Chapter 1

Adrian POV

I walked into Marcus's bar at midnight because it was the only place in London where I could think without someone asking me questions I didn't want to answer, and Marcus looked up from wiping down the counter when I came through the door.

"You look like someone died," he said.

"Worse." I slid onto a stool. "My brother got engaged."

Marcus stopped wiping. "James? Your brother James who said commitment was for people who'd given up on life?"

"Apparently he found someone desperate enough to say yes." I signaled for a drink. "My father announced a new rule at dinner tonight, whichever son gets married first becomes CEO."

"That's insane even for Richard Blackwell." Marcus poured me whiskey. "How long do you have?"

"Seventy-two hours starting from when James announced his engagement three hours ago." I downed the drink. "So about sixty-nine hours now."

"And you need a wife in sixty-nine hours."

"I need a wife period, the timeline just makes it more interesting." I pushed the glass toward him. "Another."

Marcus refilled it. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet, that's why I'm here drinking instead of home panicking." I looked at the nearly empty bar. "Any suggestions?"

"Find someone who's as desperate as you are." Marcus sat down across from me. "Offer them something they can't refuse."

"Like what?"

"Money, security, a way out of whatever hole they're in." Marcus shrugged. "Rich men have been buying wives for centuries, you'd just be continuing a proud tradition."

I was about to respond when the door opened and cold air rushed in along with a woman who stumbled through like she'd forgotten how to walk properly.

She caught herself on a table and stood there swaying, and even from across the room I could see she'd been crying for hours because her face was blotchy and her mascara was smeared down her cheeks.

"Should you help her?" I asked Marcus.

"Probably." But he didn't move and neither did I, and we both watched her make her way to the bar like she was walking through water.

She collapsed onto a stool three down from mine and put her head on the counter. "Vodka, I need vodka, the whole bottle if you have it."

Marcus walked over. "I think you've had enough already."

"I haven't had nearly enough." She lifted her head and I could see her eyes were red and swollen. "My parents died two weeks ago in a car accident and today I found out all their debts are mine now."

"How much debt?" Marcus asked gently.

"Forty thousand pounds and the bank wants it in thirty days or they're taking my house." She laughed but it came out broken. "The house where I grew up, where my mother taught me to cook and my father read me stories before bed, they're taking all of it."

Something clicked in my brain, something cold and calculating that told me this was the opportunity I'd been looking for even though I knew I shouldn't take it.

I got up and moved to the stool next to hers. "Forty thousand pounds?"

She turned to look at me and her eyes tried to focus. "Are you offering to lend me money? Because I can't pay you back."

"I'm not lending anything." I signaled Marcus for another drink. "I'm offering to pay off your debt completely."

"Why would you do that?" She squinted at me. "I don't even know you."

"My name is Adrian Blackwell and I need something from you." I waited while Marcus poured her vodka. "You need money and I need a wife."

She stared at me and then started laughing, the kind of hysterical laughter that people do when they've gone past crying into something else. "You're joking, this has to be a joke."

"I'm completely serious." I pulled out the contract my lawyer had drawn up three days ago just in case. "Marry me tonight, stay married for eighteen months, and I'll clear your debt plus give you five thousand pounds a month."

"You're insane." But she was looking at the contract now. "Why would you need to pay someone to marry you?"

"Because I need a wife by Friday and you're here and desperate enough to say yes." I pushed the contract closer. "Read it."

She picked it up and tried to focus on the words but her eyes kept sliding off the page. "I can't read this, everything's blurry."

"Then I'll tell you the terms: eighteen months of marriage, you live with me and attend events with me and play the role of my wife in public, and when the eighteen months are up we divorce and you walk away with enough money to start over."

"And you'll pay my debt?"

"Tonight, as soon as you sign." I pulled out a pen. "Forty thousand pounds transferred to your account immediately."

She looked at the contract and then at me and then at Marcus who was watching us both like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "This is real?"

"Completely real." I held out the pen. "Sign and save your house or don't sign and lose everything."

She took the pen and her hand was shaking so badly she could barely hold it. "Where do I sign?"

I showed her and she signed without reading anything, just scrawled her name across the bottom line and pushed the contract back toward me.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Elena." She reached for her vodka. "Elena Hart."

I pulled out my phone and transferred forty thousand pounds to the account number she'd written on a napkin, and her phone buzzed a second later.

She looked at the screen and started crying again. "It's real, you actually did it."

"I said I would." I folded the contract. "Now we need to make it legal."

"What?" She looked up. "We already signed."

"That's the contract, now we need the marriage ceremony." I looked at Marcus. "You're ordained aren't you?"

"I got ordained online five years ago to marry my sister." Marcus shook his head. "But I'm not marrying you two, this is insane."

"But you can legally perform a marriage?"

"Technically yes but—"

"Then do it." I looked at Elena who was drinking more vodka. "Unless you want to back out?"

"No." She downed another glass. "Let's get married, why not, I've already destroyed my life today anyway."

Marcus sighed and went to his office and came back with a laptop and a marriage certificate, and the old man who'd been sitting at the end of the bar turned around.

"I'll be your witness," he said. "This is better than television."

"Perfect." I stood up and pulled Elena to her feet and she swayed against me. "Can you stand?"

"Maybe." She was holding onto my arm. "Everything's spinning."

Marcus positioned us in front of the bar and started reading from his laptop about love and commitment and forever, and Elena's eyes kept closing like she was falling asleep standing up.

"Do you Adrian Blackwell take Elena Hart to be your lawfully wedded wife?" Marcus asked.

I looked at Elena who was barely conscious. "I do."

"And do you Elena Hart take Adrian Blackwell to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

Elena's eyes opened slightly. "What?"

"Do you take Adrian as your husband?" Marcus repeated.

"Sure." Her words were slurred. "Why not."

"I need you to say I do," Marcus said.

"I do." She was swaying worse now. "Can I sit down?"

"By the power vested in me I now pronounce you husband and wife." Marcus closed his laptop. "This is the worst thing I've ever been part of."

Elena's eyes rolled back and she collapsed and I caught her before she hit the floor, and she was completely unconscious in my arms.

I pulled out the ring I'd been carrying in my pocket for three days and looked at her left hand, and I slid the ring onto her finger while she was passed out and couldn't object.

"Did you just put a ring on your unconscious wife?" Marcus asked.

"She's my wife now." I looked down at Elena. "She should have a ring."