My eyes darted toward her, and as soon as I saw her gaze glued to me, assessing me, I realized that was a mistake. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and it’d been revealing.

“What marriage deal?” I asked, tilting my head slightly, trying to act nonchalant.

She crossed her arms over her chest and peered at me. “Holden marries you and you invest in his brewery. You get a husband, which as far as you know will lock you in as my successor. He gets to start the business of his dreams. Win-win.”

How the hell had she found out about my investment? Nobody knew that except Holden, me, Kemp, and Presley, and I trusted all of them implicitly.

“Holden and I have a real marriage,” I said. Real in that it was legal. Real in that we were living together and sleeping together.

“I’m well aware that you’re legally wed. But you have a business deal as the foundation. You’ve missed the point completely, Chloe. It wasn’t to get sly and concoct a bargain that would propel you forward. It was for your own good. I wanted you to find what I never had. Balance. Love. A life outside of work. This scheme to make me think you have that when you, in fact, do not is insulting and conniving.”

I could tell Angelica that I loved Holden. That the marriage was at least fifty percent real if you judged it by that and as real as anything I personally would ever find. But she didn’t deserve to know that, especially since Holden didn’t.

“What did you expect me to do, Angelica?” I said, my tone going hard while I kept my volume down. “You want to talk about insulting and conniving… I’ve busted my ass for you and this company for twelve years. I’ve sacrificed a personal life, been your workhorse, as you yourself said, worked long hours and seven-day weeks. I’ve played by your rules this whole time, and then you changed the rules.”

“That is my prerogative.”

“And it’s my prerogative to marry my good friend to meet your ridiculous demands. What else could I do? It’s been mere weeks since you decided it was more important for me to have a love life than to give every fiber of my being to this company. How is that fair? How could that be possible?”

“I never said you had to marry,” she said condescendingly, as if I was the idiot who’d misinterpreted.