She watched with narrowed eyes as he unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out a copy of what looked like a huge file.

"This is the file with all the details for the wedding", he said pushing a file with a sizable amount of papers towards her, "Let us go through some of the finer details of the important points together."

"If I may interrupt", she said, trying to mock his pompous tone, "Why are we using this primitive method of communication. Can't you send me a word doc via email? That way I can do a 'ctrl + F' to search for things?"

"Ms. Divan, I am not asinine enough to do that. You could easily present that in court and sue me. These papers in no shape or form can be sourced back to me so you can't use them against me. Now if you are done trying to find a way out can we resume?"

It annoyed her a little that he was being so careful.
"I agreed to go through with this. How are we supposed to be married if you trust me so little?"

"Let's just say I trust you enough to get married, but not enough to give you ammunition against me. Which leads me to one of the points we must discuss. There will be a prenup. The details are in the file. It is indexed so it should be easy enough to find. Any thoughts?"

She wouldn't completely put it past herself to try and get out of this crazy situation so she grudgingly saw his point in being extra careful. She sighed and pulled the gigantic file closer to herself. He was asking her thoughts about a prenup. She was so close to rolling her eyes that it was physically painful to not do it. She made a show of pulling up the tab for the prenup.

Weirdly this felt like a usual design meeting in which they went over the client proposals and negotiated the work items.

She simply shrugged, "I don't care. As long as I don't owe you any money, I don't want anything from you post divorce."

"To be clear, there will not be any divorce."

There he went again annoying her even more.
"Mr. Ray, why then are you making so much effort to pen down a detailed prenup?"

There was a beat of silence in which he said nothing.

"Ah. Right. Because in case you are wrong about me and I turn out to be a gold digger?"

"I would appreciate it if you weren't so loose with words?"

She let out an exasperated laugh.
"What language do you speak Mr. Ray? Coz that's not the English we peasants speak"

To her surprise he actually looked a little red as he responded to her jibe at his posh words.
"I was homeschooled for the longest time. I am sorry if my English is too proper for you."

This time she couldn't hold back the eye roll.
"That actually explains a lot."

He looked at her intently before shaking his head.

"Must we always digress Ms. Divan? Can you not keep interrupting me so often, with unrelated banter?"

She sighed and shook her head in response.

He shot her a "can-we-get-serious" look before continuing his "presentation".
"Next, we must not let anyone know that the marriage is in fact arranged. We must go along with the story mentioned in the file and make people believe we have been in love all along and have been dating for the past two months."

"Wait what?!" She exclaimed, shaking her head in disbelief.

This man was all about surprises today.
"So you are basically asking me to pretend I am in love with you? And blatantly lie to people and say that we have been dating for two months?" She asked, shocked for the hundredth time in a span of an hour.

"Is there a problem with that?" He asked. Looking confused.

"Of course there's a problem with that! Smart man that you are how will you explain the arguments and the squabbles we've been having on a regular basis for the past five years? Anyone who has ever worked with us knows we are not exactly fond of each other. I for one have been pretty vocal about my...er...dislike of you in general. And we haven't spent enough time with each other to make people believe we have been dating for the past two months. You know I am friends with a lot of our colleagues. They will never believe any of this!"

"I am a smart man Ms. Divan. But maybe I overestimated your intelligence. I thought you would already know the answers to your questions. How about you give it a try? Let's see if you can redeem yourself"

He looked so smug, she had a fierce urge to grab the front of his shirt and shake him. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The answers, she realised, were already in the back of her mind. But she didn't like them. Not one bit.

"You think our 'banter' , for the lack of a better word, can basically set a stage for a 'love-hate' relationship. Like a long-drawn 'courtship' of sorts. And...we announced the company going IPO two months back. Since then we have spent a lot of time couped up in one-on-one meetings, pulled a lot of late nighters working too much. You mean for us to portray that the increased one-on-one time gave us the nudge in the right direction and basically pushed us over the metaphorical edge."

"See. I knew you'd get there in the end. We didn't promote you to CTO without reason."

She couldn't believe life had come to this. Her taciturn boss was about to become her husband. Not only was he bullying her into marrying him, but he had thought through every little detailed with cold precision.

"In this moment, I really really really despise you."

"I would think less of you if you didn't. I am no fan of myself right now either." He said quietly.

The slight crease between his brows betrayed he wasn't very happy in bullying her. Concern filled her up again. What had pushed him to do this?

"Do you really have to do this? We both dislike each other so much. Is there no other...?"

"Ms. Divan, I am tired of repeating myself over and over again. There is no other way. I need you to do this. And for the record, I don't dislike you. I like and respect you enough. It's you who needs to work on your dislike for me."

"I respect you." She responded in an almost whisper. Her heart speeding of its own accord.

His lips twitched as he made eye-contact with her and said in the all-knowing manner he usually spoke in, "I never said anything about respect. I said you need to dislike me less, maybe even start liking me."

The direction the conversation was taking was making her feel increasingly unsteady, so she quickly tried to nip it in the bud.
"Is there anything else you wanted to go through?"

"Just so you understand the last point. You can never tell anyone the marriage is arranged, including all your friends and your family and mine."

"But..."

"Non-negotiable Ms.Divan"

"Okay." It would be difficult to hide things from her closest friends and parents. But her parents would be much happier not knowing the awful truth behind her marriage. Although she wished she could share her worries with her friends to the least.

"You know you will have to sign an NDA right?"

"I gathered as much. Still don't understand why you are giving me this file, when you could have very well drafted an NDA and given me that."

"You might need these pages to refer to things. The NDA will be electronic and will not be emailed. Once we are married you are to return the file to me and I will shred it myself."

"Are you this paranoid about everything?"

"Only my business and my family."

"Something tells me you are lying." His precision and attention to detail always added to his attractiveness. Was there a flaw in this man?

He sighed, shaking his head. "Again, we digress. Shall we discuss the third and the most important point?"

"Go right ahead"

"The marriage will take place next weekend. We will make an announcement tomorrow, I will ask my assistant to arrange for your parent's travel to the states. And all the wedding arrangements will be taken care of by a professional planner. I will email you her details and you can get in contact with her about what you want in the wedding. I have also..."

"Wait. Hold up! A week from now? You cannot seriously think we can get married in a week."

"I don't see a reason to drag this out."

"I see thousands of reasons to never do this in the first place. But a week? Really? How do I explain this to my parents?"
Her eyes widened as she shook her head, ready to battle this out with him.

"You can leave that to me. You simply tell your parents the story today. Tell them we were seeing how this would go in the last two months and that's why you never told them. We can pick them up from the airport together. Once they meet me I am pretty sure they wouldn't mind the rush."

"What is that supposed to mean? Wait...do you think you are charming or something? How exactly is meeting you going to solve things?" Her heart racing as she felt panic beginning to take a hold of her.

"I can be very persuasive"

"They cannot be bought either" She said bluntly, unable to stop hyperventilating.

"That is not what I meant. I merely meant that I am good at closing deals and placating people. Besides we agreed they won't know about the arrangement between us. We are to be a convincing couple in love." She looked at his handsome tired face, as his words caused more questions to pop in her head.

"That's the other thing. How are we supposed to do that in such a short span of time? We are not exactly couple-y with each other. We can barely stand each other. Couples in love, engaged couples are a little more...affectionate."

"I have cleared our schedules for the rest of the day. We are going to spend the day together and get to know everything about each other. Take notes if that helps you remember, and we can prepare for how to be around each other starting tomorrow."

Was he being real? He was being real! Her handsome, uber intelligent and apparently crazy boss wanted them to get into a true to god marriage in a week. A week!

Suddenly the reality of everything that was about to happen hit her full force. A deep seated panic started taking hold of her.

She shook her head and said in a breathy voice, "This is all happening too fast. Way too fast. I need more time. I thought I would get more time to think."

His face seemed to harden at her words as he responded in a cold voice. "I don't have the time to give you. And trust me you have no other option if you care even a little about your job and life here, you don't have any other choice than to marry me and agree to all the terms. I have made sure that everything is airtight"

Her vision grew blurry as she realised her eyes were filling up with tears. Anxiety gripped her, turning her stomach into a furnace.

"You are being so cruel right now. I don't think I have ever hated you in all these years. But I feel so much hatred towards you right now. Right this moment. What you are doing is extremely heartless. You are threatening me with everything I hold dear. My job, my career, my reputation, my family, my friends, my entire life! It scares me that I am supposed to be marrying you. Right this minute you seem so ruthless and tyrannical and controlling. I don't want that in a life partner."

Tears were now rolling down her eyes. Angry tears, scared tears, her whole body shook as she cried.

A/N.

Hello People!!

Hoping Aisha and Aaditya bring some entertainment to you :)

Hoping everyone is staying safe and is happy and healthy!

Love,
AnjaaniWriter