Page 25 of Yours, Forever

He paused and gazed at me, then down at himself. "Something wrong with my robe?"

I gave him a once over. Naked legs and bare feet—who knew what he wore underneath the robe, if anything. I tried not to think too hard about it. Good news was that I had gotten good at redirecting my thoughts, thanks to how often I'd had to stop thinking about our recent cuddling at the beach.

"Nothing wrong with it, I suppose."

Except that, to me, it pointed out not only how different we were, but how out of place he was in Laguna Island. I didn't think anyone had ever owned a robe like his around here.

"Good." He joined me at the peninsula and sat on a stool. "Do you mind if I join you? I have news."

He tapped away at his phone. I put my knife down and took the other earbud out, as I waited for him to tell me more.

"The investigator got a recording from a security camera showing the moment we met," he said.

"Have you seen it yet?"

"No. Let's watch it together."

I rounded the peninsula and stood by his side; we both leaned in to watch on the small screen.

Proximity to him resulted in an attack on my senses. His smell, intoxicating and rich, latched onto whatever ancient brain structure was responsible for instant attraction.

Oh, shit. That's terrible news.

I liked it too much. Still, I showed nothing to him of the effect his scent had on me.

Max pressed play on the screen, and I focused on the video rather than his fragrance.

The image was clear but quite zoomed out. Most details were lost. Past Me stood by the bar in a busy place, looking out to the crowd. The one memory I had of it was that I had chosen a place at random on the strip.

Max appeared next to me and ordered something; I didn't seem to notice him right away, and he took the opportunity to study me. Once he got his drink, he leaned to me and said something. I couldn't see my reaction due to lack of details, but I leaned to him too, as if to hear him more clearly. We appeared to chat for a few minutes.

"That must be it for this one. In the email I got from one of the lawyers on Leon's team, they said that the end of the video is just us talking. At the very end, though..." Max moved the slider to the last bit, "she said you can see us walking together off the frame."

I rested an elbow on the counter to watch us move out of frame on Max's phone. His robe caressed my arm, so smooth.

"It doesn't look like love at first sight," I said.

Max shrugged and put his phone screen down on the island. "It's probably going to be okay. They're trying to get a video that apparently shows us on the pub's terrace after we met at the bar. As long as we don't appear to fight, it'll suffice."

I went back to cooking; I grabbed the knife and continued chopping vegetables, this time cutting through cauliflower.

I tossed the first floret into a bowl. "Don't the videos need to show us falling progressively more in love through the night? How are you going to justify that we decided to get married?"

"Do you have wine?" He asked. When I shook my head, he sighed. "I'll get us some. To answer your question, well... I'm counting on a loophole. Remember how I said he never talked about love in the documents that put us in this mess?"

"Yes. You said we were using his rules against him."

He nodded. "My father wanted to prove that I'd be just like him and, by the one-year mark, I'd have caused my wife to want to divorce me. He put way more stock into what happens during my marriage, than how I ended up married."

"That sounds like a father who doesn't have a lot of hope in his son."

"Maybe." He gave me a long look. "More than that, is that he has too much hope in himself, in a way. He's egotistical enough to think it's impossible for me to not be just like him."

I put the chopped-up cauliflower in the bowl and tossed it in a mix of oil, cumin, and parsley.

"What does he get from all of this? Proving you're like him?"

"It's an ego trip, for sure. But as his business grew and he became a billionaire, it wasn't only about proving he was right, but also maintaining control of all the assets. If I win, he has to give me access to a fund of shares and capital he doesn't want to let go of. The bigger the business is, the larger the sum of what he has to give me. Considering his age, soon it willallgo to me."