The Billionaire's Fake Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Freeze
Mamie storms the Foundation board when her sister's grant is cut, and Rhys claims her as his fiancee in front of everyone.
The email said my sister's lab was frozen, effective immediately, and it was signed by a man I had never met.
I read it standing in the Marwick Lab with a pipette still in my hand.
Pippa was across the room, reading the same email, and she had gone the color of paper.
"Three years of work," she said. "They cut us in the middle of year two."
"They can't do that without a vote," I said.
I checked the Foundation's website for the board schedule.
The meeting was happening right now, forty minutes away, on the twentieth floor of a glass tower in Back Bay.
I put down the pipette and took off my lab coat.
"Mame, what are you doing?" Pippa asked.
"Asking a question in person," I said.
I got there in thirty-five minutes, still wearing jeans and a gray sweater with a bleach stain on the sleeve.
The woman at the front desk told me the board was in session and I could not go up.
I went up anyway, behind a courier with a stack of boxes.
The boardroom doors were glass, and I could see twelve people around a long table.
I pushed through them.
Every head turned.
A man at the far end stopped mid-sentence, with a pen held in two fingers.
He was in his thirties, polished, with a gold watch the size of a cookie.
"Excuse me," he said. "This is a closed meeting."
"My name is Mamie Marwick," I said. "You froze my sister's grant an hour ago, and nobody told us why."
He smiled.
"Ah. The materials lab," he said. "Dorian Halloway, vice chair. We made discretionary cuts today. Yours was on the list."
"We have a signed three-year agreement," I said.
"And the Foundation has a right to review its commitments," he said. "Security will show you out."
A man by the door took a step toward me.
"Our data is in year two," I said loudly.
"If you stop us now, our results go in the trash, and so do my sister's two grad students."
"Then you should have found a better sponsor," Dorian said.
A few people at the table smiled.
An old woman at the head of the table did not.
She was small and straight-backed, with a white bob and a cane resting against her chair.
She watched me.
My face was burning, and I did not move.
"You cut the Marwick Lab because you can," I said to Dorian. "Not because we failed."
"I cut it because the Foundation has a limited budget," he said, "and your little project makes nothing and cures nothing."
"It makes a battery that works at forty below," I said. "You'd know that if you had read one page."
Somebody coughed.
Dorian put his pen down.
"Ms. Marwick, you walked into a private meeting and insulted a board officer," he said.
"I will have you removed, and I will have the university informed."
The guard took my arm.
"Let her go."
The voice came from the middle of the table.
A tall man had stood up.
He had dark hair cut short, grey eyes, and a nose that had been broken once and healed a little crooked.
He wore a charcoal suit and he looked at me like he was reading a contract.
"Rhys," Dorian said. "Sit down. This is not your business."
"Everything in this building is my business," the man said.
He walked down the length of the table, and the guard let go of me.
He stopped at my side and took my hand, and his fingers were warm and steady.
"This is Mamie," he said to the room. "She's my fiancee."
My mouth opened and nothing came out.
Twelve people stared.
Dorian laughed, short and ugly.
"Your fiancee," he said. "You haven't had a date in two years."
"I've had a date every night for three months," Rhys said. "You just haven't been invited."
His thumb moved once across my knuckles.
It said, very clearly, play along.
I had no idea who he was.
I had a sister, a frozen lab, and an audience.
"Yes," I said.
My voice came out steady, which surprised me.
"I'm his fiancee," I said. "I'm sorry for the entrance. I was upset."
Dorian's smile slid off his face.
"This is absurd," he said. "Where is the ring?"
Rhys did not even blink.
"At the jeweler being resized," he said. "She has small hands."
"Convenient," said Dorian.
"Dorian," the old woman said.
It was only his name, and he shut his mouth.
She looked at Rhys, and then at me, for a long time.
"Grandmother," Rhys said.
"I heard," she said.
She picked up her cane and set the tip on the floor.
"The Marwick grant stays frozen until the Founders' Gala," she said.
"I will cast my vote that night, on what I have seen between now and then."
"Odile," Dorian said, "this is a stunt."
"Perhaps," Odile Halloway said. "Then she will have to be a very good one."
She turned her eyes on me.
"Dinner," she said. "Tonight, at Harrow House. Bring the ring."
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