Chapter 3 Eight O'Clock

Damian Cole had never been afraid of a room until he walked into his grandmother's study.

The house in Holmby Hills was a monument to restraint. Pale stone, black iron, gardens trimmed within a millimeter of their lives. The study held two armchairs, a desk that had belonged to his grandfather, and one framed photograph of a small boy in a school blazer scowling at the camera. Damian had always hated that photograph. Eleanor had always refused to move it.

She was seventy four with silver hair coiled at the back of her head and a spine as straight as a ruler. The cane beside her chair was a prop. She used it to point and to punctuate and sometimes to end arguments. She poured tea and waited until he had taken the cup.

"You will marry Elena Hart."

He set the cup down very carefully. "I'm sorry?"

"Ten days from now. The Harts were told this evening. Thomas will handle the arrangements."

"Grandmother." His voice came out level, the voice that closed deals. "I'm not for sale."

"No. You are an investment. There is a difference."

"Hart Industries is insolvent. They make landing gear nobody orders anymore. You're buying a collapse."

"I am buying a century of engineering and four thousand jobs, and I am buying them cheaply." The cane tapped once. "And I am buying the most capable young executive I have seen in thirty years. The Whitmore girl has held that company together with her bare hands while smiling for the cameras."

"Then hire her. Don't marry me to her."

"That would not be the same."

"Why?"

Something flickered across Eleanor's face, too quick to name, a bird against glass. She reached for the drawer of the desk, hesitated, and pulled her hand back.

"Your grandfather made a promise," she said. "Edmund gave his word to a friend thirty two years ago, before either of you existed. He ran this company for forty years and he never broke a promise in his life. He has retired and left it all in your hands, and I intend to see that one promise kept."

"A promise to who?"

"That is not tonight's conversation."

"Grandmother, you can't ask me to marry a stranger because of something Grandfather said over a drink."

"I am not asking." The words were quiet and final. Then, to his astonishment, her voice softened by a fraction, and somehow that was worse than the steel. "Damian. I am seventy four. I would like to see you settled while I am still here to see it."

He had no answer for that. He never had. She had known it for thirty one years and she had never been cruel enough to say so aloud.

"One year," he said at last. "I'll do it for one year. Then we talk."

"We will see."

"That isn't an agreement."

"It is the one you are getting."

There it was, his own sentence handed back to him, and the awful fact that he was going to obey. He was going to walk out of this room and become a husband the way he had once become a student and a chairman and a billionaire. Because she asked. Because he had never learned to be anyone else.

"Thank you," said Eleanor Cole.

It was the worst part. She almost never said it.

Marcus was parked outside the gate with the engine running and a bottle of scotch on the dashboard. Damian climbed into the passenger seat without a word and Marcus handed him a glass.

"Well?"

"I'm getting married."

Marcus did not move. The bottle stopped halfway to his own glass.

"Say that again."

"Ten days. Elena Hart. Whitmore Holdings. Eleanor arranged it."

"Dame." Marcus put the bottle down. "Are you insane?"

"Probably."

"No, look at me. I'm asking as your friend. Are you out of your mind?" He twisted in his seat. "You negotiate billion dollar mergers for fun. You made a prince beg for a water contract. And you couldn't negotiate your own wedding?"

"She wasn't negotiating. She was telling me."

"That's the whole problem!" Marcus dragged a hand through his hair. "You don't have to do everything that woman says. You're thirty one years old. You own half the city. You are allowed to say the word no."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Damian looked out at the dark lawn and the lights of the city beyond it. For a moment neither of them spoke.

"I asked for one year," Damian said. "I got one year. That's something."

"That's a prison sentence with a nicer name." Marcus picked up his glass and stared into it. "What's she like? Is she nice?"

"I don't know. I've read her file. I've seen one photograph." Damian drank and felt it burn all the way down. "She looks tired."

Marcus watched him a long beat and his expression changed from alarm into something quieter and more careful.

"Huh," he said.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You said huh."

"Huh is not a sentence."

Damian almost laughed. Then he stopped. A thought had been circling at the edge of his mind since the study and now it came down and landed. His grandmother had said a friend. Not a partner. Not a rival. A friend. Edmund Cole had been a man with no friends, only allies, and Damian had known him all his life.

"Marcus, I'll walk home."

"It's eight miles."

"Then I'll call a car."

He got out. The night air hit his face. He turned and looked back at the house where one light still burned behind the study curtains, and he knew with sudden certainty that he hadn't gotten the whole truth. He had gotten the version she could stand to say.

He walked back through the gate.

Eleanor was still in her chair. She had not moved. When he came through the door she raised her eyes, and for the first time in his life Damian thought his grandmother looked frightened.

"Who was the friend?" he said.

"Damian."

"Who did Grandfather make this promise to? Did he know what he was asking? Did he know it would be me?"

Eleanor looked at him for a very long moment. Then she looked at the photograph on the desk, the scowling boy in the school blazer, and her mouth tightened as if the words physically hurt.

"He knew," she said quietly. "And so did the Whitmores."