“Good? Try exceptional.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She glanced sideways at him, catching the slight lift of his mouth and the glint of unspoken thoughts in his eyes, and she knew she’d won more than Eleanor and Andrew’s approval tonight.
Chapter 7
The silencein the car was heavy with the residue of their performance. Streetlights painted fleeting stripes across Ronan’s knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel, his movements tense. The air still hummed with the ghosts of shared laughter and feigned intimacy from the gala, leaving a charged void that neither of them seemed willing to fill. He could still feel the phantom weight of her hand on his arm, the scent of her perfume—citrus and pear, a bright splash in his sterile world—clinging to the fabric of his suit.
It had been a role, a performance.
So why did his pulse quicken every time he caught her scent lingering on his jacket? Why did the words “my fiancée” roll off his tongue when he spoke to Andrew Beauchamp, natural as breathing? The memory surfaced unbidden. Devney was spinning her story about the sunflower ring, her eyes bright with invented history, her voice carrying such conviction that he’d found himself leaning forward, drawn into her fiction. In that moment, she hadn’t been his assistant fielding a crisis. She’d been a woman weaving magic from thin air, and he’d wanted to step inside her story and make it real.
“Well,” Devney said, her voice quiet in the confined space. “I think they bought it. You’re a surprisingly good actor, Mr. Wilder.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. The compliment landed like a critique. He was a good actor because his entire life was an act—a carefully curated performance of control. But tonight had been different. Tonight had felt dangerously like truth.
“The role wasn’t demanding,” he said, his gaze fixed on the road ahead.
“Wasn’t it?” She turned in her seat, the movement slight but her focus on him absolute. “You had to pretend to be in love with me. For a man who refers to joy as an ‘inefficient allocation of emotional resources,’ I’d say that was a stretch.”
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The most difficult part of the night wasn’t pretending to be in love with her—it was remembering, with increasing difficulty, that he was supposed to be pretending. Seeing the Beauchamps together—their easy rhythm, the unspoken understanding in a shared glance—had been like staring through a window into a world he’d deemed illogical and therefore unattainable.
“They have a genuine partnership,” she said softly, as if hearing the echo of his thoughts. “The way they look at each other, it’s like they’re on the same team.”
“No marriage is perfect,” he said, the words automatic, a shield he’d carried since he was a boy.
“Maybe not perfect,” she conceded, her voice gentle. “But it can be good. They respect each other.”
“My parents’ divorce left more scars than memories.” The words left him before he could stop them, dragged from a place he kept locked and barricaded.
The statement hung between them, stark and heavy.
“How old were you?” she finally asked, her voice calm in the dim car.
“Twelve.” Old enough to understand, young enough to be rewired by it.
A delivery truck swerved in front of them, and he braked hard.
“It was acrimonious,” he added, the word inadequate.
He could still hear the precise, cutting tone of his mother’s voice on the phone with her lawyer, discussing him as if he were an asset being divided. “The visitation schedule is non-negotiable,” she’d said, her voice like ice, while he sat at the top of the stairs, pretending not to listen.
“They were two intelligent people using their knowledge of each other as weapons. I wasn’t a witness to their war—I was ammunition. My father tallied the financial cost of every visit. My mother documented every minute he was late.”
He risked a glance at her. The passing streetlights illuminated a profound empathy in her eyes. It made him want to say more, to unburden himself in a way he never had.
“They turned love into a zero-sum game,” he finished. “Whoever cared less held all the power.”
“And you learned from them,” she said. It wasn’t an accusation.
It was recognition, understanding. And it was more devastating than any judgment could have been.
“I learned that emotional investment is a liability,” he confirmed, his throat tight. “In business, that clarity has served me well.”
“And outside of business?” she asked, the question so simple, so direct, it disarmed him completely.
He thought of his sterile apartment, his hollow social interactions, his life devoid of the messy, unpredictable reality of genuine connection.
