POV Caroline
"What if neither of us had to do this?"
The question leaves my lips before I can stop it, and James's hand tightens at my waist. Around us, the ballroom hums with champagne laughter and predatory observation, but for this suspended moment, we exist in a pocket of stillness.
"What do you mean?" His voice is low, cautious.
I don't answer. Instead, I do something reckless—I take his hand and pull him off the dance floor, weaving through clusters of watching guests toward the French doors that lead to the terrace.
I tell myself it's a strategy. Privacy for a conversation that cannot be overheard.
But the truth is simpler and far more dangerous: his proximity is unbearable. The warmth of his palm against mine, the cedar and cold air scent that clings to his skin, the memory of how those hands felt in a dark hotel room when I was drowning and he was the only solid thing in the world.
I want to touch him. I want to press myself against him and let the wanting burn away everything else—the grief, the rage, the suffocating trap of this arrangement.
He makes me forget. That night in his hotel, he made me forget my name, my bloodline, the brother being lowered into frozen ground. And standing this close to him now, my body remembers that oblivion like a drug it's desperate to taste again.
The terrace is empty, the February air sharp enough to cut. I release his hand and put distance between us, needing the cold to clear my head.
"Talk," James says, leaning against the stone balustrade. The city glitters behind him, and he looks like something carved from the darkness itself. "What are you proposing?"
"Your father and my mother." I force my voice steady, analytical, nothing like the chaos rioting beneath my skin. "Did you see the way they looked at each other tonight?"
"They've known each other for years. The merger negotiations—"
"This wasn't business." I turn to face him fully. "When Eleanor Whitmore cornered us with that photograph, I watched Helen's face. She wasn't looking at the picture. She was looking at Edward. And he was looking back at her like she was the only person in the room."
James is silent for a long moment. The wind catches his hair, and I notice the way his jaw works when he's thinking—the same expression he wore that morning over breakfast, reciting rules about attachment and expectation.
"You're suggesting they have feelings for each other," he says finally. "Feelings that predate our arrangement."
"I'm suggesting those feelings have been building for seven years of late-night phone calls and private dinners, and neither of them noticed because they were too busy arranging their children's lives." I step closer, drawn by something I refuse to name. "If they fall in love—genuinely fall in love—they won't need us to secure the alliance. Their marriage would satisfy the tradition just as effectively as ours."
"You want to matchmake our parents." His laugh is low, disbelieving. "That's your grand scheme?"
"I want to engineer circumstances that allow what's already there to flourish. We fake date in public, give the society pages their engagement spectacle. Meanwhile, we manufacture situations that push them together."
His eyes narrow, and the warmth from moments ago vanishes into something harder. "Fake date. How convenient for you."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me." He pushes off the balustrade, closing the distance between us until I can feel the heat radiating from his body. "We pretend to be falling in love, spend weeks in each other's company, and somewhere along the way, you hope I'll develop real feelings that you can leverage. Is that the play, Caroline? Trap me into wanting you so you have power in this arrangement?"
The accusation lands like a slap. I stare at him, fury and something hotter churning in my chest.
"You think I'm trying to trap you?" I laugh, and it comes out sharp enough to cut. "That's rich, coming from the man who sent me a first edition of Vienna: Portrait of a City. No card. No explanation. Just a gift so thoughtful it kept me awake for hours wondering what game you were playing."
His expression flickers—surprise, then something that looks almost like embarrassment.
"That was—"
"Courting," I finish for him. "That was courting, James. You researched my life. You found something that would matter to me. And you sent it anonymously, like you couldn't decide if you wanted credit for the gesture or deniability." I step into his space, close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat. "So before you accuse me of manipulation, perhaps examine your own tactics."
The silence stretches between us, charged and dangerous. His jaw tightens. His hands flex at his sides.
"The book was a peace offering," he says finally. "Nothing more."
"And this plan is a survival strategy. Nothing more." I hold his gaze, refusing to back down. "I don't want to trap you. I don't want to marry you. I want to go back to Vienna and pretend this nightmare never happened. This scheme is the only path I can see that doesn't end with both of us suffocating in a marriage neither of us chose."
He studies me for a long moment, and I feel the weight of his attention like a physical pressure against my skin. Whatever he's looking for, he seems to find it.
"One month," he says. "We try this for one month. If there's no progress with our parents, we reassess."
"Agreed."
"And during that month, the performance has to be convincing. Public affection. Coordinated appearances. No half measures."
"I can be convincing when necessary."
His mouth curves into something that isn't quite a smile. "I remember."
The words hang in the air, loaded with meaning neither of us acknowledges. My skin flushes despite the cold, and I hate myself for it—hate how easily he undoes my composure, how my body responds to him without my permission.
"We'll need to strategize," James says, his voice dropping to something more intimate. "Map out opportunities, coordinate schedules. This can't be improvised."
"Fine. When?"
"Tomorrow evening." He glances toward the ballroom, where our absence is surely being noted and catalogued by every gossip in attendance. "My penthouse. Eight o'clock. We'll plan properly."
The invitation shouldn't make my pulse quicken. It's strategy, nothing more—the same thing I've been telling myself since I took his hand on the dance floor.
But as I follow him back inside, his palm warm against the small of my back, I'm not thinking about our parents or the merger or the escape route we're trying to build.
I'm thinking about fourteen floors of distance collapsing into nothing.