Chapter 2 Do you need a bride right now?

Soon, Asher regained his usual composure. He gently carried Eleanor back to bed, his movements still tender. "Rest first. I have something to handle."

His voice was so calm it was as if nothing had happened. As if the domineering, passionate man at the dining table wasn't him at all.

Eleanor lay in bed, watching him get dressed. Her heart felt like something was viciously tearing it apart.

She opened her mouth. Don't go, she wanted to say. Not tonight.

But she already knew what he would answer. She is Emma's mother. I have a responsibility to her. He would say it calmly, reasonably, and there would be nothing left for her to argue with. She didn't want to hear those words. She didn't want him to look at her and see a small, grudging woman.

So she said nothing at all. After Asher left, Eleanor lay alone in the enormous bed. She stared at the ceiling as silent tears streamed down.

Half an hour later, the doorbell rang. Eleanor put on a robe and went downstairs. She saw Asher's assistant James standing at the door, holding an elegant envelope.

"Ma'am, this is what Mr. Grayson asked me to give you. He said it's an anniversary gift. Also, Miss Daisy's medical expenses for next month have been transferred to the hospital account."

Eleanor opened the envelope. Inside was a check for ten million dollars.

Her hands trembled slightly.They were husband and wife, and every single time they made love, a check arrived afterward.

At first, she had mistaken this for Asher's way of showing love and consideration. Her younger sister Daisy had a severe congenital heart defect and needed medication that cost more each month than Eleanor could ever earn. Two years ago, when three specialists had told them to let Daisy go, Asher had refused. He had paid for surgeons, called medical teams in the middle of the night, and kept her sister alive. Eleanor had never forgotten it.

But as time went on, she realized something was fundamentally wrong.

It wasn't just after sex; whenever she did anything to help Asher, he settled the score with money.

Last month, she accompanied him to a charity gala and smiled at his business partners for four hours; the next day, James delivered an incredibly expensive, limited-edition handbag.

Two months earlier, when Asher suffered a stomach ailment, she stayed up all night caring for him by his bedside; the following day, a massive sum appeared in her bank account.

It was only tonight - after witnessing firsthand how a single phone call from Regina made Asher lose his composure, fly into a rage, and ultimately capitulate - that Eleanor was forced to confront a cruel realization: in all their years of marriage, she had never once truly stirred this man's emotions.

To her, Asher was always the picture of calm, restraint, and gentlemanly courtesy. But that wasn't respect. It was the indifference of a man who had never loved her.

For several minutes she only stared at the check. Then she lifted her head. When she spoke, her voice broke in the middle. "James... can I ask you something?"

"Of course, ma'am."

"Does this look like a marriage to you?"

James paused, lowered his head, and gave a careful reply. "Mr. Grayson is very generous. He has always felt a strong sense of responsibility toward you."

Responsibility.

Eleanor gave a wry smile. Even his assistant could see that Asher's feelings for her were merely a matter of obligation.

James inclined his head, said good night, and left the moment his errand was done. The door closed, and the house went quiet again. Eleanor stood in the hall a while longer. Then she walked to the piano in the living room and rested her fingers on the keys without pressing down.

She had loved him since she was nineteen.

Back then she was a music major and Asher was the boy in the computer science building who slept four hours a night.

He was poor — scholarships, part-time jobs, instant noodles at midnight — and he was in love with Regina Sterling, the most dazzling cheerleader in the art department, a girl who went through boyfriends the way other people went through coffee.

When Regina got pregnant, the whole campus talked about it for a month. Asher wanted to do the right thing. He proposed.

Regina laughed at him. "Without a five-carat ring and a wedding people will still be talking about in ten years, don't even think about it."

In their senior year his company closed its first round of funding, and he spent almost all of it on the most decent wedding he could afford.

Eleanor went. She told herself she was going to congratulate him and to look at him one last time. She had a pair of custom cufflinks in her bag that had taken her three months to save for, engraved with his initials, and she was going to hand them to him in the dressing room and then walk out of his life for good.

However, as she reached the end of the church corridor, she heard a heated argument coming from the bridal dressing room.

The door was ajar. Regina, clad in a red camisole, let the white wedding dress fall at Asher's feet. "Asher, there is absolutely no way I'm walking out there in this cheap rag."

Asher tried to take her hand, his voice strained with suppressed pain: "Regina, the company is about to secure its next round of funding. Just give me a little more time—I swear I’ll give you and Emma the very best of everything in the future...I love you."

“Love?” Regina said mockingly. "What's the use of love? Can love make the diamond on my hand bigger? Can love support my career? I'm an artist. Do you know how much money I need to hold an art exhibition? I'm not spending my twenties in a one-bedroom apartment with a baby."

Asher's voice cracked. "I invited my closest friends. Every relative I have. They're all sitting out there waiting to watch us be happy. Just wear it today, all right? I swear I'll work myself into the ground, and one day I'll give you the wedding of the century to make up for it." He was almost choking on it. "Please, Regina."

"A shabby little wedding and a room full of poor relatives." Regina laughed in his face. "I want a man who can put me in a Paris gallery tomorrow, who can buy me diamonds without begging an investor for permission first. Save your worthless promises for some girl who doesn't know any better."

She stepped over the wedding dress and walked out.

The door slammed, leaving Asher alone with a church full of guests, a discarded gown, and the humiliation of being walked out on at his own wedding.

When Eleanor finally entered the dressing room, he was sitting with his head in his hands, surrounded by the wreckage Regina had left behind.

From the doorway Eleanor saw his shoulders shake once. He wasn't speaking to her. He didn't even know she was there. "Maybe she's right," he said hoarsely, and laughed at himself. "What woman would want a man like me, a man with nothing to give her?"

For the first time, Eleanor saw how completely Regina had broken his pride.

Eleanor took a deep breath.

She bent down and picked up the wedding dress from the floor. To anyone ordinary, it was not a cheap dress at all.

Then she gathered her courage to approach him. "Asher. Do you need a bride right now?"

He raised his head slowly.

"I'm willing to marry you."