Page 119 of The Temporary Bride

Chloe

The flight back to LA feels longer than the one out, mostly because I’m so excited to get home. I’ve got my forehead against the window for most of it, watching the country roll by thirty thousand feet below, a patchwork of lights and dark stretches that eventually gives way to the sprawl of Los Angeles glittering out to the horizon.

The trip was definitely worth it. The writer of Better Days Ahead, Leonor Alvarado, is a kid just out of college, living in a semi-basement in Jersey City and struggling to make it as a writer. This is her big break, and her excitement when we met to talk through the film was infectious in the best way, the kind of energy that makes you remember why any of this matters. And New York, as always, was a good place to spend a few days. Between meetings I walked through Central Park and ate too much good food and thought about how strange it is that two cities can both claim to be the center of the world and feel so completely different from each other.

But still, I missed Tristan more than I thought I would. Every text from him over the past few days gave me a burst of energy, keeping me moving.

The private car is waiting at the curb when I come through the arrivals doors, and I slide into the back seat, letting out a long breath as we get moving.

I glance at my phone as we drive, hoping to see a message from Tristan, but the screen is disappointingly blank. He hasn’t responded to many of my texts since yesterday, and I’m sure he must be swamped with work.

Guess I’ll just have to distract him a bit.

I grin privately to myself, replaying the way he kissed me goodbye, my shoulders against the wall and his hands in my hair. He took his time with it like he had something to prove, and butterflies tumble through my stomach at the memory. After that send-off, my welcome home is going to be something.

The house is dark when we pull up, just the porch light on and the windows unlit except for a faint glow coming from the back. I thank the driver, grab my suitcase, and wheel it toward the front door. The familiar scents of the house—clean linen, the ocean breeze, and a hint of Tristan’s cologne—greet me, and I inhale deeply.

“Tristan?” I call out, flicking on the light by the door. “Hey, I’m back.”

There’s no answer, so I set my bag down and move through the foyer, glancing around the room. The tall windows are dark, the ocean beyond an inky expanse into the night. I make my way into the living room, where everything looks as it should, cozy and welcoming. But still, there’s no sign of him.

There’s a light on under the door at the end of the hall, so I head that way. I push his office door open, smiling as I catch sight of him at his desk.

“Hey, there you are. Did you hear me calling? I’ve been texting you since⁠—”

“Why did you do it?”

His voice stops me cold. It’s quiet, flat and contained, and my stomach drops before I quite know why. I stop just inside the doorway and look at him properly.

He’s leaning back in his chair, a glass of whiskey on the desk in front of him, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on me with an expression that turns the butterflies in my stomach into rocks.

The smile slides off my face.

“Do… what?” I frown, taking a step toward him. “Tristan, what’s going on? You’ve barely texted since yesterday and now you’re sitting in the dark with a whiskey, what⁠—”

He doesn’t answer directly. His gaze hardens, settling somewhere past me. “I can understand why you’d marry me to benefit your family’s business,” he says, his voice cold enough to make my skin prickle. “That’s not new. People do it all the time. I can even understand stealing company secrets. You’re certainly not the first to try something like that.”

He pauses, and when his eyes come back to mine they’re flat and hard. “But what I can’t figure out is why you’d go to so much trouble to pretend this was real. Why act like you were falling for me when it was all just a lie? Why make me believe in something that wasn’t true?”

My pulse spikes hard enough that it hammers in my throat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Someone accessed Thorne Enterprises’ servers.” He stands suddenly, moving around the desk, his shoulders tight. He crosses his arms over his chest, glaring at me with a closed-off expression that makes him look like a stranger. “Downloaded our entire expansion strategy. Market reports, client lists, everything we’ve been building toward for the past year. The breach was traced to your computer. Your login credentials, your office, your machine.”

My jaw drops open. “What? That’s not possible.”

“IT traced it twice.” A muscle in his jaw works. “The files were sitting on your desktop. I went to your office myself and checked.”

“You went through my office?”

“I needed to see it with my own eyes.” He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a folded piece of paper, and sets it down on the desk between us. “And I found this.”

I cross the room and look down at it, and the floor tilts underneath me.

My handwriting. My notepad. My words, written months ago in those first ugly weeks when I was still treating this whole arrangement like a chess match and him like the opponent sitting across the board.

It’s a marriage of convenience, nothing more. Don’t forget that Tristan Thorne is the enemy.

My breath catches in my throat. I remember writing this. I remember hating myself even as the ink dried, knowing even then that the words weren’t fully true, that they were armor I was putting on because I was scared of exactly what ended up happening, which is that I fell for him completely.