firm grip on his glass tell me he’s hanging on my every word with the serious intent of a man ready to snap.
“That’s when my father stepped in. He told me under no circumstances was I allowed to leave Ezra.
That our union was imperative for the future of Monroe Securities.
I didn’t love Ezra, but that didn’t matter.
My father told me that if love and a happy marriage were important to me in this life, then I’d learn to love Ezra and make myself happy with him. ”
I sigh, staring down at my hands in my lap.
“Did Ezra know you wanted to leave him?”
I nod. “I had told him I wasn’t happy and that I wasn’t sure I could go through with the wedding. In response, Ezra apologized again and told me he loved me. He vowed to make me happy and promised he’d change. ”
“But he didn’t.”
“No,” I quietly mumble. “He didn’t. It was the same pattern, and I didn’t know what to do.
I was having panic attacks for weeks leading up to the wedding.
I wasn’t sleeping. I was hardly eating. I was in the middle of my final fitting, literally wearing my wedding gown, and passed out from a panic attack.
My father was in Paris working a deal with a French software company, and I called him and told him I couldn’t go through with the wedding.
He was furious. He flew home a day early and… ” I trail off.
“His plane never made it home.”
“No.” I lift the glass and down the rest of it because clearly I need it, and he used smooth fucking bourbon, so it’s goddamn delicious.
I set my glass down, running my finger along the thin rim of the glass.
“Originally, all they said was that my father’s plane had gone missing on radar.
That was it. That was all they knew for days because of the storm that blew through where his plane was last recorded.
Then they found small pieces of his plane, and that’s when everything started spiraling out of control.
My father was gone. His plane had exploded.
My mother and I were inconsolable. I blamed myself.
Hated myself actually.” I swallow and look away, blowing out a breath as grief slams through me, making the backs of my eyes burn with unshed tears.
“And then?” he prompts when I fall silent, but I don’t want to talk about that. Not anymore. So I cut it down to the basics.
“And then I called off my wedding, told Ezra I was done, and I moved out. It was the only good thing to come out of this,” I continue when I’m back in control. “Until my father’s will was read.”
“Why would there be a stipulation in your father’s will about you having to be married?”
I shake my head, my hand flying out and knocking the martini glass in the process.
It goes careening off the counter and smashes into a million pieces on the floor.
“Shit. I’m so sorry.” Clearly, I’m a hot mess of nerves right now.
I move to jump off the counter, but he puts a hand up, stopping me .
“Don’t move.”
“I need to clean it up.”
“You need to stay where you are before you somehow manage to hurt yourself. I’ll clean it up.
You keep talking.” He grabs a broom and dustbin from a nearby closet and starts sweeping up the pieces of glass that are littered across his floor.
I fall back on the counter, staring up at the ceiling, my legs dangling over the edge.
“I don’t know why my father did that,” I admit.
“It doesn’t make sense, and the only thing I can come up with is that my father wanted Monroe to stay in family hands, and he knew I was a midwife, not a businesswoman equipped to run a multibillion-dollar organization, and I was set to marry Ezra anyway.
In the meantime, my father’s best friend was named CEO, Ezra his COO, and they made me chairperson of the board. ”
“Because you will have a controlling interest in the company?”
I twist my head toward him, watching as he dumps the glass in the trash bin in the cabinet beside the sink.
“Only if I’m married.” I rest my hands on my thighs and sit back up.
He returns the broom and dustbin, the mess forgotten, as he moves back to his previous spot against the counter.
“So now you can imagine how Ezra and his father, Alfie, are frantic that I ended it with Ezra before the will was read. And I use the term frantic lightly. They’re both relentlessly—in their own ways—trying to get me to marry Ezra because I have to marry in order to inherit, and Ezra is the man my father wanted me to marry. ”
“What do you mean by relentlessly and in their own ways?”
“Alfie is like my second father. He’s doing this from a place of love and concern for Monroe Securities and for me. Ezra… not so much. Ezra, well, he’s… tell me you have a stalker without telling me you have a stalker.”
“What?”
I roll my eyes and pull out my phone, showing him the texts from Ezra. The desperate ones, the obsessive ones, the threatening ones.
Lenox’s face grows hard, his jaw visibly clenching, but that’s his only reaction .
“And with the press and Ezra all over me, the clinic I was working for kindly asked me to leave as it was too distracting for them and their patients. It broke my heart, but I understood their position. No one wants press hanging outside a women’s health clinic.”
“So now you’re jobless, dealing with a company you don’t feel comfortable dealing with, managing two men who want you married to their family so they can take over Monroe on your behalf, and you have the press hounding you about all of this and your father’s plane and guilt over that.”
I point at him. “In a nutshell. Wow, you just took a long story and paraphrased it into like two sentences. I need to learn that trick. I also need to be married, but I can’t marry the man I’m supposed to marry, which is why I’m here.”
“How about you lay it out for me without paraphrasing.”
I swing my legs back and forth. “It’s simple.
If I’m married to you, I don’t have to marry Ezra.
If I’m married to you, I’ll inherit Monroe and though I don’t care about the money from it, I don’t want my father’s company falling into other hands.
It needs to stay in my family. My father’s will never stipulated who I had to be married to, just that I had to be married in order to inherit.
It doesn’t even say I have to stay married, though my attorney advised I remain so for at least a year after so it can’t be contested. ”
“And if you don’t marry? What happens then?”
“I can’t claim the shares and neither can my mother, so they will escheat to the state, which means the state will become the owner of the stock and then sell it. Monroe will no longer be owned by my family, and the state, with controlling interest, will be able to do basically whatever it wants.”
“I see.”
Looking up at him, I try to keep my breathing steady.
“I’m so glad you do because I can’t let that happen, and I can’t marry Ezra.
I just can’t. I’ll never get out of it. He’ll never let me go.
I just know it. I love my father with my whole heart.
He was a great dad and did everything for me, but I can’t sacrifice my life like that even in his name.
I want to marry you—well, that’s a lie—I need to marry you so I can get them off my back for good.
And I need you to come to Vegas with me, marry me, and after that, attend the Monroe Securities conference with me and tell me what I’m missing with all the tech lingo. ”
“Vegas?”
I smirk at his surprised tone since I did quickly tack that on the end.
“Yes. Las Vegas, Nevada. Party capital of the world. I need you to come to Las Vegas with me tomorrow for a Monroe conference meeting thing, but I figured it was perfect since it’s super easy to get married there. Two birds, one stone.”
Now he starts blinking. “Tomorrow?”
“You’re fixated on that of all things?” I hop off the counter and cut our distance, getting right up in his face.
“Yes, tomorrow. Las Vegas. Monroe Securities is hosting a huge company conference, and I’m about ninety-nine point six percent positive you could be an invaluable asset there. Tell me I’m wrong.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not following.”
“Bullshit, you’re not.” I poke his chest and then do it again for good measure.
“You might not want anything to do with me, and you might enjoy playing dumb to the people who don’t know any better, but don’t forget who I am.
I know you, Lenox Moore, though I seriously wish I didn’t.
I know all about your skills with a computer and I am desperate.
My life is all kinds of fucked up, and not only will my ex-fiancé be there but also his father, and since both are actively trying to hitch me to the altar like I’m some piece of cattle they can prod with their brand, I cannot show up alone. ”
His head dips, his stare hard. “Do I look like someone’s plus-one? I’m not a bodyguard.”
“Funny, since you’re the size of an NFL tight end and Asher calls you Thor.”
“You have cousins.”
I shake my head, immediately cutting him off.
“They can’t help me with this. I need to be married, but I also need someone who speaks the language and can help me navigate through it while keeping his mouth closed.
This isn’t my world, Lenox. I deliver babies and help women with their reproductive health.
Medicine is my practice. But since my father died, I’ve been a mess, and this marriage stuff… it’s not a joke. I need your help.”
That’s when he falls silent. And it lasts a thousand years until he grits out, “They’ll never agree to this.”
I laugh bitterly at that. I don’t even know why. He’s talking about Grey and Zax because they’re what matters to him. Not me. Never me.
“They will because I need this. Because you’re the only one. Plus, they’ve always hated Ezra, and they know you’ll never touch me again.” It’s true. He won’t. He regrets that he ever did, and it’s just another reason why I hate him.
“I can’t marry you, Georgia.”
I stare at him for a long, hard minute, ready to tear him apart for dismissing me so flippantly. My insides boil as frenzy claws at my skin.
“For real? Just like that?” I hiss out a harsh breath, running my hands through my hair and clasping them at the back of my head, glaring indignantly at him. “You do realize I’m not looking for love in all the wrong places, right? This is a business arrangement.”
“You have nothing I want.”
Ouch. I mean, sorta. If I allow it to ouch. “I’ll have fifty-four percent of Monroe Securities, and I know about our latest tech. It’s part of what this conference is about. You’ll get that info, even if I shouldn’t share it with a hacker.”
He stares without budging.
“I’ll give you three percent of Monroe,” I offer.
“Your money is the least appealing thing about you.”
I snort. “Don’t I know it? I just wish everyone else did too. But you do want my insider info on my tech and all the pretty ways it manages to keep dickwad hackers like yourself out of the systems you’re trying to gain entry into, right?”
“Nope. No challenge in that.”
My feelings explode like an atomic bomb, wreaking havoc and destruction with my emotions and thrusting me right into unglued territory.
My eyes burn, and I can feel my face turning redder by the second.
I pace away from him, barely able to catch my breath.
I hate being like this. It’s not who I am.
I am all take charge. I am the master of my ship.
But spool by spool, I’ve been unraveling, and this is the only thing I can think of to stop that and regain control.
“Do you hate me that much, Lenox? Did I mean so little to you that you can’t even help me when I am so fucking desperate that I show up at your house?
” I turn back to him, my arms falling heavy at my sides.
“I know I’m asking a lot. I know I’m asking you to marry me and all that comes with that craziness. ”
I stop here, about to break down again. I just want him to marry me to give me some breathing room to figure out my life and my situation.
I hardly trust anyone right now, but I trust him because he doesn’t give two shits about me.
He never did, and he doesn’t care about Monroe or my money—he has tons of his own, likely billions, and is the definition of a loner.
I wipe angrily at my face, slashing at the tears as they fall on my cheeks, only it’s futile as more keep coming.
“I know this is a one-sided arrangement, and the last thing you want is to be around me. I don’t exactly want to be around you either.
I’m not going to move in with you or anything.
I’ll stay in LA or possibly move back to Boston to be near Zax and Grey.
You won’t have to deal with me other than these few days and possibly on rare occasions if something comes up.
Please, Lenox. Just… fuck.” My hands rake through my hair, feeling so exhausted and defeated I can hardly stand it.
“Please. I let you use my body for two years. I’m not even talking about what you did to my heart.
I was the stupid one in that, and I know it.
But you owe me, and if you won’t do it for that reason, then do it for Zax and Grey.
I know you feel guilty about lying to them and hate how it eventually all came out. Please.”
Maybe that was wrong to throw at him—he already has so much guilt sitting on his soul that if he stepped into the ocean, he’d immediately drown under its weight—but I don’t care. I need this too badly. All’s fair in true hate and marriage .
He makes a displeased noise in the back of his throat as he sets his glass down on the counter. “How long are we talking?”
“A year,” I tell him, and I can see he doesn’t care for that answer as he rubs his hand across his mouth and jaw and stares at me with tense eyes. “As much as you hate the idea of being married to me, I hate it equally as much. But you’re the only one who can do this. Please don’t say no.”