Chapter 3: The announcement

Nadia's coffee goes everywhere.

She's at her desk Monday morning, pulling up the week's event checklist, when James appears and says, "Come with me." Not a question. He's already walking toward the conference room where the executives sit, and Nadia does what she's learned to do around James Whitmore: follow.

The coffee mug slips. Hot brown liquid spreads across her keyboard.

"Oh, come on," she mutters, grabbing tissues. She doesn't even bother cleaning it. Whatever's about to happen, her keyboard casualties will be the least consequential thing.

Three partners are already seated around the long glass table. Evelyn Chen, Marcus Webb, and Derek Marsh—the three names on the letterhead of Compass Events. James sits at the head. He doesn't offer her a chair, but he glances at her in a way that means sit. She does.

"Nadia and I are engaged," he says.

The room goes silent in the way rooms go silent when someone has just said something impossible.

Evelyn's coffee cup pauses halfway to her lips. Marcus stops mid-sentence to someone on the phone and actually hangs up. Derek laughs—an actual laugh—and then stops when nobody joins him.

"I'm sorry, what?" Evelyn sets down her coffee carefully, like it might explode.

"We're getting married," James adds. His voice has the same texture as always: flat, factual, like he's reporting quarterly earnings. "The wedding is in September. We wanted to tell you before it becomes general knowledge."

Nadia nods. She's nodded so many times in the last forty-eight hours that her neck is starting to develop muscle memory for it.

Marcus leans forward. "How long has this been happening?"

"Six months," James says.

Nadia says, "Five," at the exact same time, then quickly corrects. "Basically six months. Time flies."

James doesn't look at her, but something in his jaw tightens. It's a tell—tiny, quick, the kind of thing nobody else would catch. Nadia catches it. She files it away.

"Where did you meet?" Derek's eyes are sharp now, calculating. Derek's always calculating.

"Here," James says. "At a client event."

"The Carver gala," Nadia adds, because that's what they'd decided. It was six months ago. It's verifiable. And it's technically where James stared at her for an entire night while she coordinated the seating chart. "He spilled a drink on my dress."

"Burgundy," James says.

"Burgundy," Nadia confirms.

She's aware of how natural this sounds. Too natural. Like they've been practicing, which they have, but not in the way it appears. They've been practicing through text messages at two in the morning. Through careful conversations where James seems to absorb entire emotional landscapes in single sentences and then hand them back to her rearranged into something that makes sense.

Evelyn's expression has shifted from shock to calculation. Nadia knows that look. It's the look of someone tallying up optics and professional image. "This is quite sudden."

"We wanted to be sure," James says. "Before we went public."

"And now you're sure," Marcus states.

"Now we're sure," Nadia says, and she means it in a way that probably reads wrong because the thing is, she is sure. She's sure that James Whitmore has never asked her for anything she wasn't able to give, and she's sure that this week at the lake house will either confirm everything she suspects about him or shatter it entirely, and she's sure that both outcomes terrify her.

Derek grins. "This is great. Really great. Have you set a date?"

"September 14th," James says.

"It's small," Nadia adds. "Family, very close friends. We're not doing a huge production."

This lands well. Evelyn nods, satisfied with this information. Marcus starts thinking out loud about whether they'll stay in Chicago or relocate. Derek, ever the romantic, asks when James knew.

"The moment I saw her," James says.

And it's such a perfectly reasonable answer, delivered in such a perfectly flat tone, that nobody questions it. But Nadia's blood does something strange in her veins. It goes hot and then cold and then hot again. Because she's pretty sure James Whitmore doesn't lie. She's pretty sure he's just told the truth in the shape of a cover story, and nobody here knows the difference.

The meeting winds down quickly after that. The partners offer congratulations that sound genuine enough. Evelyn actually squeezes Nadia's shoulder and says something kind about being happy for her. By the time they're back at the elevator, Nadia's hands are shaking.

"You okay?" James asks, and of course he notices the shaking.

"Fine. Great. Totally fine."

The elevator doors close. They're alone.

"You said five months," he says.

"I panicked. Six sounded too round. Too planned."

"Five is measurable. More credible."

She looks at him. Really looks at him. Dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, the kind of expensive grooming that looks effortless because it actually is effortless for people like him. He's watching the elevator numbers like they're genuinely interesting.

"Did you know they'd ask how long?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I'm telling you now." He glances down at her. "You handled it well."

"We handled it well," she corrects, and watches his jaw tighten again. There's satisfaction in that tightening, she realizes. He liked that she caught them in sync.

By noon, everyone knows.

By one o'clock, Nadia's received four emails congratulating her, two text invites to lunch to discuss details, and one message from someone in accounting asking if she and James wanted to split a Crate and Barrel registry code.

By two o'clock, she's had her second coffee spill and a minor crisis with a client about a venue change. By three, she's been cornered in the bathroom by her friend Sophie, who works in social media and has the best intelligence network in the company.

"Okay, so here's the thing," Sophie says, and Nadia knows from her tone that this is serious. Sophie leans against the sink, arms crossed, expression carefully neutral in that way that means she's about to say something difficult. "That man has been watching you for six months."

Nadia's hands freeze under the soap dispenser.

"Like, actually watching you," Sophie continues. "I noticed it months ago. Every event we do, he finds a reason to be there. Every client meeting you're in, somehow he has notes afterward. He asks about your projects. He asks about you."

"He's our CFO," Nadia says, but her voice sounds very small. "That's his job."

"No," Sophie says gently. "His job is finance. Watching you the way he watches you—that's not his job. That's something else."

The bathroom is very quiet. Somewhere outside, someone's laugh echoes down the hallway.

"He asked me to be his fake fiancée," Nadia says, and she says it fast, like speed will make it true. Like speed will make it matter less.

Sophie's eyebrows go up. Then down. Then she starts to smile.

"Oh my God. He didn't."

"He did. There's a family thing. He needs—"

"Nadia." Sophie reaches over and grabs her wrist. "He doesn't need anything. That man is CFO of a major event planning firm. If he needed a date, he could call anyone. He called you. He asked you to pretend to be his fiancée. Do you understand what that means?"

"It means I'm getting a promotion recommendation."

"It means he's in love with you."

Nadia's breath does something complicated in her chest.

"You're wrong," she says, but even as she's saying it, she's thinking about six months of careful glances. About the way he remembers her coffee order. About the Carver gala, where she'd turned around and found him watching her with an expression so carefully controlled it could only mean something.

About the way he said: "The moment I saw her."

Sophie squeezes her wrist. "Just be careful, okay? People like him—they don't usually ask for things. When they do, it's not casual."

Nadia nods. She nods until Sophie lets go and leaves the bathroom, and then she stands alone by the sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror.

She looks the same as she did this morning. Same brown eyes, same dark hair, same face that's been noticing people's motivations for twenty-six years. But something feels different. Something feels like the ground has shifted underneath her and she hasn't been told yet.

She pulls out her phone and texts James: "We need to talk before the lake house."

His response comes in seconds: "I know."

She stares at that text for a long time, at the finality of those two words, at the unspoken confession buried underneath them.

He knows, and she's not sure what he means by it. He knows she needs to talk. Or he knows what the conversation is actually about. Or he knows what Sophie told her, somehow, through some CFO intelligence network she hasn't mapped yet.

She pockets her phone and gets back to work. She edits a venue contract for a rooftop event in November. She emails a caterer about minimum headcount. She approves a floral budget she thinks is too high but she was outvoted and this is not the hill she is dying on today.

At five o'clock, she packs her bag and James is standing at her office door.

"Friday," he says. "Pick you up at eight."

She nods.

He nods.

Neither of them mentions the text. The word fake is starting to feel less accurate than it did this morning, and neither of them is ready to say that out loud yet.

Then she puts her phone away, washes her hands again, and goes back to work.