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“So what the fuck was all that about?”
Right.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she hedged and he levelled an unimpressed glare on her.
“It was part of the act, right?” he prompted and she swallowed painfully.
What act?
“Yes?” She didn’t want him to know she had no idea what the hell he was talking about. But sensed that it was an out. A way to save face. A way to get out of this conversation with her dignity intact.
He looked relieved, even though something in his eyes, something behind those layers of impassivity and disinterest, told her that he didn’t believe her uncertain response at all.
“I don’t want Cyrus to know this is fake. And I know you wouldn’t want that either. It would upset him. So far, I think we’ve done a pretty decent job of convincing him that this is a legitimate union. He thinks we want this. That we love—” Did he have to sneer the word? “— each other. We’re in this for the long haul. Clear?”
As mud.
She inclined her head—not wanting to commit with words—when she had no idea what was going on. But it did now seem clear that at least Gramps wasn’t a part of this deception.
“Lilah,” he prompted, impatience layered through the two syllables of her name. “Are we clear?”
“Explain it to me one more time?” she asked, barely able to raise her voice above a whisper.
The look he gave her was filled with active dislike, mixed in with a massive dose of contempt. It ripped her breath away and left her reeling.
“You’re playing dangerous games, little Lilah. I’m not amused.”
Who was this man? How could she ever have thought he loved her? Perhaps the warning signs had been there all along?
Only Lilah had been too stupid and too naïve to see it.
But she was seeing it now. The veil had been ripped from her eyes—metaphorically and literally—and she now understood that she had walked straight into a spider’s web with no way out. She was trapped and helpless and unsure of how she got here.
“You don’t love me,” he informed her, leaning toward her almost threateningly. “Do you, Lilah?”
“Ben…”
“Oh come on,” he interrupted her with an impatient slash of his hand. “This is bullshit and you know it. Tell me why you think we’re doing this.”
Lilah blinked, not sure how to reply to that. Not knowing what to say to make this better. Only knowing that admitting to loving him would make it far, far worse.
“I think…” she floundered beneath the weight of that icy, brooding gaze and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “The-the… board?”
His mouth tightened and, if anything, that remote gaze went even more frigid.
But once the words had escaped her lips, they made so much sense and she picked them up from where they’d landed heavily in the space between her and Ben, and ran with them.
“Gramps seemed to be pushing for it. I assumed it had something to do with the business. That maybe you both needed the family connection to make your succession to CEO more palatable for shareholders and board members.” She had no clue if any of what she’d just said was at all plausible. She barely paid attention when Ben and her grandfather were discussing business, but her words had sounded convincing to her. It seemed like that could be a thing.
His brow lowered and he was pale and—if anything—he looked even more terrifyingly grim. Had they discussed this? Lilah couldn’t recall. Before changing her asthma medication back to the old prescription, she’d had several scary dissociative episodes, which she’d kept from Gramps and Ben—they could be stiflingly over-protective at times. She’d had entire conversations with people she couldn’t quite recall afterwards. Maybe Ben had spoken to her about his real reason for wanting to marry her during one of those?
She was grasping at straws here. They’d discussed no such thing, but she’d just married this man and she needed to give him some benefit of the doubt. Even though she knew that whatever relationship she’d hoped for with him as her husband was now doomed.
“The board,” he repeated flatly. He broke eye contact and his gaze flickered to the passing scenery, which he stared at for a long moment, his jaw tight, mouth still drawn into a thin line, before he nodded abruptly.
“Okay.” His voice was even raspier than usual and he sounded as though he were humoring her rather than agreeing with her. “The board. But if that’s true then what the fuck was the song and dance about at the wedding? With the love stuff?” he asked with a formidable frown.
“Well, I assumed we had to make the whole thing look convincing, right? Since most of the senior board members were there.”
“So… you don’t love me? That was all bullshit?”
