The Five-Year Contract. (#arrangedmarriage)

Chapter 30 - Eleanor Mulroney

New York, Billionaire's Row, 16th of January 2025

He wants to do what!?

My head goes into the emoji exploding head. Immediately. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm frozen in the middle of Jack's office. What level of craziness is he operating on? I mean...he's supposed to be one of the most intelligent guys in the business world (I'm not admitting that to his face though). What is he thinking? Haven't we established that this marriage is a complete nightmare, three years later, and...he wants to make it public? Actually, having to pretend to other people that we are head over heels in love with one another!? Last year he didn't want to tell Olivia and Aaron, who are our best friends, and they are married to one another....and now? Now, he wants to tell the world!

"Excuse me, what?" It's the first thing that I actually managed to say between ten thousand scenarios and questions that are running on repeat in my head. "Are you crazy? How in this world is our marriage any help to Dot Com's current business strategy? Oh and let's not forget, this means the media is going to hound us and we are going to have to pretend that we are actually in love."

"Yeah, about that....we actually want them hounding us," Jack said, calmly. How he could be like that? I had no idea.

I laughed. I laughed hysterically. He's officially crazy. Just plain crazy. How is the media hounding us going to benefit Dot Com? We would be working fewer hours because we would be completely swamped with interviews, and tell-alls from Newspapers to even socialite magazines. Sure, Dot Com would benefit from all the publicity but that does not change the current business strategy that is in place. In fact, the only person who would benefit from something like this is McCarthy. We would be busy with PR and he would run the company freely without Jack's or mine interference. 

Again, how in the world would we pull off pretending to be madly in love? "You're absolutely insane, Van Lowden."

"You're the one who wanted to know. This plan is been packed away for a reason," He mutters while crossing his arms. Damn, I hate that I can't control the focus of my eyes because they go rapidly from his green ones to his toned arms. How does he get time to go to the gym between all he does? 

Focus. No more appreciating the arms. The arms are nice but he wants to make the marriage public. I don't speak for a few seconds and then I sight. "Explain. You dropped the bomb, a plain crazy one might I add. You got out of me the reaction you were expecting. Now, that we passed that. Explain to me what is your plan because you've got to excuse me if I don't see clearly what our horrendous marriage has to do with the company's business strategy. I'm smart but I'm not insane." 

Jack manages to crack a smile while chuckling. Clearly, he found my reaction amusing. "Right..."

I give him a glare. I'm not in the mood to have to dig through the information and have a Jack vs Elle session at midnight. "Now, Van Lowden."

"Fine," Jack said, rolling his eyes. "We are both the faces of Dot Com. We draw attention to the media and we want them to be talking about the annual results of the company. With our marriage public, we are certainly going to have to entertain a lot of people, from news channels to socialite magazines, and in those McCarthy can't control what we say to them. We can easily say that we have products A, B, and C, coming out. That puts pressure on him to authorize funds for the development and production of those products."

Clearly, someone had been thinking about this one for a long time...

"What if he doesn't care? He might not let the pressure affect him," I say thoughtfully.

Jack shrugs and shakes his head. "He can't risk not to care. McCarthy is many things but at the end of the day, he wants money and reputation. He will not want the company to be seen as a liar to his customers. I'm telling you, he will not risk having the image of the company smeared. You remember how he was with us when our dads died. There could be no inappropriate pictures of us in the newspapers."