7. Chapter 7
Graham
Five weeks ago, the kitchen smelled like nothing.
Now there's always coffee made before I come downstairs. Real coffee. Iris's drawings are stuck to the fridge with magnets shaped like strawberries. There's a cardigan draped over the arm of the couch that doesn't belong to anyone who lives in the main house.
Little things. Stupid things.
Three days ago, I flagged something in the Sterling Global access logs.
A senior-level credentials pull on the Ainsworth merger files, 2:17 a.m. The name attached had no reason to be in that folder.
I forwarded it to my head of security. I've been turning it over ever since, the way you press a bruise to check if it still hurts.
It does.
The glass of the laptop screen reflects a man I barely recognize.
Tie gone. Top button undone. Shadows under my eyes like bruises. I am a billionaire with a fleet of private jets and a board that hangs on my every word, yet I am currently being outmaneuvered by a small-town judge who hasn't updated her judicial philosophy since the fifties.
Five weeks. Jade has been in this house for five weeks. The math of my life has changed and I have not yet decided what I am going to do about it.
The dream from her first afternoon hasn't gone anywhere.
It comes back when she leans across the kitchen island in the mornings.
It comes back when she pushes her sleeves up to wash dishes.
It comes back when she laughs at something Iris says and her hair falls across her face and she pushes it back without thinking.
I have spent five weeks logging those moments and have not yet found a way to file them somewhere that does not produce heat.
"Judge Halloway isn't looking for a stable father, Graham.
" Pierce's voice comes through the encryption software, tinny and careful.
"She's looking for a family. A specific, traditional, white-picket-fence kind of family.
The unsealed arrest reports from your twenties?
She's calling that character evidence of a volatile nature. "
I rub my jaw, feeling the grit of twenty-four-hour stubble. "I was twenty-two, Pierce. That was twenty years ago."
"To a woman like Halloway, twenty years is yesterday. And then there's the board. The merger with Ainsworth Aerospace is on life support. They want a reset. A family-first image that makes the shareholders feel warm and fuzzy."
"What about recusal? She's playing bridge with my mother-in-law."
"I've looked at it from every angle. Halloway and Beatrice Whitlock go back thirty years, well-documented, but it doesn't rise to the legal threshold for mandatory recusal.
We'd have to prove active misconduct, and Halloway is too smart for that.
She'll keep the friendship at arm's length on the record while voting Beatrice's way on every motion that matters. "
"So, we're stuck with her."
"We're stuck with her. Which means we have to give her a story she can't say no to. Five weeks out from the hearing, Graham. Five weeks to manufacture stability."
I look out the window. Across the lawn, the carriage house is a small warm beacon in the Linden Lake mist.
"What if I give them what they want?" My voice drops to a low rasp.
"A wedding?" Pierce sounds skeptical. "You've been a widower barely a year. Moving on that fast usually looks like a scandal, not a solution."
"Not if it's an old flame. Not if it's someone the family has known for years. Someone who was already here, helping with Iris. It's not a scandal if it's a tragedy turned romance. It's a redemption arc."
I hang up before he can tell me how many ways this can fail. I know the risks. I also know that if I lose Iris to her grandparents, there won't be enough money in the world to buy back the piece of my soul that will go with her.
I walk across the damp grass to the carriage house.
The air smells like pine needles and lake salt and the first cold of the season. I don't knock. I can't afford the hesitation a knock implies. I push the door open, and the scent hits me. Vanilla and something bright, like citrus. A stark contrast to the sterile dusty smell of the main house.
Jade is sitting at the small kitchen table, a stack of bills in front of her and a calculator that looks like it's seen better days.
The top envelope is open, a red FINAL NOTICE stamp visible from across the room.
Her fingers tap the calculator keys like she's running the same number for the fifth time and still doesn't like the answer.
She's wearing an oversized sweater the color of a bruised plum. Her hair is a riot of curls held back by a pencil.
The dream cuts through me before I have time to suppress it. Her hair down on a pillow. My hand at her wrist. I close my hand into a fist at my side and let it pass.
"We have a front door for a reason, Sterling." She doesn't look up.
"The front door takes too long."
She looks up.
I stand in the center of the room, feeling too large for the space. She looks at me the way she looks at everything. Like a stray dog she's considering whether to feed or kick.
"You look like hell. Did the board finally decide to fire you, or did Iris find your stash of expensive scotch?"
"I haven't had a drink in seven years, Alvarez. You know that."
"I know. I'm just checking that you still know."
"The judge is moving the hearing up. And the board is demanding a lifestyle stabilization plan before they approve the merger. They think I'm a liability. An unfit father because I don't have a wife to soften my edges."
Jade snorts. Sharp, unladylike. It tightens something in my chest.
"They aren't wrong about the edges. You're about as soft as jagged flint."
I cross the small space in three strides. The kitchen table is the only thing that stops me. I plant my hands on the wood and lean forward, close enough to see her pulse jumping at the base of her throat.
"I need you to marry me, Jade."
The silence is absolute. Even the crickets stop.
Jade stares at me, mouth slightly open, the pencil sliding from her hair and clattering to the floor.
Then she laughs.
Not a giggle. A full-throated, genuine laugh that rings through the small house. She clutches her stomach, shaking her head.
"Oh, God. You're serious? You walked over here, in the middle of the night, to propose a fake marriage like we're in some terrible daytime soap?"
"It's a strategic partnership. Not a soap opera. It solves your financial crisis. I know about the rent, Jade. I know about your mother's medical bills. And it keeps my daughter safe from people who want to turn her into a trophy for their social standing."
The laughter dies. Her eyes go hard, the sunshine replaced by a cold, protective fire.
"You ran a background check on me? You went digging into my mother's life because you needed a pawn?"
"I ran a check because I don't trust anyone with my daughter."
I round the table. Nothing between us now but a foot of air. I can smell her, the same scent that's been ghosting through the main house for weeks. The same scent that has been ghosting through my sleep. I can see the rapid rise and fall of her chest under that plum sweater.
I keep my hands at my sides. I have spent five weeks keeping my hands at my sides. I have gotten very good at it.
"I found a solution that benefits both of us. You need money. I need a wife. A contract. Nothing more."
"A contract." She stands up.
She's shorter than me, but she doesn't back down. She moves into my space until I can see the gold flecks in her dark eyes. Chin tilted up. Not afraid. She has never, in the five weeks I have known her, been afraid of me.
I don't know what to do with that.
"You want to buy a wife? Is that how the great Graham Sterling solves his problems? You just throw a check at them until they stop being problems?"
"I'm protecting my family."
Close enough now that the heat of her body reaches mine through the sweater. The skin at the base of her throat is soft, and I am, against every survival instinct I have, thinking about my mouth on it.
"The Whitlocks have the judge in their pocket. They have my arrest records. They are going to take Iris away from this house and put her in a penthouse in Manhattan where she'll be raised by a rotating cast of nannies who don't know her favorite color or the name of her stuffed owl."
The flicker of hesitation in her eyes. I've hit the mark. She loves Iris. In five weeks she's become the only thing holding that little girl together.
"And what about me? What happens when the contract is over? When the judge is satisfied and the merger is signed, do I just get a nice severance package and a polite shove out the door?"
"The contract will be for one year. You'll have a separate bedroom.
No physical expectations. In public, we are a devoted couple.
In private, we are business partners. At the end of the year, you walk away with enough money to buy your mother the best care in the country and a house of your own.
No more cleaning for the Sterlings. Ever again. "
She looks at the stack of bills on her table. Then back at me.
"Separate rooms." Her voice drops to a low challenge. "And I set the boundaries. I'm not a prop, Graham. I'm not something you pull out of a box when the cameras are rolling and tuck away when you're done."
"Agreed."
The urge to touch her is a dull ache behind my ribs. I keep my hands at my sides.
"I'll have the lawyers draw up the paperwork tomorrow. It will be ironclad. Your interests will be protected."
Jade looks at me for a long time, searching my face for something I'm not sure I can give her. Then she nods.
"One year. And Graham? If you ever use my mother as leverage again, the deal is off. I don't care how many judges you have to fight."
"Understood."
I turn to leave. Something makes me stop at the door.
She hasn't moved from where she's standing. Her eyes are fixed on the middle distance. Her right hand has drifted to the base of her ring finger without her noticing, her thumb pressing against the bare skin there. A gesture so small and unconscious she would deny it if I named it.
She's already doing the math.
"You forgot something, Sterling." Her voice drips with sarcasm. She twirls the pencil between her fingers, a small dangerous smile at the corners of her mouth.
"What?"
"You didn't even ask me if I would like a ring. If we're doing this, you better buy me something obscene. I have a reputation to uphold as a gold-digger, don't I?"
"You'll have the biggest diamond in New York. Try not to choke on the irony."
For the first time in months I feel the ghost of a smile tugging at my own mouth.
I walk back to the main house through the dark, the cold air clearing my head.
I sit at my desk and open a new folder on my laptop. I title it The Sterling Solution.
A good name. It sounds final. It sounds like I've won.
But I keep coming back to the way Jade looked in that plum sweater, and the way her laughter felt like a physical blow to my chest.
This contract is going to be the most expensive thing I've ever signed. And I'm not talking about the money.
I close the folder. I lean back in the chair and look at the ceiling.
I have just proposed marriage to a woman I have spent five weeks systematically not looking at across the kitchen island. Separate bedrooms. No physical expectations. A contract designed specifically to keep my hands at my sides for another twelve months.
I have, in writing, agreed to spend a year sleeping forty feet from her and not crossing the hallway.
I do not know who I am trying to fool.