She asked. He hesitated, then stepped aside. Viven walked into the small apartment and stopped in the middle of the room. Her gaze moved slowly over everything, the single plate drying in the rack, the thin curtains, the half-lit tree held together with copper wire. Elias braced himself for the look.
He had seen it before on wealthy faces, that polite flicker of pity or disgust. It never came. Vivienne simply looked as if she were memorizing the place. Then she reached out and touched one of the dead bulbs on the tree. You could fix these, she said.
I could, he agreed. But you didn't. Not tonight. That was what unsettled him most. She was not judging him.
And a woman like Vivienne Blackwood, not judging a man like him made no sense at all. Sit down, he said finally, pulling out the only other chair. And tell me what this is really about. She sat her back perfectly straight, her gloved hands folded on the table. I need a legal marriage, she said.
Soon before midnight on the 31st of December, he waited. My father died in October, she went on, and for the first time her voice tightened. His will contains a clause. If I am not married by the end of this year, my controlling shares in Blackwood Meridian pass into a family trust. The trust is managed by the board and the board right now belongs to my cousin.
She said the word cousin as if it were a disease. Elias leaned back. So you need a husband. I need a marriage. And out of every man in this city, you came to a repair man on the fourth floor of a building with no heat.
Viven met his eyes because you are the only person I can trust. He stared at her. Then he stood, walked to the window, and looked down at the snow gathering on the parked cars. "No," he said. "I'm sorry."
But no, I've been poor a long time, Miss Blackwood. I've never been for sale. Behind him, he heard her move. When he turned, she was pulling the glove from her left hand. On her finger was a ring, old platinum.
A single pale sapphire set between two small diamonds. The band slightly bent on one side. Elias felt the floor tilt beneath him. He knew that ring. He had pulled it out of broken glass and burned wiring in the basement of the Meridian Tower last June.
And he had returned it to a woman who had not even looked at him when she took it. Viven slid it off and set it on the table between them. "You think that day you only saved a woman?" She said softly. But you saved my entire company.