He Sold My Designs to the Chairman, So I Married the Chairman novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Clause Four

Married by morning, Yichen walks into the press floor on the chairman's arm, and in the elevator a rule is almost broken until the doors open on the Bund rooftop.

The registrar at the Jing'an office pushed two red booklets across the counter at 8:41 in the morning.

She did not look up, and she did not ask why the groom in the grey suit had a security man holding the door.

Qiao Weicheng signed his name in one stroke.

Yichen signed his under it, and his hand was steady, which surprised him.

Forty-one missed calls from Zhiyuan sat on his phone.

He turned it face down on his knee in the black car and listened to the terms.

"Two years," Weicheng said. "Then a clean divorce, and the work stays yours."

"Fine."

"You'll have your own bedroom."

"Good."

"In public we touch, because a husband would. In private we don't, unless one of us says so."

"Understood."

"And no falling in love," said Weicheng, looking out of the window, "because that would be inconvenient for both of us."

Yichen laughed, short and sharp.

"Chairman, I was proposed to by nobody last night and I'm not in a hurry to repeat it."

Something moved in Weicheng's jaw that was not quite a smile.

The car turned onto the Lujiazui ring road, and the tower stood up in front of them, all glass.

"What's at ten?" Yichen asked.

"Meridian previews Autumn Telegram for the press."

"Zhiyuan will be there."

"Yes."

"Then I'll be there too."

Weicheng turned his head and looked at him, long enough that Yichen felt it on his skin.

"I was going to take you," he said.

The press floor was on forty-one, a white room with a runway of mirrors and two hundred cameras.

Twenty-eight looks hung on silent mannequins, and every mannequin wore something Yichen had drawn.

Zhiyuan stood at the front beside Director Meng, in a fresh grey shirt, laughing at a reporter's joke.

He saw the doors open and the laugh stopped in the middle.

Weicheng walked in first, and the room went quiet in a wave, because nobody had ever seen him walk into one of these.

He put his hand at the small of Yichen's back and kept it there.

"Chairman," Meng said, bright and fast. "We didn't expect you."

"This is my husband, Lan Yichen," Weicheng said.

His voice carried to the back wall without his raising it.

Two hundred cameras swung round.

Meng's smile slid by half a centimetre.

"Chairman, with respect, Mr. Lan is a former acquaintance of Zhiyuan's, and he has been under some strain. Security will see him out."

"Director Meng."

"Chairman?"

"Security works for me."

Nobody moved.

Yichen took the black sketchbook out of his bag and held it open to the first page.

"This is the original of look one," he said, to the room. "I drew it on the fourteenth of March. The date is in the corner. Every page has one."

A woman from a fashion weekly stepped forward with her phone up.

"May I?"

"Please," said Yichen, and handed it to her.

She turned the pages slowly, and her lips moved as she counted.

"Twenty-eight looks, and twenty-eight dates," she said, loudly. "All before the first Meridian atelier order."

The murmur started at the back and rolled forward.

Zhiyuan's face did something Yichen had seen only once, years ago, when a professor had asked him to explain a dart.

"It was a collaboration," he said. "Yichen and I always worked together."

"Then draw me the sleeve of look fourteen," said the woman, "since you worked together."

"This isn't the place."

"It's your launch."

Meng put a hand on his arm, quickly, as if to hold him up.

"We'll provide a statement this afternoon," she said. "Thank you all."

She said it to the room, but she was looking at Weicheng, and there was no smile left at all.

Weicheng looked back without blinking.

"Do," he said.

Across the river, in the private lift of the Bund building, Yichen noticed his hands were shaking again.

He leaned back against the mirrored wall, his shoulders coming down.

"You didn't have to say husband like that."

"I was told husbands touch."

"In public."

"It was public."

Weicheng stood very still in the corner, three feet from him, with his hands in his pockets.

The lift hummed.

Yichen saw him look at his mouth, just once and quickly.

"Chairman," Yichen said softly. "You're staring."

"I'm considering."

"Considering what?"

Weicheng crossed the three feet in one step and put a hand flat on the mirror beside Yichen's head.

He leaned in until Yichen could smell cold air and cedar and clean steel.

Their breath met, one inch from a kiss.

Yichen didn't move, and he didn't breathe, and his pulse beat in his throat where anyone could see it.

Then he smiled, slow and mean.

"Clause four, Chairman."

Weicheng's eyes dropped to his mouth again and came back up black.

"Then I'll have to kiss you somewhere that isn't in the terms," he said.

The lift stopped at the top, and the doors slid open on a wall of sky.

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