“Okay. Let’s get hitched, Mr Renault.”
But her eyes were different now. And a small smile lit her face.
“Please. We are to be married in the morning. Call me Raphael.”
I studied her across the candlelit table. Soft yet unbreakable. Entirely willing to enter a contractual marriage to solve a problem she refused to let define her.
“Okay, Raphael.”
The sound of my name on her lips grounded me in a way only order and paperwork had in years. I did not know what this would become, yet relief settled deep in my bones.
“Now, let’s eat before it gets cold,” she said as she nodded to the plate of herb-roasted chicken before us.
We both started eating, and the energy around us settled into something impossibly familiar.
She would see a doctor. She would not sleep in that van tonight. She would not manage mere survival alone.
And my heart, despite my better judgment, had moved.
I lifted my glass. “To health,” I said.
She raised hers. “To insurance.”
Her mouth curved slightly when she said it. Suddenly, the house did not feel sterile anymore. It felt inhabited, like a place that could be an actual home.
10
BELLE
He cleared the plates. I watched him do it as if what just happened was completely normal. Like we hadn’t just agreed to get married between bites of roasted chicken. The dining room felt too quiet now. Candles still flickered. Silverware was neatly aligned. My pulse refused to cooperate.
I just agreed to marry a man I barely know . . . for insurance. I pressed my palms flat against the table and closed my eyes. I tried for a deep breath, but my chest was too tight.
What had I just agreed to? There was still time to back out.
Yet as I opened my eyes and looked across the table into his deep brown eyes, I did feel something. I was just trying to decide what that was. His eyes were sharp and observant, but not unkind. Not the eyes of someone with a nickname like the Beast. The rest of him, from the broad expanse of his chest to the beard covering his face, gave beast features, but not his eyes.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m trying to figure out if I’ve lost my mind,” I said honestly.
He didn’t smile. “I’m not impulsive,” he said.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked with a laugh, trying to lighten the tension.
“I would not propose something I hadn’t considered.”
He walked back to the table and remained standing across from me. Not looming. Just . . . present.
“You believe I’m solving this with money,” he said.
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
I lifted a brow. “What do you mean?”
He took a breath. A real one. “I don’t like watching problems I can address remain unaddressed.”
