But pride was a luxury. It belonged to a version of her who’d had a healthy body and an open horizon and the freedom to be insulted by a rich man’s offer and walk away. That woman had been slowly withering away for the last few years as the mystery symptoms increased. At this point, Jasmine was fairly sure she was dead. The woman sitting on the floor now had a chronic illness with no cure, a mother to protect, and a clock running down on everything she’d built.
She would not be rescued. She refused the word. But she could use this. She could take the thing he’d flung at her as an insult and turn it into the only real security she might ever have. And she could do it on her terms, not his.
“I need my phone,” she said.
Eden’s eyes widened. “Right now? It’s almost one in the?—”
“If I wait until morning, I’ll talk myself out of it.” Jasmine was already up on her knees, reaching for her clutch on the console, pulling out the phone where his number still sat in her contacts from years ago. “And I’m not doing this because I’m scared. I’m doing it because it’s the smart plan. I’d be stupid to not do it.”
She pressed his name before she could think better of it.
He answered on the second ring, and there was no sleep in his voice. He’d been awake too.
“Jasmine.” Wary. Careful.
“I have conditions,” she said. No greeting. No softening. “I’m not agreeing to anything tonight. But I’m willing to hear how this would actually work. In person, on paper, with everything spelled out. No handshakes. Just terms.”
A pause. She could almost hear him thinking.
“Okay,” he said, and for once there was nothing rehearsed in it. “Yes. Of course. I’ll have my lawyer there. He’s discreet. He handles things that never make the papers.”
“Then I’ll bring my own,” Jasmine said. “I’m not walking into a room that’s all your people. If we do this, it’s even, or it’s nothing.”
Another silence, longer.
“Understood,” he said. “Name the day. I’ll make everything else work around it.”
Jasmine gave him a day. Then she ended the call before he could say anything else, before he could thank her or charm her or make it warm, and she sat back down on the floor with her heart slamming against her ribs.
“You just said yes,” Eden whispered. “You just agreed to marry Nate Aaron.”
“I agreed to a meeting.” Jasmine picked up her glass of wine. Her hand only trembled a little. “Everything else, we’ll see.”
But she knew, even as she said it, that something had already moved. That same line she’d drawn six years ago had just been crossed. And that whatever came next, it would change everything.
CHAPTER 7
JASMINE
The boardroom felt like a place built to make people feel small.
Jasmine had worn a black suit, well-fitted, her hair pulled tightly back. It was a costume, like all her costumes, and she wore it the way she wore the others: completely, until she half believed it herself.
The room sat forty floors up in a downtown tower. All glass, the air conditioning blasting. A polished table ran the length of it, long enough to seat a dozen people.
Her attorney sat at her right hand. Renata was a sharp woman in her sixties who’d handled Jasmine’s contracts since the indie film that started it all, and who had arrived this morning having read the preliminary terms and said only, “Well. This is certainly a first.”
Across the shiny table sat Nate, and beside him, a silver-haired, steely-faced man named Richard.
And Nate?
She’d braced for him. She’d spent the drive over telling herself he was a means to an end now, a solution to her problems. But he looked up when she walked in, and surprise moved across his face. Whatever he’d been bracing for, it wasn’t this version of her. He’d been expecting the girl from six years ago, perhaps. Soft eyes, easy laugh. What he got was a woman in a black suit who sat down without greeting him and slid a legal pad squared to the table’s edge.
Good, she thought.Get used to it.
“Shall we?” Renata said, and it wasn’t a question.
Richard spoke first, in a low, even voice. The proposed arrangement was a marriage lasting for one year, a formal wedding ceremony and certificate to be included. Jasmine was to live at Nate’s house, and they were to make a minimum of two public appearances a month after marriage. Leading up to the wedding, they were also to be seen together no less than twice a week in order to sell the believability of the relationship.
