Chapter 5 CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Xavier POV

"Marry me?" she blurted.

I wasn't sure what I expected from Marie Montez but a marriage proposal off the bat had not been in the cards.

I was barely able to say a word before she flushed.

"Oh my God, forget I said that," she hissed as she grabbed her bag and fled.

"Wait—" I muttered, moving to stand, but she was out the door before I could get halfway off the chair. The door swung shut behind her and she was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

I collapsed back into my seat, my hand still half raised from trying to respond.

Two women near the counter who'd turned to watch her go looked back at me with varying degrees of pity. The waiter paused mid-stride, tray balanced across his palm, clearly debating whether something had just gone catastrophically wrong and if he was being paid enough to actually do anything about it.

I waved him off for both our peace of mind.

I looked at the empty chair across from me, then at my own coffee, untouched and going cold.

She'd asked me to marry her and then fled like the building was on fire. She could have at least waited for my response.

I sat there for a long moment, replaying the moment in detail, thinking back to the exact look on her face in the half second before she'd bolted.

Apart from the embarrassment which had washed over her at the last minute, she had looked more surprised at herself.

It was like she had never done something like this before and it stunned her. I found that I was smiling.

It wasn't the reaction I would have predicted from myself an hour ago, and definitely not from a woman I was meeting for the first time.

When I'd investigated Marie Montez I'd barely read the file before getting bored. She was a normal woman, with a normal life, nothing that would make me worry about her having my child.

Now that I'd met her in person, I had one more thing to add about her — she had nerves of steel.

I respected that.

In fact, now that I thought about it, it didn't seem like such a bad idea to me. My mother had paraded no fewer than four women in front of me over the past two years, each one perfectly composed, perfectly bred, and when they didn't work she'd fallen back on Tess.

I couldn't stand any of them. Every conversation felt rehearsed, like watching someone recite lines they'd practiced in a mirror that morning.

Marie Montez was more honest. Maybe it was because she was a working class woman instead of a socialite.

Watching her panic her way through an entire lunch and then ask me to marry her — it was, against every reasonable instinct I had, refreshing.

I paid for both coffees and went back to the office.

---

"You're smiling at the quarterly projections," Daniel said, setting another folder on my desk with caution.

He'd worked for me long enough to know when something was off.

"Should I be concerned?"

"No."

"You've been smiling since you got back from lunch. Is it a girl?" he drawled, and I glared up at him.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"So it is a girl," he whispered, leaning in, because as it turned out, he didn't have to be anywhere.

"It's none of your fucking business," I grumbled, and he laughed, clearly not waiting for an explanation I had no intention of giving him.

"I definitely hit a nerve. Who is it? It can't be Tess—" he mumbled under his breath.

"Wait, it can't be the woman you asked me to investigate, right? What was her name again?" he huffed, and I glared.

"Don't we have a meeting right now?" I hissed, and he nodded, grabbing his folder.

We walked to the boardroom but the meeting that followed did not go well, or at least not by my usual standards. I sat through forty minutes of quarterly margins and supply chain figures only half absorbed, which was unlike me.

I prided myself on being the kind of man who didn't let his attention wander. I'd learned from as early as nineteen how to filter out the noise of people.

Today though I wasn't fighting with the external. I was fighting with my own mind.

Marie Montez was a fascination I couldn't stop thinking of.

Her soft words as she'd whispered, almost embarrassed, "I guess no one leaves the family," reminded me of myself — that quiet resignation I recognized because I'd worn it myself, once.

"Mr. Richards?"

I blinked. Six people were looking at me, mid-presentation, waiting.

"Continue," I said, with authority that suggested I'd been listening the entire time. Daniel caught on, grinning widely. I would have tossed something at his head if it weren't unbecoming.

By five o'clock I'd read the same email three times without absorbing a word of it.

By six I'd given up pretending, grabbing my keys from my desk.

I made it home an hour later.

"Xavier, I want to talk to you about Tess, can you—"

"Mom, later," I called out, jogging up the stairs as I pulled out my phone.

I collapsed at the edge of my bed, looking at the number I'd saved from Miss Craven's file days ago, never expecting to actually use it for anything beyond a polite, businesslike conversation about logistics and timelines.

This didn't feel businesslike anymore.

I knew what I was about to say and do would sound absurd. Two near strangers discussing marriage like it was a line item on a quarterly report — and then I thought about her face again.

I wanted just once to have something for myself that was my choice, without considering anyone else's feelings.

I didn't particularly care how absurd it sounded.

I dialed before I could talk myself out of it.

It rang once.

Twice.

She picked up but remained silent. Al

l I could hear was the sound of her, slightly breathless, like she'd been running.

I opened my mouth.

"Marie—"