ログイン共有
Chapter 1
公開日:
2026-07-07 01:06:45Emily's POV
"Say that again," I said, "because I don't think I heard you right."
My father did not look up from the folder on his desk. Flour still clung to the creases of his knuckles from the morning batch of croissants, the same croissants Eleanor Whitfield had ordered every Tuesday for twenty years without fail. "You heard me, Emmy."
"I heard the words. I didn't hear anything that makes sense." I pulled the folder toward me and flipped it open. Numbers stared back at me, more zeroes than I had ever seen attached to anything that involved our family name. "Dad. What is this."
"A loan," he said quietly. "From the Whitfield family trust. Your mother was sick, the ovens were dying, the bank had already said no twice. Eleanor offered, and I took it, and I told myself I would pay it back before you ever had to know."
"And now?"
"Now the note is due. All of it. In thirty days."
The bell over the front door chimed, and Chloe's voice floated back from the counter, bright and oblivious, telling a customer about the lavender scones. I lowered my voice so it would not carry. "So we lose the bakery."
"Unless," my father said, and something in the way he said it made my stomach drop before he finished the sentence, "there's another option. Eleanor mentioned it herself, this morning, when she came in for her order."
"What kind of option costs less than everything Mom built?"
He finally looked at me, and the shame in his face was worse than any number in that folder. "She wants you to meet her grandson."
Eleanor Whitfield's town car was parked outside within the hour, as if she had known exactly how this conversation would go before it happened. She sat in our back office in her camel coat, hands folded, looking entirely too calm for a woman about to upend my life.
"You're offering to forgive the debt," I said, "if I marry a man I have never met."
"I'm offering to forgive the debt," Eleanor said, "if you marry my grandson for one year. There's a difference, and it matters more than you think."
"It sounds like the same thing with better lighting."
Her mouth twitched, almost a smile. "You remind me of your mother. She used to talk to me exactly like that too."
"Don't," I said, sharper than I meant to. "Don't use her to soften this."
"I'm not trying to soften it, Emily. I'm trying to be honest with you, which is more than most people in my position would bother to do. My grandson has thirty days to marry before he loses control of the company his grandfather spent his whole life building. You have thirty days before your father loses the bakery your mother spent hers building. I am simply pointing out that both problems have the same solution."
"He doesn't know me. I don't know him."
"No," Eleanor agreed. "But you'll have a year to fix that, won't you."
I walked six blocks before I let myself feel anything, and even then all I let myself feel was angry, because angry was easier than scared. A year of my life, handed to a stranger, so my father would not lose the only piece of my mother that was still standing. I thought about the pastry shop I had been saving for since I was eighteen, the one with my name on the window in my head, always just one more year of saving away. I thought about how that year had just been spent before I ever got to use it.
Chloe caught up to me outside the subway station, out of breath, apron still tied around her waist. "You cannot just leave in the middle of a shift and not tell me what Eleanor Whitfield wanted."
"She wants me to marry her grandson."
Chloe stopped walking entirely. "The Nathaniel Whitfield. Forbes cover, ice for blood, dumped by that awful woman at the altar Nathaniel Whitfield."
"That's the one."
"Emily." She grabbed both of my hands. "Tell me you said no."
I thought about the folder on my father's desk, the number that would swallow everything my mother had built. I thought about his face when he told me, the shame he had been carrying alone for years so I would not have to carry it too.
"I didn't say no," I said. "I said I needed to think about it."
"And?"
I looked up at the skyline across the river, all that glass catching the last of the daylight, somewhere in it a man who had no idea his life was about to collide with mine.
"I think I already know what I'm going to say."
That night my phone rang from a number I didn't recognize. I almost let it go to voicemail, until something told me not to.
"Miss Hart." The voice was low, controlled, entirely unbothered, like he made calls that reshaped other people's lives every day of the week. "This is Nathaniel Whitfield. My grandmother tells me you're considering her proposal."
"Your grandmother tells you a lot of things, apparently."
A pause, brief enough that I almost missed it. "She tells me you're direct. I appreciate direct. It saves time."
"Is that what this is to you? A time saving measure?"
"This is a business arrangement, Miss Hart. One year, a signature, and both our families keep what matters to them. I'm not interested in pretending it's anything more sentimental than that."
"Good," I said, "because I'm not interested in pretending either."
Another pause. When he spoke again, something in his voice had shifted, just slightly, like a door opening half an inch. "Then we understand each other. I'll have my assistant send the paperwork in the morning."
"Wait." The word left me before I decided to say it. "What happens if I say no?"
"Then I lose a company my grandfather spent his life building, and you lose a bakery your mother spent hers building. And two strangers who might have made a decent arrangement never find out." A beat. "So. Miss Hart. Do we have a deal, or don't we?"
I looked at the ceiling of my tiny apartment, at the framed photo of my mother behind the bakery counter, flour on her nose, laughing at something out of frame.
"We have a deal, Mr. Whitfield," I said. "But only for one year. And only my rules."
His voice, when it came back, almost sounded amused. "We'll see about that."
最新チャプター
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 10
Nathaniel's POV"You look like a man who didn't sleep," my grandmother said, pouring tea into two cups in her study the next morning, entirely unbothered by the photo already spreading across three gossip sites."I didn't.""Good. It means you're finally taking this seriously." Eleanor set the teapot down and studied me the way she used to when I was a boy who'd broken something and hadn't yet admitted it. "Vanessa called me last night as well. Did you know that.""No.""She wanted me to confirm, on the record, that I forced this marriage without either of your consent. She seems to believe that story will end things cleanly for you and Emily." Eleanor's mouth thinned. "I told her the truth instead, which is that I offered an opportunity, not a command, and that both of you said yes with your eyes open. She did not appreciate the correction.""You could have simply not answered at all.""I could have. I've found, over eighty one years, that silence in the face of an accusation is usua
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 9
Nathaniel's POV"Delete it," I said, low enough that only Vanessa could hear me, though every instinct in me wanted to shout it across the entire terrace."Delete what, exactly. A photo of a couple having a conversation at a party. There's nothing scandalous about that, Nathaniel." Vanessa's smile was pure satisfaction. "Unless, of course, someone happens to leak the timeline alongside it. Married three weeks. First real fight already caught on camera. People will draw their own conclusions.""You want to hurt me. Fine. You've wanted that for three years and I understand why. But she has nothing to do with what happened between us.""She married into it the moment she signed that certificate," Vanessa said, and for the first time her voice lost its careful lightness, something rawer underneath. "You think I don't know what your grandmother's will really is. A cage dressed up as an inheritance. I loved you before that ca
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 8
Emily's POV"You look like a woman who just heard something she can't unhear," Vanessa said, appearing at my elbow at the charity gala like she'd been waiting for the exact moment Nathaniel stepped away to take a call."I look like a woman who's tired of you assuming she owes you a conversation.""Fair enough." Vanessa took a slow sip of champagne, studying me over the rim of the glass. "I'll make this quick then. Did he tell you why the loan to your father was so much larger than a simple bakery renovation should have cost."My stomach tightened, but I kept my face still. "He's telling me everything, in his own time.""Is he. Or is he managing what you learn, the same way he manages everything else." Vanessa smiled, small and sharp. "Ask him about the fire, Emily. The one at the original bakery location, before your mother rebuilt on Fifth. Ask him who really owned that building.""You say that like you expect
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 7
Emily's POV"Say it again," I told Chloe, "because I want to make sure I heard that correctly.""I said you're in love with him." Chloe didn't even look up from the dough she was kneading, like she was commenting on the weather instead of detonating a small bomb in the middle of my Tuesday shift. "The billionaire. Your husband. Nathaniel.""I am contractually married to him. That is a completely different thing.""Is it, though. Because you've mentioned him four times in the last hour, and not once did you complain. You complained about the chef, the marble kitchen, the doorman who won't remember your name. You have never once complained about Nathaniel.""That doesn't mean anything.""Emily." Chloe finally looked up, flour on her cheek, eyebrows raised in the exact expression she'd been giving me since we were fourteen and I insisted I did not have a crush on the boy who kept "accidentally" sitting next to me at lunc
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 6
Emily's POV"You're looking for the good scissors," Nathaniel said, appearing in the doorway of what I'd assumed was an unused hall closet, "in the one room I asked you not to go into.""You didn't ask. There was no note, no sign, nothing. I was looking for wrapping paper for Chloe's birthday and found a box marked keep instead.""Emily.""I didn't open it," I said, which was almost entirely true. "I saw the top layer. That's all."His jaw tightened in the way I was learning meant he was choosing his next words carefully. "The top layer would be the invitations.""Wedding invitations," I said quietly. "With your name on them. And hers.""I should have moved that box before you ever set foot in this apartment.""Or you could have just told me it existed. I'm not going to break, Nathaniel. I've read the same tabloid articles everyone else has.""There's a difference between reading about it and standing three feet from the actual proof.""Try me," I said. "I'd rather know the real versi
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT chapter 5
Emily's POV"You rearranged my kitchen," Nathaniel said, standing in the doorway of the marble showroom I had officially claimed as mine three days into this marriage."I organized your kitchen. There's a difference.""I could not find the coffee this morning.""It's in the jar labeled coffee, Nathaniel. Right where I put it.""It used to be in the cabinet on the left.""It used to be in a cabinet you never opened, next to a chef who only shows up twice a week. Forgive me for putting things where a person who actually cooks might find them."He stared at the jar like it had personally wronged him, and something about his genuine confusion, a man who apparently commanded boardrooms but could not locate his own coffee, cracked something loose in me that had been tightly wound since the dinner with Vanessa."Sit down," I said, pulling out a stool. "I'll make you a cup. Since apparently that's a skill gap in this household."He sat, cautiously, the way a man sits in a room he technically
あなたも気に入るかもしれません
I Fell For The Boy His Daddy Was A Bonus
LiLhyz947.3K ビューLet Me Go, Mr. Hill!
Shallow South6.5M ビューRevenge of the Hideous Lady
Moonlight971.9K ビューMarried a Secret Billionaire
Breaking Wave1.2M ビューCHOOSING MY EX'S HOCKEY RIVAL
BJORN72 ビューThe Lycan King Who Claimed Me
Leo Lexcity 26 ビューHome Alone With My Stepbrother
Flimxy vic 46 ビューMy Promdi Wife
Senyorita20 ビュー
