Chapter 3
Emilia
The rules are my idea.
Obviously.
I write them on a legal pad while Jake sits across from me in my office, eating a mango like we have all the time in the world, like the internet isn’t currently obsessed with our fake relationship, like I didn’t spend half the night fielding texts from Mason that ranged from I’m concerned to what the hell, Emilia.
“You’re making a list,” Jake says.
“I’m establishing parameters.”
“Right.” He takes another bite. “Because nothing says romance like parameters.”
I ignore him.
Rules of Engagement – Non-Negotiable
I underline non-negotiable twice.
“Rule one,” I say. “No sex.”
Jake sets the mango down. “Noted.”
“I mean it.”
“I heard you.”
“Jake…”
He holds both hands up, eyes wide with something that isn’t innocence. “Emilia. I heard you. No sex. Written in stone. Moving on.”
I look at him for one extra second because I need him to understand I’m serious, and then I look back at the pad.
“Rule two. No emotional attachment. This is a professional arrangement. Sixty days. Clean exit.”
“Clean exit,” he repeats. “Like a contract.”
“Exactly like a contract.”
He’s quiet for a moment. I don’t look up.
“Rule three,” I continue. “No public humiliation. If this goes sideways, I don’t want to be the woman left holding a fake ring while gossip sites have a field day.”
“That’s fair.”
The agreement surprises me enough that I actually glance at him.
He’s not smiling, just watching me with that steady focus he uses when he’s actually paying attention, which is more unsettling than the charm, honestly.
“Rule four,” I say. “No real relationship. Whatever happens in public stays public. The moment we’re off camera, it stops.”
Jake nods slowly. “Four rules,” he repeats. Then quieter, almost to himself: “Hell of an engagement.”
“Four rules.”
He picks the mango back up. “Can I add one?”
“No.”
“It’s a good one.”
“Jake—”
“If we’re going to convince an entire donor network and the media that we’re engaged,” he says, “we need to actually be convincing. Which means the chemistry has to read as real.”
I put the pen down. “The chemistry will be fine.”
“Will it?” His voice is light. Genuinely curious. “Because right now you’re sitting three feet away from me like we’re at a deposition.”
“I’m sitting at a professional distance.”
“You’re sitting like you’re afraid to get closer.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” I say. “Least of all you.”
Jake just looks at me.
And the problem, the infuriating problem, is that he knows I’m lying.
The Honolulu News Studio smells like coffee and hairspray and stress.
I’m calm.
Jake is standing beside me in the green room in a charcoal suit that fits him perfectly, tie loose and hair slightly disheveled in the way that photographs like intention, and I am completely calm.
“Stop adjusting your earpiece,” he says.
“I’m not adjusting it.”
“You’ve touched it four times.”
“I’m checking it.”
“It’s fine.” He turns to look at me directly. “You look good, by the way.”
I glance down at my dress. It’s structured navy, professional, chosen because it photographs well and communicates competence rather than decoration. “Thank you.”
“I mean it. You look…” He stops. Tilts his head slightly. “Actually good.”
Something about the pause makes my spine straighten. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird. I’m noting that my fiancée is attractive. That’s normal.”
“We’re not…” I lower my voice. “We’re not engaged. That’s the entire point.”
“We are for the next sixty days.” He smiles, slow and easy. “Try to look like you like me.”
“I like you fine.”
“You look like you’re tolerating me.”
“That’s because I am.”
His smile widens.
A production assistant appears at the door before I can say anything else. “Mr. Hale, Ms. Hart? We’re ready for you.”
Our interview is with a journalist named Claire Jackson, who covers Pacific business and philanthropy and has the kind of sharp, pleasant smile that means she’s going to ask the question everyone wants answered.
She does it within ninety seconds.
“I think the thing everyone wants to know,” Claire says, leaning forward slightly, “is how the engagement fits into the Hale Futures mission. Is this personal story becoming part of the public narrative?”
I open my mouth.
Jake’s hand settles at my lower back.
Warm and steady through the fabric of my dress, his thumb barely moving, and every coherent thought I’d assembled for this exact question evaporates completely.
Heat spreads low through my stomach so fast it feels chemical. Ridiculous. It’s a hand on my back, not a cardiac event, and yet my entire body sharpens around the contact anyway.
His thumb moves once against my spine.
I almost forget we’re live on television.
“Hale Futures has always been personal,” Jake says, and his voice is smooth, unhurried, and completely in command, while I’m apparently short-circuiting over a hand on my spine.
“My family built this foundation because we believe community support changes lives. That’s not a press release.
It’s what we’ve watched happen in real time across the Pacific. ”
Claire nods. “And your fiancée—”
“Emilia has been the operational backbone of this initiative for years.” His thumb moves again, barely, and I force myself to breathe normally.
“She understands the mission better than anyone. Getting to build this with her personally…” A brief pause.
His voice drops just slightly. “That’s not something I take lightly. ”
Claire’s smile shifts into something warmer. Genuine. She believes him completely.
The terrifying part is how much he sounds like he means it.
“Emilia,” Claire says, turning to me, “how has the engagement changed the dynamic between you two professionally?”
I’m a competent adult woman who’s been answering questions in professional settings for eight years.
I find Jake’s eyes.
He looks back at me steadily. Patiently. With a faint suggestion of amusement that only I can see.
Say something, his expression says. Any time now.
“It hasn’t changed the work,” I say. My voice is even. Good. “The mission of Hale Futures matters regardless of personal circumstances. Every program, every scholarship, every family we’re reaching…that’s the story.”
“Well said,” Claire agrees. She glances between us. “You seem like a strong team.”
Jake’s hand presses slightly warmer at my back.
“We are,” he says.
The Ala Moana donor event is elegant and controlled and I have a detailed run-of-show document in my clutch that covers every second of the next three hours.
Jake hasn’t looked at it once.
He doesn’t need to, which makes me want to throw something.
I watch him work the room. Moving from conversation to conversation with that easy, unhurried confidence that makes people feel like they have his full attention, because they do.
That’s the thing about Jake that nobody credits him for.
He remembers things. Details. The kind of specifics that require actual listening.
“Your daughter’s scholarship program, the one in Maui, how are the enrollment numbers looking?” he asks a donor I’ve been trying to schedule for three weeks. The man’s entire expression opens up.
I stay half a step behind and take notes I don’t actually need.
“You’re staring,” says a voice beside me.
I turn. Sienna Hale stands at my elbow, holding a glass of white wine and looking unbearably all-knowing.
“I’m observing professionally,” I say.
“Right.” She sips her wine. “And professional observation requires that expression?”
“What expression?”
“The one you’re wearing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sienna looks at Jake across the room. Then back at me. “He’s good at this.”
“Yes,” I say, because denying it would be ridiculous. “He is.”
“And that drives you a little crazy.”
“Everything about Jake Hale drives me a little crazy.”
Sienna’s mouth curves up. “That’s not exactly a denial, Emilia.”
Before I can answer, Jake looks up from across the room and finds me immediately. No searching, like he already knew where I was standing.
He says something to the donor, easy and warm, and then he moves toward me.
Sienna vanishes with suspicious speed.
“Having fun?” Jake stops beside me, angling his body slightly so we look natural together. A presentation of couple. I know what he’s doing, and my pulse picks up anyway.
“I’m working.”
“So am I.” He reaches out and straightens the small clutch in my hand, an unnecessary gesture, his fingers brushing mine in the process. “Holt wants a private conversation with both of us. Ten minutes.”
“Fine.” I pull my hand back. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“The touching thing.”
Jake’s expression doesn’t change. “We’re engaged.”
“We’re in a private corner of the room.”
“There are no private corners tonight.” His voice stays low. Even. “There are cameras at that east entrance, a gossip journalist by the bar who’s photographed us twice already, and William Holt is currently watching us from the dessert table to see if we look like a couple or a PR stunt.”
I close my mouth.
Because he’s right. He clocked all of that, and I’ve been so busy watching him work the room that I missed it.
“The rules still apply,” I say.
“I know.”
“The touching—”
“Is necessary, and you know it.” He tilts his head slightly. “Or we can go tell Holt right now that this was a media misunderstanding and watch our funding drop back to where it was two weeks ago.”
I hate him.
I genuinely, deeply hate him.
“Fine,” I say.
Jake smiles, just slightly. “Was that so hard?”
“Don’t push it.”
We walk toward Holt together, and Jake’s hand settles at my lower back again, light and certain. I keep my expression perfectly neutral even though every nerve in my body is acutely, inconveniently aware of exactly where he’s touching me.
An hour later, the event is winding down.
Holt commits to the full second-phase funding. Two other donors follow within twenty minutes of that conversation. Helen is standing across the room looking the least stressed I’ve seen her in two weeks.
I should feel purely satisfied.
I do feel satisfied.
But I also feel like my nervous system has been running at approximately one hundred and forty percent capacity for the last three hours because of a man who keeps touching my back like it’s nothing.
Jake falls into step beside me near the exit.
“Good night,” he says.
“Good night,” I agree.
We walk in silence for a moment. The warm Honolulu air hits as we step through the doors, and I breathe it in, relieved to be in a space that isn’t buzzing with scrutiny.
“You lost your train of thought,” Jake says.
I keep walking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The first interview question this morning. Claire asked about the engagement, and you paused.”
“I was considering my phrasing.”
“You were distracted.”
“I was professional.”
We stop near the valet. Jake turns to look at me with that quiet blue focus that I’m increasingly convinced is a weapon he uses deliberately.
“You did well tonight,” he says. “You always do.”
I don’t know what to do with a genuine compliment from Jake Hale, so I say nothing.
He steps slightly closer. Just enough that I’d have to move to create distance, and since moving would mean he wins something, I stay still.
“The chemistry reads well,” he says quietly. “Holt mentioned it. Sienna mentioned it. Even the journalist mentioned it on her way out.”
“Good,” I say. “That’s the point.”
“It is.” A pause. His voice drops, private and unhurried. “See?”
He leans down, just slightly, enough that I catch the faint scent of expensive cologne that I’ve apparently catalogued against my will.
“You’re already getting better at pretending.”
For one suspended second, neither of us moves.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
My pulse kicks so hard I feel it in my throat.
And then Jake steps back like he didn’t just set my entire nervous system on fire.
My teeth press together.
Because the real problem, the infuriating and unsettling problem, is that I’m not entirely sure how much of tonight was pretending at all.
Jake steps back before I can answer.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Hart.” There’s that smile again. Easy. Certain. “Eight o’clock.”
He turns and walks away while I stand at the valet and tell myself the heat crawling up my throat is irritation.
It’s definitely irritation.
It has to be.
Shit.
Day two. Fifty-eight to go.