Page 3 of Bride Bargain

“This way my public image will improve, people will see that I don’t hate women, and the world will start looking elsewhere for scandal. Plus fewer old ladies will try to grope me in public.” Elliot stands straighter against the desk, thrilled by his own idea. I’m zooming past him so fast, his shirt practically gusts against his body. “Andyou’llget half my assets, so you’ll never have to worry about money ever again, even if something happens to me. It’s a win-win situation, Claire.”

It is not a win-win, and there’s so much wrong with his little speech that I don’t even know where to begin. From the idea that Idon’t mindthe man I physically ache for every night, to his frankly naive idea that married men don’t get hit on, to the thought of me taking his money—it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

“I can’t talk about this.” I pluck my baggy t-shirt away from my chest, flapping the fabric to fake a breeze. “Oh god, I’m sweating. This is my only change of clothes.”

“Well, if you stop pacing—”

“Ican’t.”

If I stop pacing, my heart will beat right out of my chest. If I stop this frantic movement, I’ll have to look my best friend-turned-boss in the eye, and then he’ll see exactly why I can’t marry him as some twisted PR move.

Spoiler alert: it’s not because I’m above such things. It’s because it’sElliotoffering this. Elliot with his steady blue eyes and that deep voice which makes me shiver; Elliot who makes my insides riot whenever he walks into a room. Sexy, awkward Elliot, who simultaneously looks like he wandered out of a magazine centerfold, and who wouldn’t recognize flirting if it pinched him on the ass.

He tilts his head now, watching me closely like I’m another tech problem he needs to solve. It’s a very familiar look.

His phone rings. Without blinking, he reaches back and hangs it up.

Rain batters the windows, and a bead of sweat trickles down my spine. My shoes squeak against the floorboards, and my legs burn from power-walking up and down his office. Mental note: do more cardio. Preferably while running far, far away from this bullshit.

“I wouldn’t expect anything,” Elliot says, fiddling with one shirt cuff. Sudden discomfort rolls off him in waves. “Physically, I mean. I know you wouldn’t want that, Claire.”

Ha! A manic laugh blooms in my chest, and I want to cackle like a hysterical old witch.

Because… I wouldn’t want that? Is that what he really thinks? Listen: I would trade my left pinkie finger for the chance to lick this man’s throat. I’d transfer my meager life savings if it meant I could bottle his spicy-clean scent and spray it on my pillow every night, then roll around naked in those sheets. But has Elliot noticed my pathetic pining? He has not.

Which just goes to show: genius is specific. And Elliot Ramsay may be a tech wunderkind, but when it comes to messy things like emotions… he’s as much of an idiot as the rest of us.

“No.” I fling an arm out, slashing through the air as I jog to the doorway. At least I’m dressed for a quick escape. “This is nuts.” The door slams behind me, the sound echoing across the penthouse.

* * *

Fifty minutes later, hunched at my own desk, I’ve watched the video of Elliot pushing that lecherous old woman away dozens of times. Rage boils in my veins as I watch him brush her off politely, his expression getting more wooden with each refusal until he finally snaps.

Elliot’s right: he’s gentle when he moves her away. Even on the grainy video it’s clear, but the internet mobs have agreed: the love of my life is trash. He should be hanged, drawn and quartered; his tech should be boycotted; he should be made to pay for daring to assert his personal space.

Screw that.

I storm to the office door and fling it open, barging inside. Elliot blinks at me from where he’s been staring moodily out of the windows, hands shoved in his pockets. His dark hair is even more rumpled than before and he looks tired, with dark shadows beneath his eyes. “Claire?”

“I’ll do it,” I say, out of breath for no good reason. I stopped pacing nearly an hour ago, and yet my heart has not slowed at all. Am I dying? “Fuck it. Let’s get married.”

Two

Elliot

In nearly thirty years of life, I’ve never considered what my wedding might be like. Partly because my brain has always been full of other things—theories and experiments andtech—and partly because there’s only one woman I’d ever want to marry.

Claire Montgomery: the angel of my high school math class, my best and only true friend, and now my ruthlessly efficient PA. Obviously her. The thought of marrying anyone else is repellent.

But Claire has never liked me that way, so it always seemed like a waste of good brain-space to dwell on what might have been. Why torture myself like that? I’m confident, though, that if Ihadspent some angsty teenage hours daydreaming about our wedding, this is not what I would have pictured.

Claire is in a white wedding gown, plucking self-consciously at the fabric as it cascades over the dips and swells of her body. Her blonde hair is woven into some elaborate updo that makes my fingers itch to pull it apart, and a professional photographersnaps endless pictures of the two of us as we stand beneath a floral arch.

The wind on the rooftop ruffles the photographer’s hair, while an officiant drones on and on, warning us that this ceremony is legal and binding. Obviously.

Meanwhile stars pulse high above and traffic snakes through the streets below. There’s no music. No crowd of well-wishers. Only the two official witnesses—a pair of baffled accountants from my company, happy to do this favor and receive a bonus in return for signing an NDA.

The officiant—a middle aged woman with heavily penciled eyebrows called Sandra—keeps squinting at Claire and I, like she’s waiting for us to declare this all a joke, but we are deadly serious.

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