Billings turned to me for the first time. At first, I thought he was going to passively reprimand me for being so behind the times, but the next moment, he abruptly got to his feet and clapped his hands.
“Out—everybody out! Take five!”
The room cleared like it had caught fire, and a second later, it was just the three of us. I stared nervously around the suddenly empty corners before Billings gently caught my eye.
“No one knows a thing about you, Rebecca. We’re being incredibly selective about who gets to speak with you, so whatever interviewer we end up going with is going to be giving it all they’ve got. I know you’ve never done an interview before, but they’re going to be asking you some pretty hard-hitting questions.”
“Okay.” I shifted nervously and leaned against Marcus for support. “Like what?”
Billings held my gaze. “Like…you were first spotted together three months ago, you got engaged two months ago, and the wedding is in a few weeks. The question they’re going to be asking is obvious: Are you pregnant?”
“Oh…”
For whatever reason, I was a little relieved. I’d thought they’d quiz me on little factoids about Marcus’s life. Those juicy details that didn’t matter to anyone who wasn’t glued to Twitter so Marcus and I hadn’t really discussed them yet. Then, of course, there was still that brilliant, so how did you two meet again? question.
“Okay,” I said brightly, sitting up a little straighter. “I mean, I know it’s bad luck to tell people in the first twelve weeks, but I guess we can tell the world.”
The two men shared a quick, uncomfortable glance, and I stopped mid-sentence.
“What?” The look on Marcus’s face was making me nervous. “What is it?” I asked again, a little sharper this time.
“We shouldn’t say anything yet.” Marcus met my gaze and faltered, wondering where to go next.
Billings took over, speaking in a soft but professional tone. “We don’t think it would be a good idea to reveal the pregnancy just yet.”
My eyebrows shot to the roof, but I held my tongue—reining in my fast rising temper to listen to what they had to say. Perhaps it was a privacy issue? Perhaps he was being protective?
“It’s just,” Marcus leaned forward and tried to take my hand, “with the merger—”
“Oh my gosh!” I was on my feet in an instant, staring down at the two men. “You did not just make this pregnancy about your company, Marcus.”
Marcus paled in the face of my anger, but Billings was calm and unfazed.
“The entire point of your staged relationship with Mr. Taylor was to help rejuvenate his image—in large part to win over a particular, old-fashioned client,” he said steadily. “Why would we jeopardize all of that, as well as cast doubt as to the sincerity of your mutual feelings, by unveiling a baby conceived out of wedlock?”
I was stunned. Stunned and utterly speechless. When Marcus had first proposed this crazy scheme, I had assumed it was something that had just popped into his head upon seeing me and Takahari interact together. I had no idea that it was all so…well, strategic. People I’d never meet had sat in rooms I’d never seen and talked about Marcus and my fake relationship. Billings himself had no doubt examined our press photos for chemistry somewhere all the way over in Switzerland. And now, despite the ironic “convenience” of Marcus and me act
ually falling in love and wanting to get married, my baby might screw everything up?
I didn’t trust myself to say anything, so I just took a seat at the far end of the sofa.
“It’s just for a while, Rebecca,” Marcus said entreatingly. “Just until things have settled down after the wedding. I don’t want you to get hounded.”
“So you want us to keep it a secret until after the wedding,” I said without inflection, cutting him off. It was Billings who answered.
“Yes. If we want to preserve the resurrected image we’ve created—Marcus Taylor and his happy, stable family—we should wait until after the wedding.”
I gave him a hard stare. “And what? Hope that no one out there can count to nine?”
Marcus leaned forward quickly. “Billings, can you give us a minute?”
The man stood up to leave, but I stopped him.
“No, Billings, you should stay. We’re talking about our unborn child, after all, and that’s apparently a PR issue.”
Billings froze uncertainly in between us, but then lowered himself into his chair, flashing Marcus a look before turning to me with condescending patience.
“Rebecca, this really is for the best,” Billings said.