Chapter 2 - THE CEO WHO PAID FOR A WIFE
Eleven months earlier, none of this had seemed possible.
At the time, Laurel was not the woman whose footsteps I could recognize from another room.
She was not the person who knew I hated tomatoes but ate them politely in public.
She did not know I woke at 4:17 every morning when I was worried.
I did not know she cried when she was angry but almost never when she was sad.
She was simply a woman sitting across from me in a conference room asking whether I had completely lost my mind.
“You want to rent a wife?”
“I wouldn’t phrase it that way.”
“How would you phrase it?”
“A mutually beneficial marital agreement.”
“That is how a lawyer says rent a wife.”
My attorney coughed into his fist.
I ignored him.
Laurel leaned back in her chair.
She was thirty-one then, with shoulder-length auburn hair, pale green eyes, and a streak of sawdust across the sleeve of her gray sweater.
She had come directly from Quinn Restoration, the furniture and architectural woodworking shop her father had founded outside Boston.
I knew this because I had researched her.
Laurel had researched me too.
That became obvious quickly.
“Adrian Mercer,” she said. “CEO of Mercer North Holdings. Estimated personal worth somewhere between obscene and deeply unnecessary.”
“My financial position isn’t relevant.”
“It’s relevant when you’re offering a stranger three hundred thousand dollars to marry you.”
“Four hundred.”
She stared at me.
“Did you just raise the price because I insulted you?”
Because I respect directness.”
“That sounds unhealthy.”
Despite myself, I nearly smiled.
Nearly.
My problem was simple.
My late grandfather had founded the company I now ran, and like many brilliant men, he had also possessed a talent for controlling people from beyond the grave.
Twenty-four percent of our voting shares remained in a family trust.
According to one absurd clause written decades earlier, those shares would transfer fully to me at thirty-nine provided I had established what the document called a stable family household.
The trustees had interpreted that to mean marriage.
If the condition wasn’t met, the shares would remain fragmented among extended relatives for another decade.
A rival investor had already begun buying influence among them.
I needed control before the annual vote.
I needed a wife.
I did not need love.
That distinction mattered to me.
Laurel needed money.
Her father had died fourteen months earlier, leaving behind a workshop, nine employees, forty years of beautiful work—and considerably more debt than anyone knew.
A developer had offered to buy the property.
Laurel refused.
“If I sell,” she told me during our second meeting, “nine people lose their jobs and everything my father built becomes luxury condos named after trees they cut down to build them.”
“So you’re willing to marry a stranger instead?”
“For eleven months.”
“Twelve.”
“Eleven.”
“Why?”
“My father’s shop goes to auction in eleven months if I can’t refinance.”
I studied her.
“You planned that answer.”
“I plan most things.”
“So do I.”
“I noticed.”
Our lawyers produced a contract.
Separate bedrooms.
Separate finances.
No expectation of intimacy.
No children.
No claim on each other’s property beyond the agreed payment.
Public appearances when necessary.
Complete confidentiality.
Automatic termination after twelve months.
Laurel read every page.
Then she circled Clause Nine in red ink.
It stated that we would behave with reasonable affection in public.
“What does reasonable affection mean?”
“Hand-holding. Occasional physical contact.”
“Do I have to laugh at your jokes?”
“No.”
“Good. That would cost extra.”
I should have known then.
Nobody had ever spoken to me the way Laurel did.
Most people adjusted themselves when they entered my world.
They lowered their voices.
Straightened their backs.
Waited for signals.
Laurel moved into my Beacon Hill townhouse and immediately complained that it looked like “a luxury hotel designed for recently divorced vampires.”
On her third day she replaced the white orchids in the dining room with wildflowers.
On the fifth, she rearranged my kitchen.
On the sixth, she discovered I owned a piano.
“You play?”
“No.”
“Then why do you have it?”
“My mother did.”
Something in my voice stopped her from making a joke.
She touched one key gently.
A single note filled the room.
“I’m sorry.”
“She died when I was twenty-four.”
Laurel nodded.
She never asked more.
That was another thing I learned about her.
She could be nosy about coffee, furniture, politics at dinner, my terrible habit of checking email during movies.
But when she found a locked door inside someone, she did not kick it open.
She waited.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
We became convincing.
Too convincing.
At dinners, she touched my arm naturally.
At charity events, I found myself searching rooms for her.
At home, we developed routines no contract had required.
She made coffee first.
I cooked on Sundays.
Badly.
She worked three days each week at her father’s shop.
I started coming home before eight.
Then before seven.
One Thursday, my assistant stared at me as I closed my laptop at 5:43.
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“You’re leaving.”
“I’m aware.”
“Before sunset.”
“Daniel.”
He raised both hands.
“I’m just documenting history.”
I told myself I wanted to maintain the appearance of a marriage.
The lie became harder to believe when there was nobody watching.
One night I came home and found Laurel asleep at the dining table surrounded by invoices from the workshop.
A cup of tea had gone cold beside her elbow.
Her hair covered half her face.
I stood there longer than necessary.
Then I carried her upstairs.
She woke halfway.
“Adrian?”
“You fell asleep.”
“I can walk.”
“You’re barefoot.”
“My feet still function without shoes.”
“Go back to sleep.”
Her head settled against my shoulder.
Then she whispered something I pretended not to hear.
May you like
“You’re nicer when nobody’s looking.”
I was awake until three that morning.
