Chapter Seven

A Fever Night

I didn't tell anyone I felt unwell. That's a habit from years of running a studio on a skeleton budget — you don't stop until you physically can't move. By the time I understood that the headache and the chill weren't going away, I was already on the floor of the studio bathroom.

Lily found me. Lily called the penthouse.

I'd told her to call a car, not a person. I found out later that she hadn't.

I was on the studio couch with a blanket when Lucas arrived. He was still in a suit. It was four in the afternoon — he'd been in meetings. I know because I heard him on the phone as he walked in, ending a call in a way that suggested the person on the other end was not pleased.

He crouched down in front of me.

His hand went to my forehead without hesitation. No preamble. Just his palm, cool and certain, against my skin.

"One-oh-two," he said, like he had a thermometer built in.

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He stood. Looked at Lily. "Do you have ibuprofen?"

He managed the next four hours with the same manner he managed everything — efficiently, without fuss, without comfort that felt performed. He got me to the car. He got me to the penthouse. He found the medicine in the bathroom cabinet, brought water, adjusted the thermostat.

He didn't flutter. He didn't hover. He just handled things.

By midnight my fever had climbed instead of fallen. I surfaced from a restless half-sleep to find the room dark and Lucas sitting in the chair by the window, a document open on his tablet.

"You're still here," I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"You're still sick."

"I don't need — you don't have to—"

"Sophia." Quiet. Final. "Go back to sleep."

I looked at him for a moment. In the low light he looked different — less composed, somehow. Or maybe it was the fever.

"You had a meeting," I said. "I heard you cancel something."

A pause. "It wasn't important."

Something about that sentence — the flatness of it, the complete absence of resentment — made something shift behind my ribs. I closed my eyes before my face could say something I hadn't decided yet.

He crossed the room once more to check my temperature — his hand again, efficient, impersonal. Except that he didn't move it immediately. A moment longer than necessary.

Then he went back to his chair.

I woke at six to gray morning light and the sound of rain.

He was still there.

Asleep in the chair. Fully dressed. Head tilted slightly back. The tablet dark in his hand.

He'd stayed the entire night.

I lay very still and looked at him and tried not to think about what it meant that the sight of him sleeping in that chair made my chest do something it had absolutely no business doing.

Remember what it is, I told myself.

But looking at him, I was already less certain.

Chapter Eight

The Return

The Meridian Fashion Preview was the kind of event I normally loved — a hundred designers competing for a hundred buyers' attention, the air thick with ambition and perfume and the particular high of work you've made with your hands on display for strangers to judge.

Tonight I was distracted.

Lily and I were at the far end of the venue when I saw him.

Ethan Carter moved through the crowd like he'd rehearsed it — which, knowing him, he had. Tall, easy smile, the kind of confidence that reads as charm until you've seen what it conceals. He was heading toward me with the particular focus of a man who'd decided something.

I considered leaving.

I didn't leave.

"Soph." His voice landed like a hand on my shoulder. Familiar. Presumptuous.

"Ethan." I kept mine level.

"You look—" He exhaled. "God. You look incredible."

"Thank you. Enjoy the preview." I turned.

"Wait." His hand caught my arm. Not hard. But there. "Please. Just five minutes."

Lily, beside me, had gone very still.

I turned back because walking away felt like running, and I was done running.

"I made a mistake," he said. "The biggest mistake of my life, and I know you know that." His voice dropped. "I never stopped thinking about you. Not for a day."

"Ethan—"

"You're married to a contract, Sophia. Everyone knows what that is." His eyes held mine, and for a second I saw the man I'd loved at twenty-one — the earnest version, before ambition calcified him. "It doesn't have to be permanent."

I was composing my reply when I felt it.

A hand at my waist.

Warm. Steady. Laid there with the absolute certainty of ownership.

I hadn't heard him arrive. I hadn't known he was coming.

Lucas stood at my shoulder. Not in front of me — beside me. In the particular way of someone who is not protecting you from a threat but simply making a fact known.

"Carter." One word. Silk over steel.

The warmth in Ethan's face closed off. His hand dropped from my arm.

"Lancaster." He managed a neutral tone. Barely.

Lucas didn't say anything else. He didn't need to. His hand at my waist said everything his voice declined to.

Ethan looked between us once. Then he nodded, something shuttering in his expression, and moved back into the crowd.

Lucas's hand stayed at my waist for three more seconds. Then it withdrew.

I turned to look at him.

"You didn't have to do that," I said, keeping my voice quiet.

"He was bothering my wife." Flat. Final. Like it was simply a statement of logic.

He turned his attention to the nearest display piece — a sculptural jacket in architectural white — and studied it with genuine focus, as if the entire interaction had already been filed and closed.

I stood beside him and tried to identify the feeling that had taken up residence in my chest since the moment his hand found my waist.

My wife, he'd said.

Two words. Zero sentiment. Pure contract.

I had absolutely no explanation for why they didn't feel like nothing.

Chapter Nine

Pretending in Love

The Harrington Charity Gala was one of three annual events where the Lancaster name was required. Clara briefed me: black tie, nine hundred guests, minimum forty minutes of visible marital harmony.

Lucas and I arrived together, which I'd expected.

What I hadn't expected was how natural it would feel.

He guided me through the entrance with one hand at the small of my back — and I knew it was performance, I understood the function of it, I had signed a contract that described this exact gesture — but his hand was warm through the silk of my dress, and the pressure was just confident enough to feel like intention.

We were good at this. Scarily good.

He laughed at two things I said. Both times, the laugh was quiet, private, directed at me like I'd said something that had caught him off guard. The first time I thought he was performing it. The second time, I wasn't sure.

He remembered which wine I preferred and had it waiting when I returned from a conversation with the gala chair. He fielded a pointed question about our timeline with the kind of easy deflection that only works when you're genuinely relaxed, not rehearsed.

And in the third hour, when a photographer asked us to stand together for the society page, his arm came around my waist and he leaned his head just slightly toward mine — a small, private incline that looked, in the photograph, exactly like a husband who was aware of no one else in the room.

I was aware of his warmth for the rest of the evening.

The car home was quiet. The city moved past the windows.

"You're better at this than I expected," he said.

I looked at him. "At pretending?"

A pause. "At being present."

It was such a specific thing to say that I didn't have an immediate answer.

"So are you," I said finally.

He looked out the window. The city light moved over his face.

We reached the building. The car stopped. He got out first and offered me his hand — habit, or performance, or something that was beginning to blur the line between the two.

I took it.

At the penthouse door he kept hold of my hand for a moment. Not long. The lobby cameras were behind us. No reason for it except—

He let go when the door opened.

Inside, the apartment was quiet and dark except for the city below.

I stood in the entryway and counted back.

Three seconds. His hand in mine, inside a building, with no audience.

I went to my room.

I did not think about it.

I thought about it for an hour before I fell asleep.