Just One Year With Mr. Billionaire

_Danica’s POV_I rolled over, my eyes aching and my head spinning. Weak sunlight filtered through the heavy curtains making it difficult to keep my eyes shut. I blinked, my eyelids feeling gritty and found myself lying in this ridiculously soft bed.“How did I get here?” I muttered and groaned as I tried to recollect. Freya had made me drink a whole lot yesterday to ease the tension and told me she had booked a room for us. “ Freya?” I called out, my voice raspy and just as I made an attempt to sit up, I realized that I was naked. I pushed myself up, my head throbbing in protest. The bed was enormous and didn't look like a suite Freya would lodge. It looked too VIP.“I'm not the type to sleep naked,” I mumbled as I sat at the edge of the bed, taking the sheets off. My back felt sore but I pushed myself to stand up anyway. I froze when I felt something wet between my legs, my breathing became heavy as everything began to dawn on me. My gaze swept around the room and my eyes landed on

_Danica’s POV_“I don't want to have anything to do with this woman or her child!”I walked into the Laurent mansion in a blank state, my heart burdened with the crushing weight of Eden's rejection. I had been approached by the secretary of the Cross family matriarch who informed me that he knew who my child's father was. Eden’s grandma was welcoming and wanted me to keep her grandchild but Eden, who turned out to be the stranger I had slept with that night, wanted nothing to do with me.I knew it would turn out this way, after all, who'd want a random woman just because of a flimsy one-night stand? He most likely saw me as a gold digger or a liar, maybe both. I didn't know him enough or have any bonds with him to be hurt by his words but somehow it did. I had cried my eyes out in the taxi and now, I still hadn't gotten over it.I pushed open the front door and hoped that no one would see me in this state but my stepmother's uncanny ability to sniff out misfortune like a bloodhound ap

_Danica’s POV_The door closed behind Eden with a soft click that echoed too loudly in the suddenly empty office. I stood there, frozen, staring at the space where he’d been just moments before.“The child is mine, after all.”His words replayed in my head like a broken record. So calm. So matter-of-fact. Like he was discussing a business acquisition instead of my baby.“Sit down, Danica.”My father’s voice cut through my thoughts. Cold. Commanding. The same tone he used with employees he was about to fire.I didn’t want to sit. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to get out of this room, away from the suffocating weight of his disappointment. But my legs felt weak, trembling beneath me, so I lowered myself into the chair Eden had just vacated. My father remained standing, positioned behind his massive mahogany desk like a king on a throne. He didn’t look at me. Instead, he stared out the window at the perfectly manicured gardens, his jaw tight, his hands clasped behind his back.T

_Danica's POV_The dining room had always been too large for breakfast. I sat in my usual seat, third from the end, where I’d always been placed since moving into this house, and watched my stepmother’s sister, Margot, butter her toast.“Such a shame about the gala,” Margot said, her voice carrying that particular pitch women like her perfected, loud enough to be heard, soft enough to claim innocence. “Celeste looked forward to it all year.”My fingers tightened around my fork. Celeste wasn’t here because I existed. Because carrying evidence of my father’s attention had finally pushed her over an edge I hadn’t known existed.“Well.” My stepmother’s cousin, Philippa, dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin. “Some people simply can’t handle adversity with grace.”The words landed like stones. I kept my eyes on my plate, scrambled eggs I couldn’t eat, fruit I couldn’t stomach. The baby had turned my body into a battleground, and breakfast was usually the first casualty.“I heard the Whitmor

_Danica's POV_ Two days after I signed those papers that bound me to Eden for the next one year, my phone buzzed with a message from him. *Tomorrow. 2 PM. Wedding dress shopping. A car will pick you up.* No pleasantries. No questions about whether I was available. Just commands, as if I were another item on his daily agenda. The car that arrived the next day was sleek and black, the kind that screamed wealth and power. The driver didn’t speak to me during the entire ride, and I was grateful for the silence. It gave me time to prepare myself mentally for whatever was coming. Eden was already at the bridal boutique when I arrived, standing near the window with his phone pressed to his ear. He looked up when I entered, his dark eyes sweeping over me briefly before he ended his call. “Pick whatever you want,” he said flatly. “As long as it looks appropriate for the cameras.” Of course. The cameras. That was all that mattered. The boutique staff fawned over us, or rather, over him.