The Deal on the Sixtieth Floor

Maya Chen had exactly forty-one days before her architecture firm ran out of money.

She knew the number because she had written it on a sticky note and pressed it to the edge of her monitor, where it had been slowly losing its curl for a week. The bank had stopped returning her calls. Her two junior designers were pretending not to job-hunt at their desks. And the Riverside Library project — the one that was supposed to make Chen Studio's name — had gone to a firm with a marble lobby and a partner who played golf with the city planning board.

So when the invitation came, printed on card stock heavy enough to be a weapon, she went.

Voss Tower's sixtieth floor was all glass and quiet. Alexander Voss stood at the window with his back to her, the whole city arranged at his feet like something he was deciding whether to keep. He was younger than his Forbes cover suggested, and colder.

"Ms. Chen." He didn't turn around. "I have a proposal, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything until I've finished. People always say something."

"I'm very good at not saying anything," Maya said.

He turned then, and something almost like amusement crossed his face. "My mother is dying. Not soon, but not slowly either. The one thing she wants — the only thing she's ever asked me for — is to see me engaged before the end. I don't date. I don't intend to start."

"That's terrible," Maya said. "I'm sorry. But I don't understand why I'm here."

"You're here because you need eight hundred thousand dollars, and I need a fiancée for one year." He set a folder on the desk between them. "Pretend to love me at dinners and galas and one very difficult Christmas. In return, I fund Chen Studio through the library project and beyond. At the end of the year, we announce an amicable parting, and neither of us ever mentions it again."

Maya looked at the folder. She looked at the city. She thought about her sticky note, and her two designers, and the library she'd drawn a hundred times in her head.

"One rule," she said. "No actual feelings. The moment either of us forgets this is a contract, the deal's off."

Alexander Voss smiled for the first time, and it changed his whole face, and Maya immediately understood that she had made a catastrophic mistake.

"Deal," he said.