Chapter 9: The Only Option

"The west wing is flooded," Elizabeth said, and the words hung in the kitchen like a death sentence.

Nadia set down her coffee cup with deliberate care. Through the pass-through window, she could see James standing on the back patio, his shoulders squared against the evening air, already aware of whatever this was.

"Both guest rooms?" Nadia asked.

"All three, unfortunately. The contractors aren't coming until Monday." Elizabeth's smile apologized for nothing. "Your room is fine, the family rooms are fine, and the master suite is obviously off-limits." A pause that accomplished exactly what it was designed to accomplish. "You and James will have to double up. The furniture room is the largest. There's a bed and a sofa."

Nadia made a noncommittal sound. Through the window, James turned from the railing. He scanned the kitchen, found her. Held her gaze for a moment that was two moments too long. Then he looked away.

"Of course," Nadia said. "We're engaged."

The word tasted strange. Not wrong exactly. Just compressed, like a lie so small it had almost become true.

---

By eight o'clock, most of the family had retreated to their rooms or the media room downstairs. James had excused himself to take a work call. Nadia stood in the furniture room—which was, in fact, stuffed with a Victorian settee, two wingback chairs, a bureau, and one bed that was somehow both enormous and not nearly large enough—and tried to figure out which corner of the space she could reasonably occupy.

The sofa was too small. Unless James intended to sleep sitting up, which seemed unlikely given what she now knew about his need for a door gap of light.

When he appeared in the doorway he'd changed into sweatpants and a crew neck that made him look younger, less assembled. Like a person and not a CFO.

"I can take the sofa," he said.

"It's four feet long."

"I'm aware of its dimensions."

She turned to face him fully. "This is stupid. We can share the bed. It's ridiculous to pretend we can't."

Something passed across his face. The calculation. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

They established rules with the efficiency of people who'd negotiated spreadsheets before. His side, her side. Pillows arranged as a nominal border, lights out by midnight. It felt very corporate, this arrangement—which meant it felt like a lie too. But it was the kind of lie they'd both committed to, so neither of them acknowledged that.

He made a call to his assistant about a portfolio review while she scrolled through emails. The blue light of their respective screens painted the room in intervals. The bed was old and firm, with a headboard that creaked when either of them shifted. The sheets smelled like lavender and something that was just lake house—old fabric and clean air and the idea that things were simpler here than they actually were anywhere.

The house settled around them. Footsteps, then quiet. Someone closing a door down the hall. The dog's nails clicking somewhere on a hardwood floor below. Then just the radiator ticking and the sound of water against the lake.

"Your family seems nice," Nadia said around midnight. It was true, and it felt important to say it, because the truth had been hard to come by lately.

"My family is a lot of things."

"That's not an answer."

"They like you. That counts for something."

He was turned toward the wall. She was turned toward the opposite side. Somehow this felt more intimate than if they'd been facing each other. She could hear him breathe. She could hear the old radiator tick and settle, the wind in the trees outside, the murmur of water against the lake.

"What's your cousin Derek's deal?" she asked. "He asked me three times where you went to business school."

"He doesn't trust easy answers."

"I panicked and said Stanford. Then pivoted to Michigan when he followed up."

A pause. "Jesus, Nadia."

"That's why you exist. Backup." She paused. "For these things."

"I went to Michigan."

"I know that now. I'd already recovered anyway. I told him Stanford was the safety school you never needed to use."

Silence. Then: "That's actually good."

"Thank you."

A loon called across the water—that sound that was half-laughter and half-warning. She'd always found it unsettling. Too honest, somehow. Too willing to be both things at once.

"I've been thinking about the Hendersons account," James said. A pivot she recognized—he shifted to work when he was trying to say something and couldn't find the language for it. "Your rooftop mock-up. That was good work."

"You would have told me if it wasn't."

"I would have," he agreed. "But you should know anyway. You're better at this than most people understand. There's something in the way you solve for client anxiety without patronizing them."

"I lower my gaze and nod thoughtfully."

"You listen," he said. "Actually listen. Most people pretend to."

The compliment sat between them like something breakable. She wasn't used to James this way. Unguarded and talking about her work like it mattered to him beyond the portfolio. In the office there were layers of formality. Protocol.

Here there was just her breathing and his breathing and the accumulated weight of six months of careful distance being slowly compressed into nothing.

"James—"

"I almost called you last week," he said. "Just to talk. Not about work."

The darkness meant she didn't have to control her expression. She let herself feel the size of that sentence before she answered. "Why didn't you?"

"Because we're not actually engaged."

She wanted to argue that the distinction didn't matter. That he'd had her number and that alone was invitation enough. But that would be careless. That would be exactly the kind of thing she was here to manage.

"This was supposed to be simple," she said instead.

"I know."

"You were supposed to get your family off your back, and I was supposed to get the recommendation, and then we'd have a very civilized ending to a fake engagement and never talk about it at parties."

He turned then, facing her. Even in the near-complete dark, she could see the angle of his jaw, the line of his shoulders against the window light. "Was that your plan?" he asked quietly.

She couldn't lie to him. Not here. Not in the dark with the lake outside and his grandmother's ring on her finger and the loon asking its half-question. "No," she said. "It wasn't."

He reached out slowly, giving her time to move away. His hand found hers across the pillow border. His thumb pressed once against her wrist—reading her pulse or leaving his own, she wasn't sure which.

"I've been waiting six months for a reason to talk to you that wasn't about a client," he said.

"You could have just talked to me."

"No, I couldn't." He withdrew his hand, and she felt the absence like cold air. "I'm your superior. It would have been inappropriate."

"And now?"

"Now you're my fake fiancée, which is somehow both worse and the only thing that makes sense."

She wanted to tell him she'd also counted the months backward and forward, looking for entry points. That she'd looked forward to the moments when their work overlapped with a consistency that had become its own kind of honesty.

But then the loon called again, and the radiator settled into silence, and outside the wind picked up in the trees.

"Go to sleep," she said finally.

He exhaled—long, measured. "Okay."

He turned back toward the wall. She turned back toward the window. The distance between their sides of the bed had somehow closed, though neither of them had moved deliberately. One of them had drifted. She wasn't sure which.

She stayed awake long enough to feel him relax into sleep, to hear his breathing shift into something deeper. Half-laughter, half-warning, the loon called again. She understood it better now.

She was still awake when his hand found hers under the covers—some unconscious crossing of the line they'd drawn in the dark. She lay very still.