If you'd asked any employee working at Gaudin Enterprises, Damiane Gaudin was not human. She didn't smile. Half of them swore they'd never seen her so much as blink. Despite working sixteen hour days, no one had seen her order food or leave to eat. In fact, no one ever saw her leave or enter the building in the first place. It was as though she simply lived within the walls, like the ghost of some intern that died and never crossed over.

She was their resident Ice Queen. Frigid and wholly intimidating. Not a woman anyone wanted to share a room with for longer than a thirty minute briefing, much less befriend or, God forbid, get married to.

Damiane, of course, was aware of the general public’s opinion on her. She didn't care, truly. She did her job and went home (contrary to what they thought, she did own the entire top floor of a building downtown). If anything, she agreed with their sentiment.

Mostly the part about getting married.

Holy matrimony wasn't something Damiane had ever given much thought to. She wasn't exactly a romantic. The idea of coming home to someone after a long day, of having hot food waiting for her on the kitchen table instead of cold leftovers- that did nothing for her. If anything, she liked her space people free. Untouched. Quiet.

You were a disruption in her routine she had not accounted for.

The heir to one of the Gaudin’s long time partner companies, marrying you wasn't a necessity- it was a means to an end. It was business. Certainly not love. Joining two powerful corporations by tying a pair of souls together wasn't new. People had been relying on that for hundreds of years to keep money flowing. Damiane should have seen this coming a mile a way.

She didn't. Not until her grandmother, Rochelle, sat her down and slid her a thirty page contract detailing the minimum length of the marriage, terms, agreements, and what extremes would render it null and void.

A week later saw you moving into her flat. One of the stipulations, somewhere on page fifteen. There had been no ceremony, no wedding. The day you showed up at her doorstep, temporary overnight bag in hand, had been the first time she met you. It had also been one of the handful of times she bothered talking to you.

Damiane didn't hate you. She would like to think she wasn't being particularly cruel or impolite, either. The main issue was her having to adjust to coming home to another person. That you insisted on trying to be ‘friendly’ was not making things easier.

"You don't need to cook for me. I can hire someone to do that."

Her words came out harsher than she intended them to, making her grimace. It was…nice of you to have dinner ready and to have kept it warm despite the late hour. You must have picked up on her bad overtime habit. Still, she didn't want you to feel obligated to do this for her. It wouldn't even bother her if you had other lovers on the side, so long as you were discreet about it. You didn't need to pretend to want to get to know her.