You Divorced a Genius Heiress novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ninety Days

In Jarrett Raines's kitchen at midnight she hears his terms, his father's will and the deadline, and writes the no-touch clause herself; she signs as Desmond texts that she has no face.

Jarrett Raines drove an old black pickup with a dent in the tailgate.

He did not say a word until we were past the river.

I sat with my petition in my lap and my phone in my hand.

The apartment app said ACCESS REVOKED.

The bank app said ACCOUNT RESTRICTED, PENDING DISSOLUTION.

My laptop, in the bag at my feet, asked me for a password it had never asked for before.

I typed the right one three times.

The screen went white and began to erase itself.

"Wiped?" Jarrett said, eyes on the road.

"Remotely," I said. "He had my key. He's had it a while."

"Where are you staying tonight?"

"I haven't decided."

"That's a lie," he said, not unkindly. "You've got nowhere. I've got a spare room and a grandmother."

I looked at him.

He had one big hand on the wheel and a white scar through his left eyebrow.

"Why did you step in?" I said. "You don't know me."

"I know your question," he said.

"Kiera got it wrong, and you asked it to the room, not to her."

"Nobody who's faking a thing thinks to do that."

I had no answer to that.

His house was forty minutes west, a limestone ranch house on the Pedernales with one yellow light on and a smaller house behind it.

He put a plate of cold brisket in front of me in a kitchen that smelled of coffee and cedar.

I ate it standing up.

"Say the name," he said.

"What name?"

"What you called it before Lumen."

I put down my fork.

"Kestrel," I said. "I was nineteen. It was a bird that watches water."

He nodded slowly, once.

"I read the Lumen source in college," he said.

"Everything in it ends in the same comment. 'Water goes where it wants.'"

"You mouthed it on that stage when Kiera said Windrow."

"You were watching my mouth?"

"I was watching everything. It's my job to know the room."

I almost smiled.

He pulled a chair out for me with his foot.

"Here's the whole thing," he said. "My father died in February."

"His will gives me fifty-two percent of Raines Systems, but only if I'm married by October thirty-first."

"That's a ridiculous will," I said.

"He was a ridiculous man." He rubbed his jaw.

"I've got ninety people on the payroll."

"If I'm not married, the board sells us to the first bidder, and I know who that is."

"Desmond."

"Desmond Aldridge stole my bid file from a contractor last year and underpriced me by a hair."

"I lost the Waco job, and forty people lost theirs."

He said it flat.

"I need a wife for ninety days," he said.

"You need a company, a lawyer who doesn't work for him and a reason to be in the same room as the Authority."

"We're both finalists for that contract. You'd be inside it."

"You'd put the author of Lumen in your building," I said.

"I'd put a woman who knows where the problem is in my building."

I looked at the plate.

I thought about the stage and the chain Kiera twisted and the trustee on the screen.

I thought about how easy it would be to cry.

I did not cry.

"I won't certify anyone's bid until I read it," I said.

"Fair."

"Show me yours."

He slid a tablet across the table.

I read it for twenty minutes with the brisket going cold.

He didn't speak once.

"Your margin on the east gates is thin in two places," I said, finally. "Fix the second one first."

He looked at the tablet.

"That's the one my lead engineer said was fine."

"Your lead engineer is wrong."

He exhaled something close to a laugh.

"Terms," I said. "Ninety days. Separate rooms. And I write one line myself."

I took the paper from his printer and a pen from his shirt pocket.

I wrote it in capitals.

NOTHING IN THIS AGREEMENT OBLIGES EITHER OF US TO TOUCH THE OTHER.

He read it upside down and then right way up.

"I wasn't going to ask," he said.

"Everybody says that."

"Then I'll sign first."

He did, with a hand that dwarfed the pen.

I signed beneath him.

My name looked small and strange on the page.

It was the first time in three years I had signed beside a man I was not afraid of.

My phone buzzed on the table.

An unknown number, but the style gave it away, the polite cruelty and the full stops.

"Don't embarrass yourself. You have nothing and no face."

I read it twice.

Then I turned the phone toward Jarrett.

He read it, and his jaw went still.

"Monday," he said. "Courthouse. Nine o'clock."

"Fine."

"One thing."

"What?"

"You said no face," he said. "Where I'm from, a face is a thing you decide to hand out."

I locked the phone.

"Good night, Mr. Raines," I said.

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