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“Yes.” Dear God, please don’t strike me down where I sit.
He didn’t look convinced but he seemed keen to believe her. She could see the moment he decided to take her at her word. The tension seeped from his body in increments, until the only remnant of it left was in his white-knuckled grip on the glass. Then even that hold relaxed. He gave her a long, long look but she could see the relief edge into his wary gaze.
When he spoke again it was to issue a grim warning in an unemotional voice.
“Lilah, let’s be crystal clear about this… I don’t love you, okay? Hell, I barely even like you. I will never love you. Since I had to marry at some point, I thought why not marry you if it’ll make Cyrus happy?” He paused before continuing between gritted teeth. “And it makes good business sense. We can play happy families. Maybe have a kid or two. It can be a good life. But I don’t want you going into this thing believing a lie. If we both understand each other, I don’t see why we can’t make this work.”
He didn’t want her to go into this thing believing a lie? She was already in this thing.
“And Gramps doesn’t know why you married me?”
His nostrils flared and he poured another drink. The delay tactic was revealing.
“No.”
Lilah wasn’t sure she believed him. “Are you lying to me?”
“I’m not. Cyrus doesn’t have a clue. And even if he suspects something isn’t quite right, he’ll convince himself that it’s fine. Because he wants this. He’s always wanted this. So we’ll damned well pretend we’re madly in love if we have to. For his sake.”
“So… in your mind, this is a permanent arrangement?”
“Yes, of course.” He looked surprised that she would ask.
How absolutely horrifying. To be trapped in a union with a man who’d just claimed he would never love her. With a man she’d once believed cared for her. Someone she had thought she loved, but now realized she’d never really known.
Such a prospect was untenable. Impossible.
And it was not at all what Lilah wanted.
FOUR
Four Months Ago
One date had become two, then three, at which point Lilah had stopped counting, tentatively hopeful that this thing blooming between them was real, and not just a bizarre whim on Ben’s part.
“I don’t want you to see other men anymore,” Ben informed her one night, while they were out to dinner at a trendy restaurant on Camp’s Bay beachfront. He’d surprised her with the venue. Lilah had made a passing comment about wanting to eat here when he’d driven past it on the way home from one of their dates a few weeks back. Getting a reservation at the swanky eatery was nearly impossible on short notice and Lilah had never been one to use her name or her grandfather’s influence to get what she wanted.
It had been an idle remark, and the conversation had moved on to something else after that. She certainly hadn’t been hinting at anything, or wanting Ben to arrange an evening at the restaurant, so she’d been genuinely delighted and surprised when he’d brought her here this evening.
Now, on their dessert course, after an evening of the usual idle chitchat—he dropped this bombshell on her.
She choked on her wine and, after a brief but violent coughing fit, stared at him in stunned silence.
He had that usual furrow on his handsome brow, making him look pissed off. He always looked mad about something, but Lilah had long ago learned that it was his resting brood face. She knew how much it terrified his minions at the office, but it did not frighten her.
He used this default expression to keep people at bay, usually to devastating effect. Back when she’d first met him, the expression had terrified her. And his silence had unnerved her. Lilah didn’t enjoy being around such reticent people, but Ben had been the one exception to that rule. She’d often gravitated to his quiet company, content just to be with him, even if it meant not speaking for hours at a time.
During Lilah’s years at the private all-girls Catholic school, and later at college, her protective grandfather had always preferred to have her driven to the massive, gleaming Beckett Maritime Express company headquarters on the Foreshore in Cape Town after school. Before Ben had started working for him, Lilah had often chosen hidden corners in empty offices, or random storage closets in which to study.
But when seventeen-year-old Ben had come seemingly from out of nowhere to start living with them—first finishing high school in Cape Town before starting college and interning at the company under Gramps’s mentorship—Lilah had shadowed him everywhere. After graduating from college Ben quickly worked his way up the ranks to marketing executive, VP of transportation, and higher still to the youngest ever vice chair on the board. All while studying for his MBA.
