Chapter Three Terms, Conditions, and One Unacceptable Bed
Chapter Three
Terms, Conditions, and One Unacceptable Bed
SADIE
There were bad proposals, and then there were proposals delivered six minutes after your fiancé abandoned you on a livestream.
“No,” I said.
Beckett did not flinch.
That irritated me.
A normal man would have shown surprise, disappointment, or at least mild concern that his emergency bride had rejected him before emergency marriage could begin. Beckett Vale merely looked at me as if no were useful data.
“Understood,” he said.
“That’s it?”
“You declined.”
“You asked me to marry you for thirty days.”
“For campaign purposes.”
“The distinction is not helping.”
He picked up his phone. “I will correct the public statement and have the network release you from the feed.”
The simple acceptance should have relieved me.
Instead, panic moved through my chest with the quiet efficiency of water finding a crack.
“Wait.”
Beckett stopped.
He did not smile. I appreciated that almost as much as I resented the proposal.
“I said no to marrying you,” I told him. “I did not say you were allowed to cancel Bellwether.”
“Those outcomes may not be separable.”
“You should never say may not be separable to a woman who reads contracts for sport.”
“Do you?”
“No. But I have developed several hobbies under financial duress.”
The wall still showed the Martian sunrise. Gold light moved over the red canyon at a pace so calm it felt insulting.
My phone vibrated again.
Lila.
I answered on video and propped the phone against the bowl of pink sweets.
My sister’s face appeared above Bellwether’s cramped conference table.
Behind her, the old brass letters from our first office spelled BELLWET because the H and E had fallen during a staff party and no one had found the screws.
Lila’s dark curls were pulled into the kind of knot that meant she had forgotten breakfast. Her eyes moved from me to Beckett.
“Is that the expensive man?”
“I prefer Beckett,” he said.
“He can hear you,” I told her.
“I assumed billionaires came with strong audio.”
Beckett’s mouth moved again. It was definitely a smile this time. Very small. Very inconvenient.
“Lila, I need the exact number,” I said.
Her expression changed. “Sadie.”
“Not the number we use when we are trying to avoid upsetting each other. The real number.”
“You were dumped eleven minutes ago.”
“Thirteen.”
“That correction is why I worry about you.”
“How much of the Mars advance can we return today?”
Lila looked down. That was the answer. I needed her to say it anyway.
“How much?”
“Eight percent,” she said.
The room became very quiet.
I had expected bad.
Eight percent was not bad. Eight percent was a small decorative plant placed on the grave.
“And if they accelerate the remaining amount?” I asked.
“We miss payroll next Friday. Archive storage locks us out at the end of the month. Print production stops before the winter issue.”
Six employees.
Forty-two years of photographs, notebooks, maps, interviews, and travel reporting.
My mother’s first issue, assembled with rubber cement and optimism, sat in a climate-controlled archive we could no longer afford to enter.
“Don’t do this for the magazine,” Lila said.
“I have not agreed to anything.”
“Your voice just went flat.”
Beckett looked at me.
I disliked how quickly both of them recognized the same defense.
“You aren’t marrying a stranger because Trent is a human coupon code,” Lila continued. “We will figure something else out.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That isn’t a plan.”
“Neither is marrying a man whose idea of warmth is probably a towel schedule.”
“The towels are available on request,” Beckett said.
Lila blinked. “Was that a joke?”
“Unclear,” I told her.
I turned the phone toward myself again.
“I am not sacrificing myself,” I said. “I am asking questions.”
“There should be someone in the room whose only job is protecting you.”
“You’re in the room.”
Her face softened. “Then stop me if I start throwing things.”
“You’re on another continent.”
“I have excellent range.”
I looked at Beckett. “I want the contract.”
He sent it to the display screen without comment.
Twenty-three pages appeared over the Martian canyon.
“You drafted twenty-three pages in four minutes?”
“The original substitution language already existed.”
“For what possible reason?”
“People become ill. Couples separate. Someone once discovered a secret family at a weather delay.”
“Hospitality is beautiful.”
“It is rarely dull.”
The document carried Vale Orbit’s logo, the network’s logo, and a campaign title I disliked more every time I saw it. The last page already contained a blank line beside TEMPORARY PROMOTIONAL SPOUSE.
I pointed at it. “Spouse.”
“The network’s term.”
“Not wife?”
“You objected to the campaign title.”
“I object to many things. It is one of my more consistent qualities.”
His gaze held mine. “I changed the term.”
It was a small thing.
I did not want to notice it.
“Fine,” I said. “First rule. No false declarations of love, no invented history, and no suggestion that we were secretly attracted before today.”
“Agreed.”
“No scripted kisses.”
“Agreed.”
“No unscripted kisses arranged to look accidental.”
One eyebrow lifted. “How would I arrange an unscripted kiss?”
“You own a honeymoon resort. I assume there are people with clipboards dedicated to plausible collisions.”
“There are not.”
“Put it in writing.”
He opened the contract on his phone and added the line.
“No touching for a photograph, activity, interview, or sponsor request unless we ask each other first.”
His gaze lifted from the screen.
For the first time since he proposed, Beckett looked less like a contract with shoulders and more like a man who understood why I needed to hear the answer.
“Agreed,” he said.
“And no questions about Trent outside one factual statement today. I do not owe the campaign a daily heartbreak update.”
“You do not owe anyone that.”
The certainty in his voice reached somewhere I had not protected quickly enough.
I looked back at the contract.
“Add it.”
He did.
I watched his thumbs move.
“Second, Vale Orbit does not approve, edit, delay, or suppress anything I publish in Bellwether.”
“You will observe the privacy rights of staff and guests.”
“Obviously.”
“Then agreed.”
“Even if I hate the resort.”
“You already asked me that.”
“I am checking whether the answer survives contact with paperwork.”
He added the clause.
“Third, no hidden cameras. Anywhere.”
“The resort does not use hidden cameras.”
“Then this should be your easiest yes.”
“It is.”
“I want a map of every camera, a physical indicator when each one is active, and one room inside the resort where no recording is permitted under any circumstances.”
His fingers paused.
“The villa has private areas.”
“I said room, not area. A door. A lock. No network access. No sponsor products. No one enters without permission.”
“You want an office.”
“I want a place where I am not merchandise.”
Something in his expression became still.
Not cold. More attentive than that.
“Agreed,” he said. “Priya will select the room.”
“I select it.”
“You have not seen the property.”
“Then Priya gives me three options.”
“Agreed.”
I heard Lila exhale through the phone.
“Fourth, I get a private bedroom.”
Beckett looked at the display.
“Is there a problem?”
“The Solstice Villa has one bedroom.”
I waited for the rest of the sentence.
There was no rest.
“You built the signature honeymoon villa with one bedroom.”
“That is generally how honeymoon villas work.”
“Hotels understand doors, Beckett.”
“There is a sitting room.”
“Does it have a door?”
“No.”
“Then it is furniture.”
Lila leaned closer to her camera. “Ask how many beds.”
“We aren’t there yet.”
“I feel we’re urgently there.”
I held up one finger to silence her.
“We will return to lodging,” I told Beckett. “Fifth, staff protections.”
“Already in the contract.”
“No employee is required to participate in romantic content. No one loses hours, housing, bonuses, or advancement for refusing the camera. Staff can speak to Bellwether without management present. Any campaign schedule change that creates overtime requires written approval from Priya, not you.”
“Why not me?”
“Because she is the general manager and you are the man currently holding a shuttle for a promotional marriage.”
His jaw shifted.
“You do not trust my judgment.”
“I trust your judgment to be affected by your interests. Mine too. That is why contracts exist.”
He studied me for a long moment.
“Agreed,” he said.
“If a livestream goes badly, the campaign cannot blame a staff member publicly to protect either of us.”
“That would violate our employment policy.”
“Then add it.”
“Do you intend to convert every existing policy into contract language?”
“Only the ones people forget when cameras turn on.”
His attention sharpened again. He added the protection without arguing. That surprised me.
I had expected him to defend control because men like Beckett usually considered control a personality rather than a behavior.
He changed the contract instead.
“Sixth, a clean exit.”
“Define clean.”
“No use of my face, voice, name, writing, or personal history after the campaign without separate permission. No suggestion that Bellwether belongs to Vale Orbit. No post-residency exclusivity. No morality clause vague enough to punish me for telling the truth.”
“The completion requirement remains.”
“If you breach the privacy, editorial, or staff clauses, I leave without penalty.”
“The same applies if you knowingly violate guest privacy or publish confidential staff information.”
“Agreed.”
“If neither of us breaches?”
I looked at Lila’s face on the phone.
Eight percent.
“Then we complete the thirty days.”
The words hurt less than I expected.
That frightened me more than if they had hurt.
Beckett added the clauses and sent the revised draft to the network lawyers outside.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“Do not use that tone in the contract.”
“I was not aware I had.”
“Your punctuation is judgmental.”
I stepped closer to the display and scrolled back through the new language. There it was. Section five, paragraph three.
“You wrote reasonable privacy request.”
“Yes.”
“Remove reasonable.”
“Why?”
“Because the person denying the request always believes denial is reasonable.”
He considered that, then deleted the word.
I found three more problems. He fixed two and argued the third until Lila threatened to email Priya directly.
The network executive knocked once and opened the door without waiting.
“The launch director needs a final answer.”
“We are reviewing,” I said.
“The shuttle has been held nineteen minutes.”
Beckett did not look away from me. “Continue holding it.”
The executive left with the careful expression of a man trying not to calculate the price of each second aloud.
The final page waited. TEMPORARY PROMOTIONAL SPOUSE: SADIE BELL TEMPORARY PROMOTIONAL SPOUSE: BECKETT VALE I had never seen our names together before.
They looked absurdly balanced.
“This is not a legal marriage,” I said.
“No.”
“You do not get authority over my work, finances, medical decisions, travel, or name.”
“No.”
“I remain Sadie Bell.”
“I would not expect otherwise.”
“And the audience is told today that we are strangers entering a temporary arrangement.”
“Before boarding.”
I looked at my sister.
Lila’s eyes were wet.
“You can still say no,” she whispered.
“I know.”
That mattered.
It mattered more than the contract, the money, and the wall pretending sunrise on Mars was something serene.
I was not choosing Beckett.
I was choosing time. Thirty days to protect Bellwether, six jobs, and the archive my mother had built before I was born.
I was choosing a terrible plan over no plan at all.
I was also choosing the man who had accepted every boundary I could name, corrected his own overreach when I called it out, and removed a judgmental adjective without pretending he had thought of it first.
That did not make him safe. It made him less easy to dismiss. I was not sure which was more dangerous.
“Send me the final version,” I said.
Beckett did. I signed. He signed beneath me. The display changed instantly. A pink banner appeared above the contract.
WELCOME, SADIE AND BECKETT. YOUR HONEYMOON BEGINS NOW.
“That is aggressive,” I said.
“I did not approve that screen.”
“I am beginning to suspect you approve very little inside your own company.”
“That is inaccurate.”
“I look forward to reviewing the evidence.”
Lila cleared her throat.
“The beds.”
I turned to Beckett.
He looked almost regretful.
“How many?” I asked.
“One.”