Eventually, unable to decide how to reply, I just murmur into his chest, “It’s still kind of surreal to me, you know?”

“Yeah.” Noah gives me a reassuring squeeze . . . and presses his lips to my forehead.

I blink at his feather-soft kiss. The unexpected tenderness just muddles my feelings more.

Oblivious to my confusion, Noah lies on his back, drawing my arm around his waist. I try to push my distracting, troubling thoughts away and relax into him. I cuddle closer, pushing my head onto his chest and resting my leg over his. He’s so warm, like lying next to a fireplace.

The steady beat of his heart beneath my ear soothes me to sleep.

Chapter Nineteen

Noah

As far as the media’s concerned, a couple of our status should have a wedding with glitz and swagger, but Olivia decided she felt most comfortable having our ceremony at her father’s beach house on Nantucket. It’s a purely legal wedding. No fanfare, just a handful of family and close friends. Even the beach house itself is a quaint place, with just two bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen and living space, and a wide porch looking out onto the beach.

That stretch of beach is where we’ll tie the proverbial knot in about an hour. Drinking beer in the kitchen with Sterling, I watch seagulls land on the folding chairs we set up earlier, scaring a few tiny crabs back into their holes.

This whole affair is the polar opposite of what Camryn told me about Olivia’s scrapbook wedding. And I don’t know how to feel about that. Did Olivia just want to keep things convenient and cheap? She is the practical type, and she’s been tearing her hair out over Tate & Cane’s expenses recently.

Or is she trying to preserve her romantic dream by keeping her reality as far away from it as possible? I’m not sure I like that idea, considering I’m part of her reality . . .

“Another beer?” Sterling asks.

“I better not.” I glance at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall. “Fifty-eight minutes till I say I do.”

My best man smirks. “You think she’s actually going to go through with it?”

“You don’t?”

He shrugs. “She locked herself in her room two hours ago and hasn’t been out since. I offered her breakfast this morning, and she said she was too uneasy to eat. I don’t know, mate. It’s entirely possible that she’ll back out.”

“The contract’s all drawn up. We’ll sign it on Monday when we’re back at the office. Why back out now? Olivia’s a woman of her word. She’s dependable like that.”

He lets out a grunt of disapproval.

“What’s the big deal? You took a fake date to prom,” I remind him.

I chuckle to myself, remembering the year Sterling took his cousin to the dance. He thought it was genius at the time—no corsage to buy, no need to impress her with a fancy restaurant or limo ride. Until the end of the night, when all the rest of us were enjoying some skin-to-skin contact with our dates, and he realized what a horrible decision he’d made. The only skin-to-skin action he got was with his hand.

“A fake wife is a hell of a lot different. It’s a big fucking deal.” Sterling glares at me over the rim of his beer.

Looking out over the ocean from our spot on the porch of the beach cottage, I loosen my tie, which has grown too tight around my neck, and level him with a dark stare.

“Actually, it’s legally binding, so she’ll be my real wife. Until we got divorced, or got the marriage annulled or whatever.”

I clear my throat, my unease growing. “Oh, one more thing.”

After Olivia’s father presented the contract to us this morning over breakfast, I took a copy with me out to the porch while Olivia retreated to the bedroom. I didn’t view it as a bad sign, just that we were both taking this seriously and needed a moment to absorb it.

With a cup of coffee, I read the contract in full detail. Page fourteen, section twenty-eight, part B stated that the fulfillment of our contractual obligations as new owners of the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate was also contingent on Olivia getting pregnant. Within ninety days.

I stormed inside to talk to Fred immediately.

“An heir clause? Is this your sick way of ensuring the family name carries on? You actually expect me to knock her up?”

“It’s part of your father’s will, Noah. Bill and I both wanted a grandchild before we died. Surely you can understand that.”

“And what has Olivia said about that?” I asked him.

He made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “We haven’t discussed it yet.”

That was this morning. And I’m pretty sure that’s the reason Olivia locked herself inside her bedroom and hasn’t been seen since.

Taking a deep sigh, I watch my best man carefully as I drop my news. “I need to knock her up.”

Sterling spits out his drink.

“There’s an heir clause in the contract,” I say dryly.

Wiping beer from his lips, he narrows his eyes on mine. “You’re telling me you need to impregnate her?”

“Uh-huh.”

The fucker actually laughs at me, then takes another sip of his beer. “If I know the first thing about Olivia, it’s that she’s not going to want your bun in her oven.”

“O, ye of little faith.” I smirk at him.

“Has she even touched your cock yet?”

Aside from grabbing it through my slacks once at the restaurant, no. But that doesn’t mean anything. We’re building on something good here. It’s only a matter of time.