Chapter 4: Secrets and Lies

Mary Rose POV

I make it exactly three blocks from Graystone Manor before I have to pull over, my hands shaking so badly I can't trust myself to drive. The panic hits in waves nausea, tunnel vision, the sensation of my chest being crushed by invisible weight. I fumble with the door handle and barely make it to the curb before my knees give out.

Henry's father. Thomas Gray is Henry's father.

The man whose touch makes me forget my own name is the father of the man who taught me that love is just another lie people tell when they want something from you.

I press my forehead against my knees and try to remember how to breathe. This can't be happening. This level of cosmic cruelty feels personal, like the universe looked at my life and decided I hadn't suffered enough yet.

My phone buzzes in my pocket probably Thomas wondering why I fled his study like the building was on fire. I can't answer. Can't explain. Can't do anything but sit on a Manhattan curb at two in the afternoon having a breakdown that three years of therapy apparently didn't prevent.

When I can finally breathe without feeling like I'm drowning, I force myself back into the car. I need to go home. I need to think. I need to figure out how to extract myself from this disaster before it destroys me.

Except when I get home and actually read the contract I signed because of course I signed it, too desperate for the money to read the fine print I find the early termination clause buried in section seven. If I back out now, I owe $25,000 in penalties.

Twenty-five thousand dollars I don't have. Twenty-five thousand dollars that would bankrupt me faster than Henry's abandonment did.

I'm trapped.

The realization hits like a physical blow, and I find myself laughing hysterical, broken laughter that turns into sobs I can't control. Henry destroyed me three years ago, and now he's destroying me again from across an ocean without even knowing it.

My phone rings. Thomas's name lights up the screen, and my traitorous heart does a stupid flip before my brain reminds me why answering would be the worst decision of my life.

I let it go to voicemail. Then immediately play the message because I'm apparently a masochist.

"Mary Rose." His voice is concerned, confused, maybe a little hurt. "You left so quickly. I hope everything's alright with your other consultation. Call me when you can. I'd like to... I'd like to continue our conversation."

The careful way he says "conversation" like he knows what we were doing in his study had nothing to do with business and everything to do with the attraction we're both pretending doesn't exist makes me want to throw my phone across the room.

Instead, I do something I haven't let myself do since the day Henry left: I google Thomas Gray.

The search results are overwhelming. Articles about his real estate empire, his philanthropic work, his devotion to his late wife's memory. Photos of him at charity galas in thousand-dollar suits, breaking ground on luxury developments, accepting awards for urban renewal projects. He's Manhattan royalty, and I'm nobody a fact Henry made abundantly clear during our engagement whenever I didn't live up to his family's standards.

I keep scrolling, looking for... what? Evidence that Thomas knew who I was? Proof that this is all some elaborate scheme? But then I find it, three pages deep in the search results: a society page article from three years ago with a headline that makes my stomach drop.

"Gray Family Tragedy: Heir Apparent Cancels Society Wedding."

There's a photo of Henry looking appropriately devastated for the cameras, his golden hair artfully mussed, his expression perfectly calibrated to suggest heartbreak rather than the relief he probably felt at escaping before I became his legal responsibility.

The article is brief two paragraphs about his "cancelled engagement to Charleston native Mary Rose Bennett" and vague mentions of "irreconcilable differences" and "mutual decision." All lies, of course. Nothing about our engagement was mutual except the initial agreement to try, and the only thing irreconcilable was Henry's inability to commit to anything that required sacrifice.

But the article was published. In a society paper. With photos and names and enough detail that anyone who cared to know would know.

Thomas has to know. He hired me knowing exactly who I am. Which means everything that happened today every heated look, every intimate touch, every moment of connection that felt too real to be performance he knew.

He knew I was his son's ex-fiancée, and he touched me anyway. Looked at me anyway. Almost kissed me anyway.

The implications make my head spin. Is this revenge against Henry for some perceived slight? A power play I don't understand? Or and this possibility terrifies me more than the others is Thomas as genuinely attracted to me as I am to him, and he simply doesn't care that I used to be engaged to his son?

My phone rings again. Thomas. I let it go to voicemail again, but this time I listen immediately.

"Mary Rose, I'm concerned." His voice is gentle, worried in a way that makes my chest ache. "You seemed upset when you left. If I did something to make you uncomfortable, please let me know. That was never my intention." A pause, and then quieter: "Call me. Please."

The "please" breaks something in me. Thomas Gray is a billionaire who probably hasn't had to say please to anyone in years, and he's using it with me. Like I matter. Like my comfort is more important than his ego.

Henry never said please. Henry demanded, assumed, expected. The contrast is devastating.

I should call him back. Explain. Confess. Do the right thing like my mother raised me to do before she died and left me orphaned in a world that eats nice girls alive.

But I can't afford to do the right thing. The penalty clause makes sure of that. Henry's betrayal makes sure of that. My poverty makes sure of that.

So instead, I do what I've been doing for three years: I survive. I compartmentalize. I tell myself I can handle six weeks of professional proximity to Thomas Gray without letting this attraction become something that will destroy us both.

It's a lie, but I'm getting good at those.

I draft a text message, delete it, draft another, delete that too. Finally, I settle on something that sounds professional and emotionally distant:

"Sorry for leaving so abruptly. Family emergency all resolved now. I'll have the signed contract back to you tomorrow morning. Looking forward to working together."

The response comes within seconds: "I'm glad everything's alright. Dinner tomorrow night? We should discuss the timeline."

My fingers hover over the keyboard. This is the moment. I can refuse, maintain distance, keep this strictly professional. I can protect myself from whatever's building between us.

But then I think about the penalty clause. The debts. The way Thomas looked at me in his study like I was something precious and rare. The fact that for three hours today, I felt desired in ways Henry never made me feel.

I type: "7pm works. Send me the address."

His reply is almost instantaneous: "I'll pick you up. Text me your address."

The presumption should irritate me billionaires and their assumptions that the world bends to their preferences. But instead, it sends a shiver of anticipation down my spine that I absolutely shouldn't feel.

I give him my address, then immediately panic about Thomas Gray seeing my tiny studio apartment with its secondhand furniture and walls so thin I can hear my neighbor's television. But it's too late to take it back, too late to suggest meeting at the restaurant instead.

Too late to do anything but ride this disaster to whatever conclusion awaits.

I spend the rest of the evening researching Henry's life over the past three years, looking for clues about his relationship with Thomas. The articles paint a picture of a troubled son gambling debts, failed business ventures, a string of broken relationships. There's a two-year-old piece about "Gray heir's London scandal" that includes photos of Henry stumbling out of exclusive clubs, beautiful women draped over him like accessories.

Thomas barely appears in articles about Henry, as if he's deliberately distanced himself from his son's disasters. The few quotes I find from him about Henry are carefully neutral, the kind of statements that say everything by saying nothing.

"Henry is finding his own path." "Every young man needs time to discover himself." "I have faith my son will eventually realize his potential."

The subtext is clear: disappointment, distance, damaged relationship beyond easy repair.

Does Thomas know the full extent of what Henry did to me? Does he care? Or am I just another complication in an already complicated father-son dynamic I can't begin to understand?

My phone buzzes with another text from Thomas: "Sleep well, Mary Rose. Tomorrow can't come soon enough."

The message is simple, but the implication beneath it makes my pulse race. Tomorrow. Dinner. Just the two of us, pretending this is about business while we both know it's something infinitely more dangerous.

I should come clean before tomorrow. Call him tonight, explain everything, and let the chips fall where they may. But when I pick up my phone to dial, I remember the way he looked at me in his study. The way his voice dropped when he said my name. The way his touch made me feel like someone worth wanting.

And I realize with sinking certainty that I'm not going to tell him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Because for the first time in three years, I feel something other than numb. And I'm selfish enough to hold onto that feeling for as long as possible, even if it means lying to the one man who's made me feel alive again.

Even if it means becoming exactly the kind of person I swore I'd never be.