The CEO'S Wrong Sister (The Black Sheep Bride)

Nobody told Nora the meeting was about her. That was the annoying but usual thing. The way they all sat around the formal dining table her father at the head. Her mother beside Madison, and Nora in the chair slightly that had always been slightly to the left, and nobody thought to mention that the man sitting across from them with the dark grey eyes, and the charcoal suit that probably cost more than the Voss family car was here, in some way, because of her. She found out the same time everyone else did. Which was to say, she found out when Xavier Holt looked directly at her father and said, "I'd like to marry your daughter," and then turned those dark grey eyes across the table and looked, not at Madison, but at Nora. The room stopped. Not figuratively. Literally. Her mother's hand froze halfway to her wine glass. Her father made a sound that wasn't quite a word. And Madison, she went very, very still. Nora looked behind her. Purely on instinct. Just to make sure there wasn't another daughter standing there that she didn't know about. There wasn't, there was only the wall and the painting of the countryside her mother had bought at an auction twelve years ago and never quite liked. She turned back around. Xavier Holt was still looking at her. He was, and she would hate herself for noticing this, later, in the privacy of her own room. The man was extraordinarily good looking. Not in the approachable way. In the way that made you forget what you were about to say. Tall even sitting down, broad shouldered, dark hair with one piece falling slightly forward that he didn't bother to fix. His jaw was sharp enough to be its own argument and his eyes were the grey of a sky deciding whether to storm. He did not look like a man who made mistakes. Which made this all very confusing. "I'm sorry," Nora said, because someone had to. "Did you just ..." "Yes," he said. "You looked at me." "I did." "Not at. ." She stopped herself. Gestured vaguely across the table without finishing the sentence because finishing the sentence felt cruel, and she wasn't cruel even when people deserved it, and Madison was sitting right there with a smile painted on her face that didn't reach anything above her cheekbones. "I'm aware of who I looked at," Xavier said. His voice was low, and unhurried. The kind of voice that didn't need volume because the room always got quiet for it anyway. He picked up his water glass, and took a measured sip, and set it back down with the precise ease of a man who had never once in his life been caught off guard. Nora had been caught off guard. Enormously. She was still off guard. She was so far off guard she could no longer see guard from where she was standing. "Xavier," her father started, recovering. "Perhaps we should discuss.." "I've read the file," Xavier said simply. "I've made my decision." "The file," Nora repeated. "Yes." "There's a file." "There is." She looked at her father. Gerald Voss had the specific expression of a man who had intended to control this conversation and was watching that intention walk quietly out of the room. He cleared his throat. "It was simply background. Standard due diligence for a .." "For a what?" Nora said. "For a what, Dad?" Her mother put her wine glass down. "Nora." There it was, that word again. Worn smooth. Meaning everything it always meant don't, please, just this once, why must you always. Nora looked back at Xavier Holt. He was watching her with an expression she couldn't read not quite curiosity, not quite calculation. Something in between. Something that made her feel like she was a document he was reviewing, and had found more interesting than expected. She did not find this flattering. "I don't know what's happening," she said slowly, "but I'd like someone to explain it to me in full sentences. Starting from the beginning." "We needed a solution," her father said. He had the grace to look at the table when he said it. "The debt, you know about the debt, Nora. Xavier has proposed a business arrangement that would resolve the situation entirely. In exchange for..." "In exchange for a daughter," Nora said flatly. The table went quiet again. "An arrangement," her father said. "A marriage of mutual benefit. Xavier's company gains.." "I don't need you to explain what I gain," Xavier said, without looking away from Nora. "I can explain that myself. When she's ready to hear it." "I'm ready right now," Nora said. Something moved across his face. Quick, almost nothing. She would have missed it if she hadn't been watching him the way she'd been watching him since he sat down with the wary attention of someone who understood instinctively that this man was worth paying attention to. "Good," he said. And then he just looked at her. For a moment that stretched like taffy, like the room had decided to take a breath and hold it. Like everyone at the table understood that something was happening between these two people that didn't require the rest of them. Madison moved. It was small, a shift in her seat, a repositioning of her perfectly manicured hands on the table. But Nora had spent twenty six years learning to read Madison's small movements the way sailors read weather. She looked at her sister. Madison smiled at her. Warm and sisterly. The smile she'd been perfecting since they were children, the one that looked like love from a distance and felt like something else entirely up close. "Congratulations, Nora," she said softly. And somehow, that was the most frightening thing that had happened in the last ten minutes. Nora looked back at Xavier Holt. He was still watching her. Patient, and certain. Very much unbothered. Like a man who had already decided how this ended, and was simply waiting for the rest of the room to catch up. She thought about her small apartment. Her plants. Her Thursday mornings. Her romance novels stacked on the shelf in order of how many times she'd re-read them. Her quiet, independent, entirely her own life that nobody had thought to ask her about before apparently deciding to hand it to a stranger in a charcoal suit. "I'd like to speak with you," she said to Xavier. "Alone." Her mother made a sound. Her father straightened. Xavier simply nodded once like she'd said something obvious, like he'd been expecting her to say exactly this, and pushed back his chair. "Of course," he said. And stood up. All six feet four inches of him. Nora stood too, tipped her chin up. She refused absolutely refused to be impressed. But deep down she knew she was a little impressed, she would take that to her grave.