I was just a waitress working double shifts to pay for my sister-in-law's cancer treatment, until that brooding businessman Marcus Blackwood walked into my diner—or rather, until his eight-year-old son Tommy accidentally spilled orange juice all over me, and I didn't lose my temper.
The next day, an expensive lawyer knocked on my door: "Mr. Blackwood needs a wife. You need money. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement."
$850,000. A 24-month marriage contract.
My job seemed simple: live in his mansion, care for his traumatized son, play the perfect wife at business events. No emotional complications, no real marital duties—just an elaborate performance.
But nobody told me Marcus would stay up all night when I had a fever. Nobody told me little Tommy calling me "Mom" would feel so heartbreakingly sweet. And nobody warned me how terrified I'd feel when his ex-wife—the brilliant, beautiful doctor Elena—suddenly returned.
"She said she'd come back," Tommy clung to me desperately, "Are you going to leave too?"
Everything changed when I realized I was falling in love with the man who bought me. But is this feeling real? Or are we both just looking for substitutes for someone else?
When life and death forces a choice, I have to decide—fulfill the contract to the end, or run before my heart breaks completely...

The Contract Bride

**One Year Later**
I wiped down the counter and looked out at the mountains, leaves turning gold and red. The café was mine now—six months ago, I’d rented the place and opened for business with the money Marcus, in the end, still paid me for those four months. Sometimes, the gratitude and guilt twi...

Chapter 8