CHAPTER TWO
Michael Conroy had spent nine years building a career around the principle that numbers behaved better than people.
Numbers did not improvise. They did not conceal important information in tiny print, relocate to Singapore with nine days’ notice, or attach themselves to a stranger’s arm and announce an engagement that had not existed three seconds earlier.
Given accurate information, numbers produced reliable conclusions. People produced Natalie Tremaine.
“We’re what?” he asked.
Her fingers tightened around his arm. Her smile remained fixed, but her eyes pleaded with him to delay the objection long enough for her to think of whatever came next.
Michael had known her for approximately fourteen minutes.
That had been enough time to determine that what came next was unlikely to improve matters.
Mrs. Gable looked from Nat to Michael. “Engaged?”
“No,” Michael said.
“Yes,” Nat said at the same time.
The silence that followed was so complete that Michael could hear an old clock ticking somewhere downstairs.
Nat laughed lightly. “This is one of our little jokes.”
“It is not,” Michael said.
“We have very different senses of humor.”
“We have different definitions of reality.”
Mrs. Gable’s expression hardened. “Mr. Conroy told me he was attending alone.”
“He believed he was.”
“I was.”
Nat leaned closer without releasing his arm. “Could I speak to you privately, darling?”
“No.”
“Just for a moment.”
“I don’t think additional privacy will make this conversation more truthful.”
Her smile sharpened. “Michael.”
He had never before heard his name used as both an endearment and a threat. Mrs. Gable folded her arms, apparently willing to wait for the performance to collapse under its own weight. Michael intended to let it. Whatever desperation had inspired Nat’s lie, he would not become part of it.
Then he looked down at her hand.
The silver-colored ring on her finger was too small.
The skin around it had turned pink, and the knuckle beneath it was beginning to swell.
It was not an engagement ring. It might have come from a vending machine, a costume shop, or the bottom of a kitchen drawer.
She had put it there before arriving, which meant the lie had begun before she met him.
That should have made the situation worse.
Instead, it reminded him of the red notice she had mentioned in passing when Mrs. Gable asked why she needed an apartment so quickly.
Building condemned. Out by six. He had been focused on the terms of his own predicament and had not absorbed what hers meant.
Michael had until Friday. Nat had less than seven hours.
“One minute,” he said.
Relief crossed her face. “Thank you.”
He removed her hand from his arm, took her lightly by the elbow, and guided her through the apartment to the narrow balcony. The door closed behind them with a glass rattle that made him add window maintenance to the list of potential expenses.
The courtyard below was green and quiet, enclosed by brick walls and shaded by an enormous elm. Nat stepped away from him and immediately began speaking.
“I know this looks bad.”
“It looks fraudulent.”
“That feels unnecessarily formal.”
“It is exactly formal enough.”
“I’m not asking you to falsify a tax return. I’m asking you to let an eccentric woman believe we’re engaged long enough to rent us an apartment.”
“That is fraud involving a legally binding contract.”
“Only if the lease asks whether we’re engaged.”
“The owner is making it a condition of tenancy.”
“She is making it a condition of showing us the kitchen.”
“She showed us the kitchen.”
“And now I can’t unsee it.”
Michael stared at her. Sunlight caught copper-colored threads in her brown hair, which had been gathered into a loose knot that appeared to depend more on optimism than pins. He had noticed a streak of flour near her collar when she arrived. Now he noticed another on the sleeve of her jacket.
“You don’t know me,” he said.
“You brought your own credit report.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It tells me you pay your bills. At the moment, that qualifies as intimacy.”
“You don’t know whether I’m dangerous.”
“You alphabetized your supporting documents.”
“I indexed them.”
“Exactly. If you have a dark side, it probably has labeled dividers.”
Michael closed his eyes for one brief second. He could usually stop himself from reacting to irrational statements. Nat delivered them with such confidence that they seemed to bypass the part of his mind trained to reject them.
“I am not pretending to be engaged to a stranger,” he said.
“Fine. We’ll introduce ourselves properly. I’m Natalie Tremaine. Everyone calls me Nat. I write about food, I pay my rent on time, and I have never been arrested.”
“That last qualification should not need to be stated.”
“I thought you valued complete information.”
“I value relevant information.”
“Whether your prospective fiancée has a criminal history feels relevant.”
“You are not my prospective fiancée.”
“Temporary fiancée. Strictly for housing purposes.”
“There is no version of that phrase that improves this.”
Nat glanced through the glass door. Mrs. Gable stood in the living room, making no attempt to conceal the fact that she was watching them. Nat lowered her voice.
“Half the listed rent,” she said. “You take one bedroom, I take the other. We split the utilities and common areas. You get to stay in the neighborhood, and I get a kitchen large enough to work in. We smile at Mrs. Gable when necessary and otherwise live separate lives.”
Michael had already calculated his share.
The amount was forty-one percent less than the least expensive suitable apartment he had seen that week.
The commute to his office would take twelve minutes.
The building was quiet, the windows faced east, and the available bedroom was large enough for his desk.
The numbers were excellent.
Everything surrounding them was impossible.
“I don’t make major decisions without reviewing the risks.”
“You were prepared to offer six months’ rent in advance.”
“That was not an impulsive decision. I evaluated my options before I arrived.”
“Then evaluate this one.”
“It has existed for less than two minutes.”
“That doesn’t make it bad. Chocolate-chip cookies were invented by accident.”
“So was the financial crisis of 2008.”
“I don’t think those are comparable.”
“They both demonstrate that unplanned outcomes are not automatically beneficial.”
Nat studied him, and for the first time since she had seized his arm, the humor left her expression.
“I have to be out of my apartment by six. I have a friend who will let me sleep on her sofa, but she lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a dog who has territorial objections to knees. I work from home. Most of my income depends on having access to a kitchen, and everything affordable that I’ve called is either unavailable or wants three months’ rent before I can see it. ”
Michael knew what it was to have a home disappear because of a decision made by someone else.
His roommate’s move had been abrupt and inconvenient, but not malicious.
Owen had received the opportunity of a lifetime and accepted it.
Michael had congratulated him, helped analyze the relocation package, and then discovered that the owner of their apartment planned to sell as soon as Owen surrendered the lease.
He had responded as he responded to every crisis: with lists, projections, and increasingly narrow searches. None of those tools had produced a viable apartment.
Nat looked back toward the kitchen. “I know this is insane. But so is refusing to rent to single people because you think marriage protects hardwood floors.”
“On that point, we agree.”
“She likes couples. We both need the apartment. We can give her a couple.”
“Couples generally know one another.”
“We’ll learn.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“I don’t need you to decide forever. I need you to avoid saying no for another five minutes.”
Michael’s instinct was to refuse. It was the correct answer, the safe answer, and the one least likely to result in legal complications or future conversations beginning with the phrase as your fiancé.
Yet refusing did not produce a better housing option.
It merely returned them both to their separate emergencies.
He looked through the glass at Mrs. Gable. “If I agree to continue this discussion, you will not make another statement on my behalf.”
“Agreed.”
“You will answer my questions honestly.”
“Within reason.”
“Honestly.”
“Yes.”
“And you will let me do the talking.”
Nat hesitated. “That seems unnecessarily restrictive.”
“Then the answer is no.”
“Fine. You can do most of the talking.”
“All of it.”
“What if she asks me a direct question?”
“Answer only that question.”
“That is going to make me seem unnatural.”
“I have no basis for comparison.”
Her eyes narrowed, but the corners of her mouth moved. “Was that a joke?”
“No.”
“It was nearly a joke.”
Michael opened the balcony door before she could investigate further.
Mrs. Gable waited in the same position. “Have you settled the question of whether you are engaged?”
Michael stepped back into the living room. Every professional instinct warned him against the next sentence. He had spent his adult life avoiding uncertain commitments and agreements based on incomplete information. Even his investments favored steady returns over dramatic possibility.
Nat stood beside him, uncharacteristically silent.
“We had an argument,” he said.
Her head turned.
Mrs. Gable’s gaze sharpened. “An argument.”
“This morning,” Michael continued. “It concerned our living arrangements.”
“It did?” Nat asked.
He glanced at her.
She corrected herself. “It did.”
Mrs. Gable looked between them. “Mr. Conroy told me he was single.”
“I was angry,” Michael said. The lie came out evenly, which disturbed him more than if his voice had shaken. “I believed our engagement might be over.”