When my family forced me to choose a husband from a list of rich heirs, I did the most logical thing: I rejected every walking disaster with a trust fund and chose the only man who appeared calm enough to survive marriage without requiring a therapist, a lawyer, or a fire extinguisher.

Chapter 2

For nearly a full minute, neither of us spoke.

Then I thought, This is illegal.

Leo’s mouth twitched.

I pointed at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“I cannot control it.”

“You are trespassing in private property.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose.”

“That is exactly what a man with unauthorized access to my brain would say.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked genuinely unsettled. “It started tonight. At least clearly.”

“At least?”

“There may have been moments before when I thought I was imagining things.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“What moments?”

He hesitated.

That was a mistake.

“Leo.”

He rubbed his forehead. “The museum.”

My soul left my body.

“What did you hear?”

He looked at the carpet.

“You compared the statue’s availability favorably to mine.”

“That was confidential.”

“And at dinner last month, you thought my gray tie would look better on the floor.”

I grabbed a pillow and threw it.

He caught it.

Of course he did.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

I stared.

He sighed.

“Something about my hands requiring a license.”

I threw the second pillow.

Eventually, embarrassment gave way to the argument we should have had months earlier.

“How long has this been this bad?” Leo asked.

“You mean how long have your friends treated our marriage like a waiting room?”

His face tightened.

“I thought I was helping.”

“You were. You were helping them.”

“I thought you understood that these situations are part of my work.”

“They aren’t all work. Half these men are your friends, and they call because you have trained them to believe they don’t have to manage their own lives.”

He looked down.

I kept going because once I started, eight months of swallowed resentment came out together.

“You leave dinners. You leave dates. You leave birthdays. You left me standing in your hallway wearing lingerie because Adrian was sad about Instagram.”

“I remember.”

“I certainly hope so. I had to look at myself in that nightgown for forty-five minutes while reconsidering every decision since high school.”

Leo almost smiled.

“Don’t.”

His face immediately sobered.

Then he said something I had not expected.

“I’m sorry.”

I folded my arms.

“It isn’t enough.”

“I know.”

That stopped me.

He looked toward the nightstand where his phone remained powered off.

“I’ve spent years believing being dependable means never saying no. My father disappeared whenever people needed him. I decided I would be different.”

I sat beside him.

“There’s a difference between abandoning people and teaching them to stand on their own.”

He nodded slowly.

The phone stayed off all night.

The next morning, I created what I called the Marriage Emergency Policy.

I used thick cream stationery because anger deserved quality paper.

Rule one: no answering nonbusiness friend calls after nine.

Rule two: no leaving dinners, birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, or private moments unless the situation involves blood, fire, police, hospitalization, genuine danger, or death.

Rule three: romantic catastrophes must first be handled by a therapist, wedding planner, lawyer, security professional, assistant, or the adult who caused the problem.

Rule four addressed hostile swans because I had heard stories.

Leo read the document twice.

“You included swans.”

“Your industry requires specialized legislation.”

Then he signed.

The truly surprising part came afterward.

He changed.

Not perfectly and not overnight, but intentionally.

At Vardis Private Events, I discovered an entire operations floor had become accustomed to routing personal emergencies directly to Leo. I reorganized the flow with his permission: actual emergencies to senior staff, client problems to paid teams, romantic disasters to specialists, and wealthy friends experiencing consequences to nowhere.

One assistant raised her hand.

“What about somebody trapped inside a cake?”

“Professional removal.”

“And swans?”

“Animal control with hazard pay.”

Leo leaned against the conference table watching me.

I thought, Stop looking at me like that in front of employees.

His folder slipped from his hand.

Papers scattered everywhere.

I smiled.

His staff loved me within forty-eight hours.

His friends did not.

Adrian came first.

“You’ve changed him,” he accused while sitting in our living room wearing a linen suit expensive enough to finance a small community college.

Leo answered before I could.

“I got married.”

“You were married before.”

“I was doing it badly.”

My heart did something unhelpful.

Maxwell arrived the next day complaining that I was “controlling access.”

“If I controlled access,” I told him, “your number would be blocked, framed, and hung over the fireplace as a warning to future generations.”

Stefan tried another approach.

“We need Leo.”

“Then you need invoices.”

That gave me an idea.

By evening, I had created a professional rate sheet.

Runaway bride recovery: $8,000.

Mistress discovery containment: $12,500.

Apology-firework damage response: market rate plus emotional surcharge.

Cake extraction: $6,000.

Swan management: $10,000 minimum.

Mother-in-law microphone removal: priceless, but billable.

Leo stared at the list.

“These rates are outrageous.”

“They are consequence rates.”

Adrian called within ten minutes.

“You expect me to pay my friend?”

“No. I expect you to understand my husband is not a public utility.”

Eventually, all three men apologized.

Badly at first.

Then sincerely.

More importantly, Leo stopped rescuing them before they attempted to rescue themselves.

For the first time, we had uninterrupted dinners.

We watched television without his phone sitting between us like an armed explosive.

We went back to the museum, and he held my hand for two uninterrupted hours.

The mind-reading remained.

It happened mostly when I was emotional. Anger, embarrassment, jealousy, affection. The stronger the feeling, the more clearly he heard me.

We established rules.

He could not use my thoughts to win arguments.

If he heard something important, he had to tell me.

If he heard anything embarrassing about his shoulders, hands, mouth, or rolled-up sleeves, he had to pretend to be furniture.

“Any particular furniture?” he asked.

“An ottoman. Quiet. Useful. Low to the ground.”

He failed often.

One morning at breakfast, I thought his forearms looked unfairly attractive while he buttered toast.

He dropped the knife.

“Ottoman.”

“I’m trying.”

“You are standing.”

“I am a tall ottoman.”

For the first time, our arranged marriage began to feel chosen.

That was when Helena Drake decided to interfere.

Helena had known Leo since childhood. Beautiful, wealthy, and accustomed to being welcome everywhere, she considered long familiarity a kind of ownership.

At a charity luncheon, she smiled across the table.

“Leo has always belonged to everyone. People rely on him.”

“A wife understands that,” I said. “She also understands the difference between a husband and municipal infrastructure.”

Several women hid smiles behind napkins.

Helena’s eyes cooled.

“You sound insecure.”

“No. I sound scheduled.”

She leaned closer.

“If you loved him, you wouldn’t isolate him.”

“I’m not isolating him. I’m returning adults to their natural habitat.”

Leo was seated nearby.

His shoulders shook.

He had heard that one.

Helena noticed.

And from the look she gave me, I knew she had just decided our marriage was no longer an irritation.

It was a competition.