The Billionaire's Contract Wife

A Decision

The contract sat on my kitchen table like a ticking time bomb. I had been staring at it for nearly twenty minutes, and I still hadn't opened it. Part of me was afraid of what I would find inside. The other part was afraid I wouldn't find anything wrong with it at all.

My tiny apartment felt unusually quiet as I dropped my bag onto the couch and kicked off my shoes. Normally, coming home brought a sense of relief. Today it only made everything feel more real. Ethan Vance wanted to marry me. The thought sounded ridiculous no matter how many times I repeated it in my head, so I stopped repeating it and made myself sit down at the table instead.

With a sigh, I opened the first page. The legal language made my head spin almost immediately. Most of it covered confidentiality agreements, public appearances, financial arrangements, pages about protecting company interests and avoiding scandal that read less like a marriage and more like a corporate merger, which, knowing Ethan, was probably exactly the point.

I kept reading until a number caught my eye, and then caught it again, and then a third time, certain I had misread it. I hadn't. The compensation he was offering was enough to pay off my student loans, clear my mother's medical debt, and still leave money sitting untouched in my account. This wasn't life changing money. This was generation changing money. I leaned back in my chair and covered my face with both hands. Why offer so much? Surely there had to be a catch, because nobody gave away that kind of money without expecting something enormous in return.

A knock at the door interrupted my spiral. I frowned. Nobody visited me without warning. When I checked the peephole and found my best friend Chloe standing on the other side, relief flooded through me so fast it nearly buckled my knees.

"Please tell me you have ice cream," she said, stepping inside. "I've had the worst day imaginable."

Normally I would have laughed. Instead I must have looked so visibly wrecked that she stopped talking altogether. "Oh no," she said. "What happened?"

I hesitated. Technically I shouldn't tell anyone. But Chloe wasn't just anyone. She'd been my best friend for years, had heard every embarrassing story, every failed relationship, every terrible decision I'd ever made out loud before making it anyway. If I couldn't tell her, I couldn't tell a single living soul.

"You have to promise not to scream."

"Now I'm definitely going to scream."

Twenty minutes later, she was pacing my living room, gesturing so wildly I half expected her to knock over a lamp. "You've lost your mind."

"I haven't agreed yet."

"You're considering it."

"I didn't say that."

"You don't have to."

I groaned and dropped my head onto the couch cushion, already regretting every decision that had led to this exact conversation. Chloe pointed dramatically at the contract on the coffee table. "That man is a billionaire."

"I know."

"He's ridiculously handsome."

"I know."

"He's offering enough money to solve every single problem in your life."

"I know, Chloe."

She stopped pacing, narrowed her eyes, and delivered the verdict like a prosecutor closing a case. "You find him attractive."

I nearly choked. "What?"

"You find him attractive."

"I do not."

"Liar."

My face grew warm instantly, my own skin betraying me before I could manage a single word of protest, and Chloe gasped so loudly I threw a pillow at her, which she caught without even looking. "This isn't funny," I said.

"It absolutely is."

I groaned again, mostly because she wasn't entirely wrong. Ethan was attractive in a way that felt almost unfair, the kind of attractive that should probably require a permit. That didn't mean I wanted to marry him. At least, that's what I kept telling myself, over and over, as though repetition alone could make it true.

Later that night, after Chloe finally left, I crawled into bed exhausted, my mind refusing to stop replaying the day. The restroom. The contract. The offer. Ethan, especially Ethan, the way his dark eyes had tracked me around the office, the rare smile that had transformed his entire face for one unguarded second. Somewhere between one thought and the next, sleep finally claimed me, and with it came a dream I hadn't asked for and wasn't remotely prepared to have.

I stood in a ballroom lit by crystal chandeliers, soft music drifting somewhere above the murmur of expensively dressed guests. Ethan crossed the room toward me, his gaze locking onto mine from across the crowd until everyone else seemed to simply dissolve. He stopped in front of me and held out his hand.

"May I have this dance?"

I should have said no. Instead I placed my hand in his, and the moment his fingers closed around mine, something warm and unfamiliar swept through my chest. He pulled me closer, not inappropriately, just close enough that I noticed the warmth radiating off him, the faint trace of his cologne. His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth, then rose again to meet my eyes, and my pulse climbed in a way that had nothing to do with the music.

My alarm shattered the room apart before either of us moved another inch.

I shot upright in bed, breathing hard, heart racing, morning sunlight already streaming through the curtains. For several seconds I simply sat there, absorbing what my own subconscious had apparently decided to do to me. I had just dreamed about Ethan Vance. Not casually. A full, unmistakable, romantic dream, the kind that left an ache behind even after it ended.

I buried my face in a pillow and groaned. This situation was already getting out of hand, and in less than two hours, I had to give him my answer.