THE BILLIONAIRE’S TEMPORARY WIFE

Zara's pov The last thing I expected when I walked into that hotel room was to wake up the next morning carrying a secret that could destroy the life of a billionaire I didn't even know existed. I wasn't looking for him. I want to make that clear, because everyone who hears this story assumes I went hunting for a rich man that night, the way some of the other girls at the lounge did, batting their lashes at anyone wearing a watch worth more than my rent. I wasn't hunting for anything except the end of my shift and a hot bath before Noah's tuition bill ate what was left of my paycheck. I was counting down the minutes until I could clock out when Mr. Alden waved me toward the private section, "Table nine needs attention," he said. "Alone. Not talking to anyone. Go make him feel welcome." I plastered on my work smile and walked over, "You look like you'd rather be anywhere else," I slid into the seat across from him without waiting for an invitation. His eyes lifted. "Is it that obvious?" "You're wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit like it's a straitjacket. Yeah. Kind of obvious." Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. "Four thousand two hundred," he corrected. "And I'd take it off if I thought anyone here would let me get away with it." "I'd let you get away with it," I said, and then heard myself say it and wanted to sink through the floor. "I mean… nobody's going to report you to the fashion police. This isn't that kind of place." "What kind of place is it?" "The kind where men come to pretend they're somewhere else for an hour." I nodded at the glass he hadn't touched. "You gonna drink that or just intimidate it?" That got an actual laugh out of him, "I don't even want it," he admitted. "I ordered it because everyone at my table was drinking, and I couldn't stand another minute of listening to them talk about quarterly projections." "So you left the party to sit alone in a corner and stare at a whiskey." "When you say it like that, it sounds pathetic." "A little," I said. "But better than pretending to care about quarterly projections." He studied me for a second too long. "What's your name?" "Zara." "Just Zara?" "Just Zara." I tilted my head. "And you're just… what, a suit? A watch? Table nine?" "Ethan," he said. No surname. I didn't push. "You're doing that thing," I said eventually, "where you let someone talk for twenty minutes straight and you haven't said a single thing about yourself." "Force of habit." "What are you hiding from, Ethan No-Last-Name?" He turned his glass slowly on the table, "A version of myself I'm supposed to become in about six months. He's very successful. Everyone's very proud of him. I don't like him much." I didn't know what to do with an answer that honest, so I didn't try to fix it. I just said, "That sounds lonely." "It is." He looked up at me, "You're easy to talk to." "I get paid to be easy to talk to." "This doesn't feel like the paid version." He was right. It didn't. When my shift ended, I should have said goodnight and gone home, instead I stayed while he walked me out, the two of us drifting toward the elevators without discussing it. I'm not going to pretend I don't remember what happened next, because I do. The door of his room closing. His hand finding my waist. He paused, right at the edge of it, and asked, "Is this what you want?" instead of assuming, the way every other man in that hotel would have assumed. "Yes," I told him, and meant it more than I'd meant anything in a long time. He kissed me slowly at first, my dress found the floor somewhere, his jacket dropped too, kissing a line down my neck like he had all the time in the world. He pushed me to the bed tracing slow circles against my shoulder. “I haven't felt like a person in so long,” he said, low and unguarded. “f**k!,” I moaned, as his finger slid into my wet p***y. “I can still stop, you just have to say it,” he whispered in my ears. “Don't… I want to feel you… inside me.” I moaned out shamelessly, grinding againsy his fingers. He positioned himself at my entrance and pushed his leaking c**k in, ‘So tight… wet for me,” he groaned. “Ethan… faster… please!” I begged. “Yeah… just like that… I'm so close… don't stop,” I grabbed his shoulder. “Ethan!” I screamed as I came. He didn't stop, instead he thrust in faster. “f**k,” he growled, filling me with his c*m. He rolled off me, holding me tight, “That felt so good.” He kissed me softly. I fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, thinking, for the first time in years, that maybe the world wasn't only cruel. Morning had other plans. His phone buzzed against the nightstand before the sun had fully rises. I felt him tense beside me before he even answered it. Whatever the voice on the other end said made him sit up fast, already reaching for his shirt. "I have to go," he said, and I watched a different man dress himself, the soft unguarded one from the night before folding back into someone sharper. I told myself it didn't matter. I sat up, pulled the sheet around myself, and waited for him to ask for my number, or at least look back at me before he left. He didn't. The door closed with a quiet, final click, and I told myself it was fine. It was one night, beautiful, and over, exactly the kind of thing that wasn't supposed to happen twice. Weeks passed. I convinced myself the tiredness pulling at my bones was just double shifts catching up with me. Then the nausea started suddenly, arriving at the worst possible moments. I'd been told years ago, by a doctor with an apologetic voice, that my chances of ever conceiving naturally were close to none. I'd made my peace with that a long time ago, filed it away with all the other things I wasn't allowed to want. So when the doctor at the clinic looked up from my chart with an expression I couldn't read, I wasn't braced for what came next. "You're pregnant." The whole world tilted sideways as I walked out of the clinic, results clutched in my hand. I stood on the sidewalk while the city moved around me like nothing had happened, like I hadn't just found out I was carrying a child for a man whose last name I didn't know, a man I would probably never see again as long as I lived. I dug through my bag searching for a tissue, and my fingers closed around a crumpled piece of paper instead, a receipt I'd shoved in there out of habit the morning I left his hotel room. I smoothed it out with shaking hands. And there, printed above the room charge, was a name. “Ethan Vance.”