Chapter 1 - Six Hours, One Stranger, and the Worst Decision of Her Life
The words were out before she could call them back.
"I need a boyfriend by tomorrow."
The bartender looked up from the glass he was polishing. Marin Whitlock closed her eyes for exactly half a second and pressed the phone tighter against her ear, as if proximity could make the sentence smaller.
"Not a husband," she said. "Not a soulmate. One believable man. Six hours."
Laurel laughed so hard that Marin had to hold the phone away from her face. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Hawthorne Hotel, rain streaked headlights into smeared ribbons of red and gold. Inside, everything smelled like expensive whiskey, polished wood, and the white garden roses she had spent eleven hours arranging for the charity dinner upstairs.
Her feet hurt. Her hair had surrendered somewhere around hour nine. There was a thin green stain from flower stems along the side of her thumb, and she was fairly certain she had not eaten since a blueberry muffin at seven that morning.
She looked, in other words, exactly like a woman who should not have been discussing emergency boyfriend acquisition in one of Boston's most expensive hotel lounges.
"You cannot rent a boyfriend because Bennett is bringing Celeste tomorrow," Laurel said.
"I'm not renting anyone." Marin stared into the melting ice in her ginger ale. "I'm strategically avoiding six hours of pity."
Tomorrow was supposed to be about her younger sister. Clara's engagement dinner — fifty relatives, family friends, people from their hometown in Vermont, and enough unsolicited questions about her personal life to qualify as psychological warfare. That alone she could survive. She had survived worse.
What she had not planned for was her mother calling twenty minutes earlier to mention, in the tone of someone reading a weather report, that Bennett Hale would be attending.
Bennett. Her almost-fiancé. The man who had spent three years telling her they were building a future together before deciding the future looked better with someone named Celeste Waverly.
"Mom says everyone already knows I'm coming alone," Marin whispered. "She used the voice."
"Which voice?"
"The Marin is brave, but we are all quietly worried about her voice."
Laurel made a sympathetic noise. Marin rubbed her forehead.
"I don't need revenge. I don't need Bennett jealous. I just want to walk into that room without thirty people looking at me like I'm a rescue dog nobody adopted."
That took the laughter out of Laurel's voice.
"You know being single doesn't mean you lost."
"I know." Marin looked toward the rain. "I just don't want to spend tomorrow proving that I know."
Silence settled between them. Somewhere behind her, ice clicked softly against crystal.
She had noticed the man in the corner booth when she first sat down — only in the automatic way a woman notices who else is in a nearly empty room late at night. Dark suit. Broad shoulders. Mid-thirties. He had been alone, one hand resting beside an untouched glass, his face mostly hidden in the warm shadow of a brass lamp. He had not looked at her once.
At least, she thought he hadn't.
"Fine," Laurel sighed. "Hypothetically. What kind of boyfriend are we looking for?"
Despite herself, Marin smiled. "Someone calm. Polite. Employed. Ambitious, that would be nice. Tall."
"I'm hanging up."
"Handsome. Good night, Laurel."
"Wait — six hours?"
"Six hours. And then he turns back into a pumpkin."
She ended the call before Laurel could laugh again and dropped her forehead into one hand.
"This is officially the most pathetic night of my life," she muttered.
"Six hours is oddly specific."
The voice came from behind her. Male. Low. Calm enough that it took her brain a full second to understand that the stranger in the corner booth had spoken.
She turned slowly.
He was looking at her now. Not smiling. Not embarrassed that he had clearly heard everything. Just watching her with gray-blue eyes that seemed too focused for casual conversation. Up close she could see the suit wasn't simply expensive — it fit him with a precision that made her seventy-dollar black work dress feel even more exhausted. Dark brown hair pushed back. Clean-shaven. Thirty-five, maybe thirty-six. Nothing flashy about him at all.
That was what made him hard to ignore.
"Excuse me?"
He glanced at the clock above the bar. "You said you needed a boyfriend by tomorrow. For six hours."
Heat rushed straight into her face. "You were listening to my conversation."
"You were having it four tables away."
"That doesn't answer my question."
Something almost like amusement touched his eyes and vanished before it could become a smile. "Yes."
She grabbed her coat off the back of the stool. "Wonderful. Good night."
"What time should I pick you up?"
Her hand stopped halfway into the sleeve. For a moment, all she heard was rain against the glass. She turned back.
"What?"
He stood, buttoning his jacket one-handed. The movement was quiet and controlled, and behind the bar the bartender straightened as if a bell had rung.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Your family event. What time should I pick you up?"
She stared at him, waiting for the punchline. None came.
"You cannot possibly be serious."
"I usually am."
"You don't even know my name."
His gaze dropped briefly to the embroidered identification card still clipped to her waist. Then it came back to hers.
"Now I do."
Marin should have walked away. Every reasonable part of her knew it. Instead she stood there with her coat half on, staring at a stranger who had just volunteered to become her boyfriend for six hours as casually as if he were offering her an umbrella.
And for reasons she could not explain yet, the room suddenly felt different. Quieter.
Like everyone except her already knew who he was.
He extended a hand.
"Adrian Cross."
Marin looked at it.
The name meant nothing.
At least, it meant nothing to the version of Boston she knew.
"I'm Marin."
"I know."
She stared.
"Right. Because of the card."
"Yes."
"That is not creepy at all."
That almost-smile appeared again.
"Your family doesn't need a complete biography. They need a convincing answer to one question."
"What question?"
"Why you aren't alone."
Marin folded her arms.
"You've done this before?"
"No."
"Then why offer?"
Adrian glanced toward the bartender.
The man's face had gone very still.
Adrian looked back at Marin.
"Because you looked like you were about to walk into a room tomorrow and apologize for existing."
The words hit her harder than she expected.
She frowned.
"You don't know me."
"No."
"Then don't diagnose me."
"I'm not."
He reached into his coat and placed a business card on the bar.
Plain white.
No title.
Just a name and a number.
"I'll pick you up at seven."
Marin looked at the card.
"You've already decided?"
"You said you needed a boyfriend by tomorrow."
"I said I needed one. I didn't say I accepted your application."
Adrian's eyes held hers.
"Then consider this an interview."
She laughed before she could stop herself.
"That's absurd."
"Probably."
"How much?"
He frowned.
"How much what?"
"How much are you charging?"
For the first time, something more than amusement flickered across his face.
"Nothing."
"Nobody does anything for nothing."
"I do."
"Why?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, "Because tomorrow, someone is going to underestimate you."
Marin stared at him.
"How do you know?"
"Because people have been doing it all night."
Before she could respond, he walked away.
Not toward the lobby.
Not toward the elevators.
Toward the private staircase at the end of the lounge.
A security guard opened the door before Adrian touched it.
Marin watched him disappear.
The bartender cleared his throat.
"You really don't know who that was?"
"No."
The bartender looked at the closed door.
"Adrian Cross."
"Apparently."
"He owns half the harbor."
Marin laughed.
"He doesn't."
The bartender didn't laugh.
"Not legally."
She turned.
"What?"
But the bartender had already returned to polishing the same glass.
Marin picked up the card.
The name was still just a name.
She had no idea that by seven tomorrow evening, she would be walking into her sister's engagement dinner holding the hand of the most feared private businessman on the East Coast.
She had no idea that Adrian Cross was a name whispered in Boston's darker rooms.
She had no idea he had been watching her for weeks without her noticing.
And she had absolutely no idea that he hadn't offered to be her fake boyfriend because he found her embarrassing situation amusing.
May you like
He had offered because the moment he'd overheard her say she needed someone by tomorrow, he had already known exactly why.
And he needed her close.
