BABY, JUST SAY YES!

Chapter 5

Morning light filtered through the hospital blinds in thin, pale stripes. Elena sat on the edge of the bed, already dressed in the simple clothes a nurse had found for her—dark leggings and an oversized sweater that still carried the faint scent of antiseptic. The silver gown from the night before had been bagged and taken away like evidence. She felt no regret at its loss.

Her phone screen lit up with unanswered messages. Most were from board members and distant acquaintances offering carefully worded concern. A few were from Marcus. She ignored them all.

The door opened without a knock.

Marcus stepped in, looking as if he had slept in shifts between damage-control calls. His shirt was fresh, his hair restored to its usual precision, but the tightness around his eyes betrayed a long night. He closed the door behind him with deliberate care.

“You’re awake,” he said. “Good. We need to talk before this gets any further out of hand.”

Elena rose to her feet. The residual ache in her chest from the previous night’s coughing made the movement slower than she liked, but she kept her spine straight. “There’s nothing left to discuss.”

Marcus exhaled through his nose, the sound of a man forcing patience. “Elena. Last night was a mess. Emotions were high. Sophia was drunk. I made a poor choice in the moment. But we are not throwing away five years and a very public engagement over one incident.”

“It wasn’t one incident.” Elena’s voice remained level. “It was a photograph of you in bed with my sister. It was you swimming past me while I was drowning. It was you standing in this room last night more concerned with the official story than with whether I could still breathe.”

Marcus stepped closer. “You’re angry. I understand that. But anger is a luxury we can’t afford right now. The board is already restless. Your father is furious. Diane is talking about ‘stability’ to anyone who will listen. If you walk away from this engagement, you walk away from Harrington Enterprises. You know what the will says.”

Elena met his eyes without flinching. “I will never marry a cheater.”

The words landed between them with quiet finality.

Marcus’s expression hardened. “Then you lose everything your mother built. Is that what you want? To hand the company to Diane and Sophia because you’re too proud to be practical?”

“I want a husband who doesn’t have to be reminded which woman he is supposed to save,” Elena said. “You are not that man. You never were.”

She moved past him toward the door. Marcus caught her wrist—not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to stop her.

“Think carefully,” he said, voice low. “Without a marriage, the shares stay under board control. Your father and Diane will never let you take the seat. Sophia will make sure of it. You need me more than I need you right now.”

Elena looked down at his hand on her wrist, then slowly up at his face. “Take your hand off me.”

Something in her tone made him release her. She opened the door and stepped into the corridor without looking back.

She did not get far.

Richard Harrington and Diane stood near the nurses’ station as if they had been waiting for exactly this moment. Diane wore cream silk and a concerned expression that did not reach her eyes. Richard’s face was set in the familiar lines of paternal disappointment he reserved exclusively for Elena.

“You left the room,” Diane said, voice soft and carrying. “Marcus was trying to speak with you. The least you could do after the scene you caused last night is listen.”

Elena stopped. “The scene I caused.”

Richard’s jaw tightened. “Enough. We are not discussing this in a hospital hallway. You will return to the house, rest, and then we will sit down as a family and decide how to repair the damage.”

“There is nothing to repair,” Elena said. “The engagement is over.”

Diane’s smile remained perfectly in place. “Don’t be childish. Marcus is willing to move past last night. That is more generosity than most men would offer after being publicly embarrassed. You will accept it, you will smile for the cameras, and you will do what is necessary for this family.”

“For this family,” Elena repeated. “Or for the company shares you and Sophia intend to keep under your influence?”

Richard’s voice dropped. “Watch your tone. Your mother left a will with clear conditions. Those conditions exist for a reason. You are not ready to run Harrington Enterprises alone. You never have been. Marcus provides the stability the board requires. You will not throw that away because of wounded pride.”

Elena felt the old, familiar pressure settle over her shoulders—the weight of being the difficult daughter, the one who refused to make things easy. She had carried it for years. She was finished.

“I will not marry him,” she said, each word precise. “I will not pretend last night did not happen. And I will not stand here while the two of you calculate how best to keep me small and obedient.”

Diane’s eyes cooled. “Then you will lose the company. And when you do, do not come looking for sympathy. We tried to help you.”

Elena looked at her father. Richard’s expression remained closed, already shifting into the distant mode he used when Elena became inconvenient. She waited for something—regret, doubt, even a flicker of the man who had once carried her on his shoulders when she was small. Nothing came.

“I’m leaving,” Elena said.

She walked past them. Neither tried to stop her this time. The sound of their low, urgent voices followed her down the corridor, already rewriting the narrative for whoever would listen next.

—

Discharge came faster than the doctors preferred. Elena signed the papers against medical advice, accepted a small bag of personal items recovered from the party, and stepped out into the late morning light without looking back at the building.

She did not go home.

Home would mean Diane’s voice in the hallway, Sophia’s satisfied silence, and her father’s disappointed stares. Instead she checked into a quiet hotel under her own name, ordered food she barely touched, and sat at the desk with her laptop open until the sky outside the window turned from blue to charcoal.

The will was clear. The language had been reviewed by lawyers years ago. Marriage was the key. Without it, the controlling shares remained locked behind board votes that Diane and Richard had spent years influencing. Elena could fight. She could hire her own counsel and drag the matter through the courts. But time was not on her side. Sophia and Marcus would move quickly to consolidate every advantage.

She needed a husband.

The thought no longer felt abstract. It felt like the only door left open.

Elena opened a new search window and typed the name she had heard in the hospital room.

Julian Croft.

The results loaded in clean, expensive rows. CEO of Croft Industries. Majority shareholder. Rarely photographed at social events. Known for quiet, decisive acquisitions and an almost complete absence of personal scandal. The few public images showed a man who looked exactly as he had in the hospital—controlled, unsmiling, watchful. Harold Croft appeared in older articles as the previous head of the family holdings, now semi-retired but still influential.

Elena sat back in the chair and stared at the screen.

A contract marriage with a man like that would not be simple. It would not be quiet. But it would be effective. The Croft name carried weight that even Diane would struggle to dismiss. And Julian had already proven, twice over, that he did not look away when someone was drowning.

She closed the laptop, lay down on the hotel bed fully clothed, and slept in short, uneasy stretches until dawn.

—

Finding him the next day took less effort than she expected.

Croft Industries occupied a sleek tower of glass and steel in the financial district. Elena did not attempt to go through the main lobby. She had learned enough about powerful men to know that the front door was rarely the most useful entrance. Instead she waited across the street at a discreet café, ordered coffee she did not drink, and watched the private side exit used by senior executives.

Julian emerged at half past eleven, alone, dressed in a dark suit that fit him with the same understated precision as everything else about him. He carried no briefcase. He moved with the unhurried focus of a man who did not need to announce his importance.

Elena stood, left payment on the table, and crossed the street.

He saw her before she reached him. His steps slowed, then stopped. For a moment they simply looked at each other in the middle of the sidewalk as the city moved around them—cars, pedestrians, the low hum of a morning already in full motion.

“You left the hospital early,” Julian said. Not an accusation. An observation.

“I had nothing left to stay for.” Elena kept her voice steady. “I need to speak with you. Privately.”

He studied her face for a long second, taking in the shadows beneath her eyes, the absence of any performance in her posture. Then he nodded once and turned, gesturing toward a black car that had appeared at the curb as if summoned by thought alone.

“Get in.”

The interior of the car was quiet, the windows tinted, the city reduced to a muted blur. Julian sat beside her with the same controlled stillness he had shown in the hospital room. He did not fill the silence with small talk. He simply waited.

Elena watched the buildings pass and chose her words with care.

“I’ve ended the engagement,” she said. “Permanently. My family is not pleased. They made their position clear. Without a husband, I lose any realistic path to controlling Harrington Enterprises in the near term. The will is unambiguous.”

Julian remained silent, but she felt the full weight of his attention.

“Your grandfather’s suggestion yesterday was not as impractical as it first sounded,” she continued. “A one-year contract marriage would satisfy the legal requirement. It would give me the standing I need to take the company. In return, you would satisfy whatever expectations your grandfather has placed on you regarding settling down. At the end of the year, we dissolve the arrangement cleanly. No claims. No further obligations.”

The car turned onto a quieter street. Julian still did not speak.

Elena pressed on. “I am not asking for affection or public romance beyond what is necessary to make the marriage appear legitimate. I am asking for a signature, a year of public association, and the protection of your name. I am prepared to have terms drawn up that protect both of our interests.”

Only then did Julian turn his head fully toward her. His eyes were the same steady gray she remembered from the terrace, assessing without judgment.

“You’re proposing this because you’re out of options,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And because my grandfather put the idea in your head at a moment when you were vulnerable.”

“He put the idea in my head at a moment when I was clear-headed enough to recognize a viable path,” Elena corrected. “I would have arrived at something similar on my own. He simply accelerated the timeline.”

A faint shift touched the corner of Julian’s mouth—not quite amusement, but close. “Practical.”

“I don’t have the luxury of being anything else right now.”

The car slowed to a stop in front of a discreet residential building. Julian made no move to open the door. He continued to study her as if weighing variables only he could see.

“I told you yesterday I would consider it,” he said at last. “I have. If we do this, we do it properly. Full legal review. Clear boundaries. No assumptions. And you will not be the only one protected by the terms.”

Elena’s pulse beat once, hard, at the base of her throat. “Does that mean yes?”

Julian held her gaze for another long moment. Then he gave a single, deliberate nod.

“It means we will meet with counsel this afternoon and put the details in writing. If the terms are acceptable to both of us, then yes.”

The quiet finality of the word settled over Elena like the first solid ground she had felt since the photograph appeared on Sophia’s phone. She did not smile. She did not thank him. She simply inclined her head in acknowledgment of a mutual decision reaching its first concrete step.

Julian finally opened the door and stepped out, then turned back to offer his hand—not as a romantic gesture, but as practical assistance. Elena took it and rose from the car. The contact was brief, impersonal, and strangely steadying.

As they walked toward the building entrance, Elena glanced once at the man beside her. She still knew almost nothing about him beyond the two moments that had bound them together—her hands on his grandfather’s chest in a sunlit park, his arms around her in dark water. It was not a foundation built for love. It was a foundation built for survival.

For now, that was enough.

The glass doors of the building slid open ahead of them. Julian gestured for her to enter first. Elena stepped inside, the cool air of the lobby closing around her, and felt the desperate idea that had taken root in a hospital room begin, quietly and irrevocably, to grow.