Bid on the Groom

Let me be clear: I despise Nolan Ashworth.

He parks in my spot. He reply-alls emails that concern two people. He once ate my clearly labeled turkey-and-brie lunch and left the empty container in the sink like a confession without remorse.

So when he appeared at my desk at 6:07 p.m. on a Wednesday with a manila envelope and said, "I need you to marry me," I said what any reasonable woman would say.

"Absolutely not."

"Two hundred thousand dollars. Contract marriage. Twenty-six days. Annulment after the estate clears."

I paused. Rain hit the glass beside my monitor in thin, irritable lines. My student loans did math in my head without permission.

"I'm listening," I said. "And if this is a joke, I will report you to HR for wasting billable time."

He set the envelope down. "Grandfather's will. Marriage by thirty-two or the Ashworth trust goes to a charity board that already hates our family. I turn thirty-two in twenty-six days. I need a wife who will not fall in love with the house, the name, or me."

"You picked me because I hate you."

"Yes." He almost smiled. "Clean motives. No confusion."

I signed on page fourteen in a coffee shop two blocks from the office, after my lawyer friend texted back: *Weird but enforceable if you both disclose. Don't lie to a court. Don't forge. Don't share a joint account you can't unwind.*

We disclosed. We planned. We still underestimated his cousin Marcus.

The ceremony was at the Connecticut estate, under a white tent that smelled like wet boxwood and old money. I wore a navy dress that said *serious witness*, not *bride*. Nolan's mother touched my arm as if checking for fever.

"She's lovely," she told him. "You never bring anyone home."

Nolan's hand found my waist. "I was waiting for the right one."

I almost choked on champagne. The line was in the briefing packet. Hearing it aloud felt like wearing someone else's coat in a storm.

At dinner, Marcus leaned close enough that I smelled his cologne—expensive, eager. "I never thought Nolan would settle. He's always been… guarded."

"He's different with me," I said, because it was the line, and because the alternative was admitting I did not know who Nolan was when he was not stealing parking spaces.

Across the table, Nolan caught my eye. For one second he did not look guarded. He looked like a man watching a fuse he had lit himself.

The guest room had one bed. Of course.

"I'll sleep on the floor," Nolan said.

"Your mother will hear the floorboards. Stay on your side. We are adults with a contract."

He stayed on his side like the mattress had a surveyor's line down the middle. At 2:11 a.m. I whispered, "Are you awake?"

"Yes."

"This is weird."

"Extremely."

Silence. Then: "Thank you, Priya. For doing this without turning it into theater."

It was the first time he used my first name without sarcasm. I did not know what to do with the softness, so I catalogued the sound of rain on the slate roof and pretended that counted as sleep.

Over the next two weeks we performed. Brunch. A couples' cooking class where he burned garlic and I laughed before I remembered we were enemies. His hand on my knee under restaurant tables—deliberate, contractual, increasingly hard to bill as pure strategy.

Then Marcus started texting me.

Friendly. Then flirty. *Dinner Saturday? Nolan won't mind—he's not the jealous type.*

I showed Nolan the messages expecting a strategy meeting. He did not laugh. His jaw tightened. He took my phone, typed—*She's busy Saturday. And every Saturday.*—and handed it back.

"That is not in the contract," I said.

"Consider it an addendum."

"Or consider that your cousin is testing whether I am real."

Nolan went still. "He is not testing you. He is testing the will."

He pulled a photocopy from his bag—pages I had not been shown. A clause I had skimmed past in the lawyer's summary glowed now like a hazard light: if the marriage was found to be solely for pecuniary gain, or if either spouse publicly contested fidelity within ninety days, the trustee could freeze distributions pending investigation.

"You offered me money," I said carefully.

"I offered you a fee for a disclosed temporary marriage. Marcus wants a scandal that looks like fraud. If he can provoke you into a public fight—or into his bed—he can petition the trustee."

The room tilted. My "clean" hate-marriage had a second engine: not romance, not inheritance theater, but a cousin hunting a technical foul.

"Why didn't you tell me on page one?"

"Because I thought if you knew the stake was humiliation, you would refuse. I needed someone who already disliked me enough not to perform desire for free."

I hated that it made sense. I hated more that my anger had a new target and it was not only him.

"Then we do this properly," I said. "No more improvising jealousy on my phone. We document. We stay boring. And you stop treating my ignorance as a shield."

He nodded once. "Deal."

The inheritance paperwork cleared on day twenty-four. His grandfather's lawyer filed. On paper, it was done.

We sat in Nolan's car outside the attorney's office, engine off, rain starting again.

"So," I said. "Congratulations. I'll have my lawyer start the annulment."

"Right." He gripped the steering wheel. "Priya—Marcus filed a complaint this morning. Anonymous tip to the trustee. He attached screenshots of my texts to you about the fee."