Ava Monroe read the contract twice before she understood that Julian Cross intended to purchase a year of her life. The offer lay between them on a black marble desk, twelve pages of precise language and one impossible number. It would erase her brother's hospital debt, keep the bank from taking their apartment, and place Ava inside the penthouse of the coldest billionaire in New York.
“You need a fiancée,” she said. “Not a wife.”
Julian watched her from the other side of the desk. Snow moved beyond the glass walls of his office, but he had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves as though they were negotiating in midsummer. “I need the board to believe I have become stable. You need three million dollars. The vocabulary is less important than the result.”
Clause twelve forbade emotional attachment. Clause thirteen required public affection. Clause fourteen stated that either party could end the arrangement, but the money would disappear if Ava left first. She hated the trap. She hated more that the surgeons would stop treating Noah tomorrow without payment.
“Why me?”
Julian pushed a photograph across the desk. It showed Ava serving champagne at a charity gala while, behind her, Julian's uncle passed an envelope to a city commissioner. “Because everyone thinks you are invisible,” he said. “And because you already saw something my family would kill to hide.”
The office door opened. A silver-haired man entered without knocking, and Ava recognized the face from the photograph. Charles Cross smiled at her as if they had met before.
“So this is the little witness,” he said.
Julian moved between them. His voice dropped into something harder than anger. “She is my fiancée.”
Charles glanced at the unsigned contract. “Not yet.”
Ava picked up the pen. She told herself she was doing it for Noah, not for the protective line of Julian's shoulders or the warning in his uncle's eyes. Her signature looked too small at the bottom of the page.
Julian signed beside it and fastened a diamond ring around her finger. His touch was careful, almost reluctant. When Charles left, Julian did not release her hand.
“There is one condition I did not put in writing,” he said.
“Another rule?”
“A warning.” His thumb covered her pulse. “Do not go into the east wing of my penthouse. If you hear someone calling your name from behind that door, do not answer.”