THE PRICE OF HATING HIM: A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

I needed fifty thousand dollars to keep my mother alive. Adrian Cole needed a wife so he could inherit a billion-dollar empire. And I had hated him since the day he wrecked my life. The marble floor outside Room 412 at Johns Hopkins was so cold I could feel it through my sneakers. I'd been sitting there for seven hours in my wrinkled Columbia scrubs, my eyes raw from crying. Behind that door, my mother was dying of kidney failure. Out here, the billing coordinator had just told me, in that soft, practiced voice, that unless we put down fifty thousand dollars before 6 a.m., they would move her off the transplant list. There was no one else to call. My dad died when I was in my second year of college. My scholarship was on probation because I'd been working night shifts at a diner in Queens to cover rent. I was twenty-four, in my final year of Radiological Sciences, first in my class even after the time I'd lost to a suspension and extra work, and I was about to lose the only family I had left. "Still crying in hallways, Daisy? Some things never change." I knew that voice before I turned around. Cold, sure of itself, impossible to forget. Adrian Cole. Four years ahead of me at Phillips Exeter, he'd been the school's golden boy: valedictorian, lacrosse captain, heir to Cole Medical Group, which owned half the private hospitals on the East Coast, this one included. He was also the reason I almost didn't make it to college. The summer before my senior year, I interned in his family's research lab. When I entered my project in the National Science Fair, he accused me of stealing his data. The school took his word over mine. I was suspended for a semester and spent months clearing my name. He wasn't a boy anymore. He was twenty-eight, standing there in a charcoal Tom Ford suit that probably cost more than my tuition. Six-three, sharp cheekbones, grey eyes that seemed to have forgotten how to be kind. I hated that I noticed how good he looked. It wasn't fair. A man shouldn't get to look like that after what he did to me. "What are you doing here?" My voice came out rough. He looked at the chart in my hand, my mother's chart, and gave a small, humorless smirk. "I sit on the board, Daisy. I know every critical patient who can't cover the deposit. Especially you." Shame burned in my throat. I gripped the edge of the plastic chair. "I don't want your pity." "It isn't pity. It's business." He took a black leather folder out of his briefcase and set it on the bench beside me. He was close enough now that I could smell his cologne, clean and expensive, and I hated that too. "My grandfather died last week," he said flatly. "His will has a clause my father never mentioned. I have to be legally married before my twenty-ninth birthday next month, or I lose the CEO position and the controlling shares go to my cousin Julian." I frowned. "What does that have to do with me?" "I need a wife." He said it like he was ordering coffee. "Not a real one. A contract. Someone smart, quiet, with a decent academic background. You'd live in my penthouse on the Upper East Side, come to board meetings and galas with me, and help me convince my family and the shareholders that I'm settled. Six months." My heart was pounding so hard I thought he'd hear it. "In exchange," he went on, eyes steady on mine, "I'll pay your mother's fifty thousand tonight. Her transplant, her recovery, all of it. I'll clear your student loans. And I'll cover your final year at Columbia, so you can focus on becoming the radiologist you were always meant to be." It was insane. It was insulting. It was exactly what I needed. I jumped to my feet, anger finally breaking through the fear. "Why me? You could have any model, any socialite in Manhattan. Why come to me?" He stepped toward me, shutting down the space I'd just made. I had to tip my head back to look at him. "Because you hate me," he said quietly. His eyes dropped to my mouth for half a second before coming back up, and a shiver ran down my spine that I did not want. "Hate is safe. I need someone who will never make the mistake of falling in love with me. Someone who won't expect to stay my wife once the six months are over." He was too close. I could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the small scar above his left eyebrow. I hated his arrogance. I hated the way he'd looked at me back then like I was nothing. But standing there, angry and exhausted and out of choices, my knees felt weak, and that was the part I hated most. "You're despicable," I whispered. "And you're out of options." He didn't say it cruelly, just honestly. He opened the folder. The contract inside was thick, with my name already typed on it: Daisy Evans. A cashier's check was clipped to the first page. He leaned down until his mouth was next to my ear. "So what will it be, Daisy? Sign, and your mother lives. Or keep your pride and watch her die by 6 a.m. You have ten minutes."