She should run but she couldn’t make her feet move. And then she admitted she wasn’t going to run at all. She was going to do this with him. “Ask me again.”
His gaze seemed tender as he stared down at her. “Sylvie Martine, will you marry me?”
She was diving into the deep end of the pool. “Yes. I will marry you, but I have some questions. And some boundaries.”
“Of course. We should negotiate.”
“First, I do not want any kind of financial settlement.”
He hesitated.
She wasn’t going to back down. “I mean it, Rene. It’s a deal breaker.”
“Fine. I will have Quaid strike that part of the contract, but you have to get something out of this.”
“I will. I want to know if we can work, too.” She’d thought about it on the long drive from Guidry’s. If she was going to do this, she needed to be honest with him, too. “I think you’re the reason I haven’t been serious about anyone in years. I’ve dated but it never went anywhere, and I think it’s because I’ve always wondered what could have happened between us. So I’m going to ask you flat out. I wasn’t brave enough to do it back then. Why did you turn me down?”
“Because I knew I had to go to Chicago to work for at least two years. I wasn’t in a good place for a relationship, and you deserved a relationship. We were young, and I didn’t know how your family would handle it if things didn’t work out between us. Your family has always been important to me.”
She could understand that. “So it wasn’t that you weren’t attracted to me.”
His jaw tightened. “I was attracted to you then. I’m very much attracted to you now. I need this marriage, but you should understand, I want it, too. I don’t want to wait anymore. I worry if I do, I’m going to wake up and be out of time.”
“I worry about that, too. But we can’t simply say we’re married and start trying to have babies.”
“All right,” he agreed. “We’ll practice for a while.”
“Rene, I think we should concentrate on ensuring that you remain the CEO and then we can talk about how to move forward. We should date.”
“You want me to date my wife?”
“I’ll only be your wife legally. I want to make it clear that I’m not jumping into bed with you. We’ll put on a show for your family and agree to also take this time to get to know each other again. And you have to be all right with me telling my family what’s going on.”
“Agreed, and some of my friends will understand the nature of our marriage. Other than them and the people you’re close to, I think we should keep up the ruse.”
He was definitely being naïve. There was no way to keep those secrets in a small town. “All of Papillon is going to know. There are already rumors that you’re getting married to keep your job.”
Rene sat down and sighed. “Then this might not work at all.”
She didn’t think so, but he looked cute when he went all woe is me. “Are you worried about Charles finding out? Because he’s going to question the timing. He’s going to want to know why we didn’t have a big wedding. He’s going to want to know why me. Mostly he’s going to be suspicious.”
“He’s going to be more than suspicious, and that’s why you need to think this through,” Rene replied. “I’m absolutely certain my cousin will hire a private detective to watch us. Specifically to watch you.”
“He won’t see anything interesting. I haven’t done anything interesting in years. Like I said, I haven’t had time to. My last relationship was with a man in DC. We worked on a national campaign together, and for about six months we dated.” Being on the road could be hard, and it often led to affairs between staffers. “That was the last time I had any kind of a relationship, so it’s not like I’m jumping from one man to another. It’s entirely possible we’ve been seeing each other for months but we wanted to keep it quiet because of my position in the community.”
Rene seemed to think about it. “That could work. My friends will put the word out.”
“And no one is better at spreading gossip than Hallie. The minute I tell her, she’ll sell it, if you know what I mean.” She was sure Hallie could have the story they wanted out in no time at all. “She’ll frame it as an undercover romance. If people ask, we can tell them we didn’t want to be out in the open until we were sure about our relationship. The situation at your company forced our hand, but we made the decision to take the plunge because we’re very much in love. We would have liked to have more time, but we’ve got faith.”
“You are far better at this than I am, Madam Mayor.”
She had experience on how to control an unwieldy narrative. “We should go with that story with everyone except our closest acquaintances.”
“There will still be talk,” he pointed out.
“Maybe amongst themselves, but I assure you no one in this town will talk to Charles.” Charles Darois’s past actions would be their best ally. “People around here can’t stand Charles. That wife of his is snooty and their kids are bullies. It also might be time to do some charitable work.”
Rene stared at her, emotion plain on his face. “Sylvie, do you have any idea what you’re saving for me?”
“I hope that I’m saving your job and your house. I’m also saving this town, because if Charles takes over, you’ll probably move to New Orleans.” This was something else she’d weighed in her decision. “You do a lot for this town. The Beaumonts help out, but you personally fund an enormous amount of this town’s needs. Charles won’t do that. He won’t care. I don’t even understand why he wants this place, since he hates the town so much.”
“Because he’s always been jealous of me. Because his father was jealous of mine. It’s a family tradition.”
She would love to understand the foundation of the rivalry. “Is it because your grandfather entrusted the company to your dad? From what I remember, your uncle wasn’t interested in business.”
“No, my uncle liked to cash checks and have parties. His job was being rich. He dabbled in business and my father indulged him. He started up a magazine once. It lasted a whole three issues before he lost interest. It wasn’t the only time. He hated that my father held the purse strings, but if he hadn’t, Charles’s childhood would have gone differently. Now I hold those same purse strings and they all hate me. My cousins can’t handle money. If I thought they could, I would have bought out their shares and sent them on their ways. That’s not what my father taught me to do.”