Chapter 5

Chloe's POV

"Did Brooks explain why I asked you here?"

"He did." My voice came out of me fine, which surprised me.

He tipped his chin at the low table. The document was lying there, and I recognized the soft corner of the folder before I saw anything printed on it. He'd read it. All of it, clearly, and more than once.

"My mother doesn't do anything quietly." He turned the cigarette a quarter turn between two fingers. "How much did she give you?"

"Money for my father's company, in installments. And a million, to me personally. Living costs separate."

"Thank you." He said it like a man closing a file. "Now go back and tell her you've changed your mind."

I'd expected a negotiation. I hadn't expected that.

"She didn't ask you," I said. "That's what you're telling me."

"She didn't ask me. She decided the rest of my life and put it in a folder, and the only part I get to control is how it ends." He set the unlit cigarette down on the table and left it there. "I'll deal with my mother. The support for your father's company stands."

"That's a very handsome sentence from a man doing something decent."

"It's a clean arrangement."

I looked at him and something in me went quiet. Eight years. Eight years there had been one thing in my head — a hand that had saved my mother. And that hand belonged to somebody who talked like this.

"You think I'm something bought," I said.

"You'd be getting a husband who won't live long." He said it as flatly as the money. "You've done the arithmetic. Don't tell me you haven't, because I read the same terms and those numbers only have one explanation. Dead pays better than living."

The worst of it was that he was close. Close enough that I had to stand inside it for a while.

"The money matters to me," I said. "I'm not going to stand here and tell you it doesn't."

"Then we understand each other."

"We don't, actually." I took a step forward. "What makes you so sure I've got no interest in you at all?"

That was the first time he really looked up at me.

Then he lifted one hand and turned it over.

"Look at me," he said. "Not the one in the photograph. This. You're marrying the rest of this, so take a good look first."

I should have gone back to the chair across from him and told him he was a sanctimonious bastard, told him I'd think about it, and walked out — the way Rachel had said.

Instead I took off my coat, dropped it on the arm of the sofa, went around the low table, and sat down beside him.

His eyes followed me, and once I was sitting next to him the last bit of courtesy in them was gone.

"You want me to believe it that fast?"

The cushion sank his way. I turned, one leg bent up on the sofa, my knee a little distance from his leg.

Closer than I'd pictured.

I could smell the faint detergent on his shirt and a trace of tobacco. His collar was open, showing a strip of pale skin, and at that distance I noticed he'd been holding his shoulders tight the whole time, breathing shallow.

The line I'd prepared didn't come out.

He saw it. "Changed your mind?"

I raised my eyes and met his. "Not yet."

"My mother has good taste," he said. "At least you know what to do before you take the money."

My fingers curled where they lay on my knee.

He noticed, and something cold and knowing crossed his eyes, as though he'd finally found the proof that I was exactly the kind of woman he'd taken me for.

I should have stood up.

Instead I reached out.

My fingertips landed on the top button of his shirt. He glanced down at it and didn't move.

That frightened me more than if he'd caught my hand straight away.

"Did she tell you to do this?" he asked.

"No."

"Then it's your own idea."

"Yes."

After that one word I noticed my breathing had gone uneven.

He stayed back against the sofa, still watching me. No invitation, no stopping me, and that look of waiting to see how far I'd go made me want to wipe the certainty off his face.

I undid one button.

The cloth gave, and my fingertips brushed the bare skin of his chest.

His body went rigid.

Before I'd even worked out what happened, he had my wrist.

"Enough—"

The word broke off in his throat.

His hand didn't let go.

The eyes that had been mocking me a moment ago came up hard and fixed on me. His breath stopped for half a beat, and his chest rose once, heavily, under my fingers.

I froze too.

A low sound came out of his chest.

"Elias?"

His gaze dropped to my hand.

My fingertips were still on him, and his skin was so cold I wanted to pull back. He gripped harder instead, as if he had no idea he was still holding me.

I tried to move my wrist.

The pain made me wince.

He realized, let go of my wrist, and pushed me away.

My knee slid off the cushion and my heel hit the floor.

He was standing too.

He'd moved too fast, and he had to put a hand on the back of the sofa before he was steady.

I got up as well, and before my hand was even raised he looked over at me.

"Don't touch me."

I stopped.

He looked down and did up the button I'd opened. He missed it the first time and got it the second.

There was nothing left in the room but distant music.

I rubbed my wrist. He saw it, and his eyes stopped there for a moment and moved away quickly.

"What you just—"

"Go back and tell my mother the engagement is cancelled."

Colder than before.

I looked at him. He wasn't looking at me anymore, and his knuckles had gone white.

"I haven't agreed to cancel."

He finally raised his eyes.

"Is that money so hard to give up?"

That was uglier than anything he'd said yet.

Because a few seconds earlier I'd thought something had happened between us. At least for one moment, when he was looking at me, he hadn't been thinking about the agreement.

"You can go on thinking that," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"I'm not going to marry you, Chloe. Keep cooperating with her and you won't get anything else out of it."

It was the first time he'd used my name.

"I'll handle what comes after. All you have to do is tell her you don't want it."

He picked his phone up off the table and walked past me.

Before the door closed I thought he'd say one more thing.

He didn't.

I stood there a while before I bent down for my coat.

That small patch of skin at his collar had been cold in a way no living person's should be. But when he had hold of me I'd felt that hard rise in his chest clearly enough.

I didn't know what it was.

I only knew I didn't want to cancel anymore.

He'd walked fast that day, back then. I'd only had time to say thank you to his back.

My mother died anyway. But he had stopped the car and put out his hand, and that doesn't stop counting because of how it ended.

I had no way to save him, and I didn't like the way he'd just spoken to me.

But I wanted to be with him for the last stretch of his life.