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Chapter 27
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2026-09-29 15:20:24
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CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 27
MAYA "Your cousin," I repeated. "Camille." Liam sat down at the far end of the bench, leaving a careful foot of space between us. "My mother's sister's daughter. She flew in from Geneva in early September for one weekend." "You never mentioned a cousin." "I didn't think it mattered. It was two months before the Greystone meeting. I didn't know you. I didn't know any of this would happen." I stared at the stone path. The chapel bell began to toll the half hour, slow and low. "She had just broken up with her boyfriend," he continued. "She showed up at my door at eleven at night, crying. I took her out for a drink so she wouldn't sit alone in my apartment. That's the bar. That's the walk home. She grabbed my arm because she'd had two glasses of wine and the sidewalk was icy." "And the booth?" "She was telling me how he ended it. Over text. Her head was practically on the table." His voice cracked on the last word. "I leaned in because I couldn't hear her over the music."
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 26
MAYA The photos were everywhere by the time we parked. I scrolled through them with my thumb and my pulse in my throat. Liam at a bar on the east side of town, with a girl's hand on his arm. Liam walking with the same girl down a dark sidewalk. Liam leaning toward her in a booth, his face close to hers. She was blond, small, and pretty. I didn't recognize her. The timestamp read September 3rd. That was before the engagement. But the Digest had printed the story under a question mark headline, with a huge photo and a caption that read RECENT, in a font so small you had to squint to catch the lie. "Maya," Liam whispered. "Don't." "I can explain." "Not now." I got out of the car. The cold hit my face like a slap. "I have to handle this first." * * * I handled it. I had been doing it for a month, so I was fast. I called Pearce, our communications director, and told him to put out a statement within the hour. I called Naomi Reyes and asked her to check the photo's metad
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 25
MAYA I had never seen a house like the Cross family's east wing. It sat at the back of the estate, behind a group of old maples and a gate that clicked softly open for Liam's car. It was low and long and made of pale stone, with tall windows that looked out over a frozen garden. It didn't look like a hospital. It looked like someone had tried very hard to make sure it never would. "She picked everything," Liam whispered as he parked. "The windows, the floors, the paint. My father wanted something smaller. She wanted light." "It's beautiful." "It's her." He came around and opened my door. I climbed out holding a lemon cake in a white box and a bunch of yellow tulips against my chest, trying not to shake. Liam had doubled the guards at the gate after I showed him the text. Sara had checked the car, the cake box, my phone, and even my shoes. We had almost canceled. In the end, Elena had refused, through her nurse, in four words. Bring the cake anyway. "Ready?" Liam asked.
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 24: My Mother
MAYALiam asked me on a Wednesday, careful in a way that made the question feel heavier than the words themselves."My mother has a scheduled visit this weekend." He didn't quite meet my eyes at first. "Physical therapy, then time at her apartment. She knows about the engagement. She wants to meet you properly.""Not as a performance." I tested the shape of it."Not as a performance. Just you, meeting her." He finally looked at me directly. "You don't have to say yes. This one's actually personal."I thought about the hospital hallway months earlier, the fragment of his mother I'd glimpsed through his careful, guarded description of her. I thought about how rarely he mentioned her at all, how much that rarity seemed to matter."Yes." The word came before I'd fully finished thinking it through.Something shifted in his expression, relief and surprise tangled together. "Yeah?""Yeah. I want to meet her."He didn't say much else right away, just
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 23: New Rules
MAYALiam showed up outside my dorm at six thirty the next morning without being asked, leaning against his car like waiting for me at that hour was the most ordinary thing in the world."You didn't have to come this early." I climbed in."Practice starts at seven. I checked your schedule." He pulled out into the quiet street, the campus still mostly asleep around us. "This is the new normal for a while. I hope that's okay.""It's more than okay. I just don't want you exhausting yourself over my schedule.""I've survived worse than early mornings." He glanced at me, something warm cutting through the vigilance he'd carried since the parking lot. "Besides, I like the quiet drive. Nobody's performing for anyone at six thirty."I didn't tell him not to stop. Some part of me had expected to resist the protectiveness. To insist on independence the way I usually did. But the fear from the broken car window still sat close enough to the surface that his presenc
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 22: Escalation
MAYAMy car was broken into Tuesday night, parked in the same lot I always used behind the athletics building.Nothing taken. My gym bag still sat on the passenger seat, my laptop untouched in the back. Only the driver's seat told me anyone had been there, a single printed photo left square in the center, waiting.The Foundation dinner photo. The same one from months earlier, me and Liam on the front steps, caught from across the street. This time my face had been circled in red marker, slow deliberate strokes that looked nothing like the rushed scrawl of panic.I sat in the driver's seat a long moment, the photo in my lap, my hands not quite steady.I texted Liam before I'd even started the engine.Car broken into. Nothing taken. The old photo again. My face circled.He called instead of texting back. I answered on the first ring."Where are you." His voice came tight and fast."The lot behind athletics. I'm okay. Just shaken.""Don't move. I
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 5: Behind the Diamond
MAYAI showed Liam the second text at seven the next morning.Not because I had planned to show him over coffee in the university cafe two hours before our seminar. But Priya had an early lab session and I was sitting alone at our usual table when he walked in, scanned the room the way he always di
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 4: The Announcement
MAYAI did not tell Liam about the text that night.Not because I was hiding it, but Because I wanted twenty four hours to think about what it meant before I handed it to someone else to think about, and that was a habit I had built so deep into myself that I did not even question it anymore. I pro
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 3: Neutral Territory
MAYAPriya walked me halfway there without knowing it.She had a lecture in the building two blocks from Greystone and we had the same route for most of it, which meant I spent twelve minutes navigating her observations with the focused energy she usually reserved for exam season."So you have a me
CONTRACT ENGAGEMENT: Unexpected Heir Chapter 1: The Seminar
MAYA"He's staring at you again."Priya said it the way she said most things, directly and without apology, not looking up from her coffee. We were sitting on the steps of Harlow Hall in the ten minutes before our first Tuesday lecture of sophomore year and the courtyard was full and loud and I alr
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