Chapter Five
EVERETT
I climb into the backseat after her and shut the door on a wall of camera flashes.
The quiet that follows is immediate, insulated, expensive. The silence money buys.
It does nothing for the noise in my head.
Jeremy is already in the front passenger seat, one phone to his ear, the other in his hand, his thumbs moving fast as messages flood in from every direction.
Beside me, Aria is still breathing like she ran a mile barefoot and kissed a man she hates at the finish line.
Or maybe a man she doesn’t hate nearly enough.
My mouth still tastes like her.
That is a problem.
A serious one.
Because the kiss in my office had been bad enough—contained only by the thin thread of restraint I barely managed to hold onto.
The kiss outside?
That had been something else entirely.
That had been me forgetting, for one reckless, humiliating stretch of seconds, that there were cameras, consequences, and an entire trust board waiting to dissect every decision I make.
That had been me putting my hand on her ass in front of half the city because the second she touched me, reason left the building.
Dangerous doesn’t begin to cover it.
Jeremy glances at me in the rearview mirror. "That was ballsy."
Aria turns her head toward me, cheeks flushed, mouth kiss-swollen, eyes brighter than they should be. "You told me to sell it. Now everyone thinks I’m in love with you. I don’t think I could have been any more convincing."
My gaze catches on her mouth for half a second before I drag it away.
"The board will decide whether they believe us," I say. My voice sounds even, as if I still have control over the situation. Like I’m not one bad second away from hauling her back across my lap.
She blinks. "So this still might not work?"
Jeremy makes a sound that could be a cough or a laugh and wisely turns it into neither.
I look out the tinted window as the car pulls away from the arena.
I saw her the second she walked into the ballroom tonight.
Black dress. Bare shoulders. That slit running up one thigh, high enough to make a man think dirty thoughts in public. Her hair down. Her mouth painted in soft pink.
I hadn’t expected to see her again. Not after I fired her. In fact, I was counting on never seeing her again—it was the entire point of letting her go.
Seeing her tonight was unexpected.
And the second I did, every instinct I had demanded distance. So I kept mine.
I watched her from across the room like a masochist. Like a man with enough self-awareness to know exactly how bad an idea she was and not enough self-preservation to stop looking anyway.
That slit in her dress caught every time she moved.
I spent an entire conversation with a donor imagining tracing my fingers along the exposed line of her thigh to find out just how soft her skin is.
Then I went upstairs because distance felt smarter.
Because if Aria was downstairs looking like temptation wrapped in black silk, the last place I needed to be was anywhere near her.
And then she followed me upstairs.
Offered to marry me.
Climbed into my lap.
Kissed me.
And now we’re here.
Jeremy’s phone buzzes again. Then again.
"What do you want me to tell the media?" he asks, scrolling through the incoming texts. "They’re already asking for comments. Everly’s PR team wants to know if we’re confirming the engagement tonight or waiting."
I straighten in my seat.
"Confirm it," I say. "Yes, it’s real. No further comment."
Jeremy’s fingers start moving again. "Half of them want confirmation. The other half want the timeline."
"Tell them Aria and I fell in love over the six months she worked for me," I say.
Beside me, Aria goes very still.
I keep going.
"Tell them I let her go last week so we could go public without compromising workplace policy."
Jeremy nods once, already typing. "Clean. Respectable. The press will eat it alive."
Aria folds her arms. "Wow. You made that lie sound alarmingly practiced."
I turn to look at her fully then.
She’s trying for flippant, but I can still see the adrenaline moving through her. The rise and fall of her chest. The way her fingers grip at the leather seat in the back of my town car like she needs something to hold onto to steady her.
"You kissed me in front of cameras," I say. "You don’t get to complain about the story we have to sell."
She narrows her eyes. "I did not just kiss you in front of cameras."
My brow lifts.
She glares harder. "Fine. I launched myself with purpose."
Jeremy lets out a snort. I look away before the corner of my mouth does something unhelpful.
His phone buzzes again. "Christian and Everly are both blowing up my phone. They want to know what the hell is going on."
"Tell them to meet me at my house tomorrow morning."
Jeremy glances back. "Both of them?"
"Yes."
He nods and goes back to typing.
Then I look at Aria.
Whatever impulsive, champagne-fueled courage got her into this car is going to wear off eventually. When it does, she needs to understand one thing, that this is no longer a reckless idea thrown across a desk or a kiss detonated on arena steps. It’s public now. Real in all the ways that matter.
Christian understands the trust clauses inside and out. Everly understands image, narrative, and how quickly a story can turn if it’s handled badly.
If Aria and I have any chance of pulling this off, we need both of them.
"I'll send my driver for you in the morning," I say. "He'll bring you to my penthouse. Christian and Everly will meet us there."
Some of the color fades from her face.
"Before any of that happens," I say, "I need to know why."
She blinks. "Why what?"
"Why you're doing this. You climbed into my lap two hours ago and offered to marry a man who just fired you. People don't do that without a reason." I turn in my seat to face her fully. "What do you need the money for?"
The shift in her is immediate. Her jaw tightens. Her fingers curl into the fabric of her dress at her thigh, and for a second I think she's going to lie to me.
"My father," she says quietly.
I wait.
I wait.
She exhales through her nose, and when she speaks again, her voice is steadier than I expect it to be.
"Three years ago, my parents were in a car accident.
My mother died. My father survived, but he had a traumatic brain injury.
He lost years of memory. Motor function. He couldn't walk for a long time."
The car feels smaller.
"He's at Brookhaven," she says. "The memory center."
I know Brookhaven. My family's name is on a wing.
"Insurance covered a facility where he sat in a hallway and stared at walls.
Brookhaven is the place where he's actually getting better.
Walking again. Rebuilding. His therapists say two to three more years and he could move into his own apartment.
" She pauses. "It costs almost ten thousand a month.
I need to know that I can afford his care until he's well enough to function on his own again. "
I don't say anything. I don't need to do the math. I already understand.
The job she fought to keep. The longer hours. The reorganized filing cabinets and the coffee experiments and the way she flinched when I said the word redundant. None of it was about impressing me.
"That's why Phil adjusted your salary."
It's not a question. The pieces fall into place with the kind of quiet efficiency I should have seen months ago.
Some of the color fades from her face.
If she would have told me from the beginning why she needed this job, I probably would have covered his care whether or not she agreed to marry me.
"I'll make sure that Brookhaven gets funded immediately," I say, and then look away.
Because if I keep looking at her, I'm going to start understanding exactly how much trouble I'm in.
Jeremy glances back again. "Everly wants to know if she should tip off a few photographers to get clean shots of Aria coming and going from the penthouse this week."
Aria’s head turns toward me. "Why would we need that?"
I ignore the question for a beat and think. Everly’s instincts are usually good. Better than good. She understands public appetite, media rhythm, and narrative construction better than most CEOs understand their own balance sheets.
But manufactured too early is risky. Too polished and the whole thing starts to smell false.
Then again, there is nothing polished about the way Aria is sitting beside me now—hair wild, mouth swollen from my kiss, still holding her shoes like she might use them as a weapon if pushed too far. No one is going to accuse us of overplanning.
"Tell her to give us a day for set up," then my eyes glaze over her body. She looks the part of a billionaire’s fiancée tonight, and though she always dressed professionally for work, she lacked the expensive touch of a woman people would assume is engaged to a Kauffman.
"Tell Everly to schedule her stylist for a full lifestyle overhaul.
Expensive bags, clothes, gowns, shoes, jewelry.
.. everything. If she is going to step out of Kauffman Enterprises building, she needs to look like she belongs to me. "
"Belongs to you..." she whispers out in confusion.
"You're a billionaire’s soon-to-be wife. Everyone will expect I spoil you. We need to make that look true. I doubt you own a pair of Louis Vuitton's or an Hermes bag. You'll need both to sell it."
Aria gapes back at me while I see Jeremy's head nod in agreement in the front passenger seat. "I’ll tell her."
The rest of the drive passes under the hum of Jeremy’s typing and the low purr of the engine. Aria grows quieter beside me, and that silence unsettles me more than an argument would have.
I shouldn’t notice the way her dress shifts when she moves. I should not still be thinking about the taste of her.
And I absolutely should not be thinking about the fact that when she kissed me outside, my first coherent thought wasn’t "stop this."
The car rolls to a stop outside her building.
Before my driver can move, I open the door and step out first. "I've got her," I tell him.
Then I turn and offer Aria my hand.
She stares at it for half a second like she doesn’t know what to make of me anymore, then places her fingers in mine and lets me help her out.
The night air is cooler here. Quieter.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
I should get back in the car.
Instead, I hear myself say, "One last thing."
She pauses on the sidewalk, heels dangling from one hand, the paddle still tucked against her side. "Yes?"
"A year is a long time," I say. "And if this goes forward, we may be spending a lot of it together."
Her face flickers. Nerves, maybe. Or defiance.
"This only works if you remember what this is and what this isn't. The last thing I need is a distraction.
I have an empire to manage and a family counting on me as the patriarch.
I plan to do all of that better than my father.
I have no intentions of getting attached to you, and I suggest that you align with those same intentions.
Whatever you do… don't fall in love with me. "
Her chin lifts.
"Lucky for you," she says softly, "I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Mr. Kauffman."
She turns toward the building.
"Aria."
She looks back over her shoulder.
"It’s Everett now."
She stills for half a beat, like she feels the shift in that too, then she disappears inside.
I slide back into the car already knowing I stepped into the biggest challenge of my career tonight.
All I know is this… Everyone had better bring their A-game in the morning if we have any shot at convincing the board of trustees this is real.
As my driver pulls away from the curb, I see a text from Damien
That was fast.
I text back:
I'm royally fucked.