Chapter 5: The Announcement

Nadia's coffee goes everywhere on Monday morning.

She's at her desk pulling up the week's event checklist when James appears in her doorway and says, "Come with me." He's already walking toward the conference room where the executives sit. Nadia does what she's learned to do around James Whitmore: she follows.

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

"Oh, come on," she mutters, grabbing tissues. She doesn't bother cleaning it properly. 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. James sits at the head. He doesn't offer Nadia 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 said something impossible.

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

"I'm sorry, what?" Evelyn sets her cup down with the care of someone handling evidence.

"We're getting married," James adds. Same texture as always—flat, factual, like quarterly earnings. "We wanted to tell you before it becomes general knowledge."

Nadia nods. She's been nodding so many times in the last week that her neck is developing muscle memory for it.

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

"Six months," James says.

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

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

"Where did you meet?" Derek asks, his eyes calculating now.

"Here," James says. "At a client event." He pauses for exactly as long as it takes to seem like a natural hesitation. "She spilled—I spilled a drink on her dress."

"Burgundy," Nadia adds, because that's what they'd landed on. She watches the word land.

"Burgundy," James confirms.

She's aware of how natural this sounds. Too natural, in the way that things practiced into the bones always come out smoother than the truth. Evelyn's expression has shifted from shock to calculation, which is more dangerous. Evelyn tallies optics.

"This is quite sudden," Evelyn says.

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

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

"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 James Whitmore has never asked her for anything she wasn't able to give, and she's sure this weekend at the lake house will either confirm everything she suspects about him or complicate it beyond fixing.

"This is great," Derek says, warming to it now. "Have you set a date?"

"September," James says. "Small. Family and close friends. Nothing we'd need to involve the firm in."

This lands well. Evelyn nods, satisfied. Marcus starts thinking aloud about whether they'll stay in Chicago. Derek, ever the romantic, asks when James knew.

"The moment I saw her," James says.

It's a perfectly reasonable answer delivered in a perfectly flat tone, and nobody questions it. But something in Nadia's chest does something complicated—goes hot, then cold, then something she doesn't have a name for. Because James Whitmore doesn't lie. She's been working for him for six months and she knows this. He just doesn't always tell the full story.

That sentence was the full story.

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

"You okay?" James asks, because 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. Dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, the kind of grooming that looks effortless because it actually is. He's watching the elevator numbers like they're genuinely interesting.

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

"Yes."

"And you didn't prepare me for that?"

"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 in a way she's beginning to recognize as something other than disapproval. More like recognition. He liked that she caught them in sync.

By noon, everyone knows.

By one, she's received four congratulatory emails, two text invites to lunch, and a message from someone in accounting asking about a registry. By three she's been cornered in the women's bathroom by Sophie from social media, who has the best intelligence network in the company and uses it without apology.

"Okay," Sophie says, leaning against the sink with arms crossed. "That man has been watching you for six months."

Nadia's hands freeze under the soap dispenser.

"Actually watching you," Sophie continues. "Every event we do, he finds a reason to be there. Every client meeting you're in, he has notes afterward. He asks about your projects. He asks about you. Nadia. He asks about you."

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

"His job is finance." Sophie's voice is gentle but precise. "Watching you the way he watches you—that's something else entirely."

The bathroom is very quiet. Somewhere outside, a laugh echoes down the hallway.

"He asked me to be his fake fiancée," Nadia says, fast, like speed will make it matter less. "For a family thing. His mother sets him up on dates. He needs—"

"Nadia." Sophie reaches over and grabs her wrist. "He's CFO of a major 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."

Something in Nadia's chest does something complicated and unprepared.

"You're wrong," she says, but even as she's saying it she's thinking about six months of careful glances. About the Hospitality Summit she'd forgotten. About the way he built a proposal story around things he had no right to know about her.

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

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

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

She looks the same as she did this morning.

She doesn't feel the same.

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 those two words for a long time, at the particular weight they carry, at the thing they don't say and don't need to.

At five o'clock she's packing her bag and James appears in her office doorway.

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

She nods. He nods. Neither of them mentions the text.

She watches him go. The thing that's been sitting at the back of her mind since his reply came through finally moves to the front.

I know.

Not okay. Not sure, when? Not even a question mark. Just two words, sent in the time it takes to read a message and type two letters. She'd asked to talk and he'd replied like a man who had already been waiting for her to ask.

Which meant he knew something. The question she couldn't dismiss, standing alone in her office with Friday coming fast: what, exactly, did he know?