chapter 4

Nathan’s POV

“You are actually going through with this,” Gerald said, leaning back in his chair with the smug look he had worn since the will was read. “A baker’s granddaughter. How romantic.”

“It is a legal arrangement, Uncle Gerald. Nothing more.”

“Does it matter what it is, so long as the board believes it satisfies the terms?” He steepled his fingers. “Though I admit, I am curious to meet the girl who thinks she can simply walk into a contract like this and walk back out again in one year, unscathed.”

I did not answer him. I had learned a long time ago that giving Gerald a reaction was the same as giving him ammunition. He had spent thirty years perfecting the art of the small cruel comment, the kind designed to look harmless if anyone repeated it back to him later. My father had warned me about him once, years before he died. Your uncle does not want to destroy you quickly, Nathan. He wants to watch you struggle first. I had not understood what he meant until I was the one sitting across from Gerald in every board meeting since.

Even now, watching him swirl the ice in his glass like this were all a mildly entertaining diversion rather than a fight for the company our family had built, I could see exactly why my father had never fully trusted him with anything that mattered. Gerald did not want to run Cross Hospitality because he loved it. He wanted it because taking it from me would mean he had finally won something he had spent his entire life believing should have been his in the first place.

My assistant, Marcus, was waiting for me when I left the boardroom.

“The Hartman contract is ready for signatures,” he said. “Legal wants to know if you’d like the ceremony private or public.”

“Public,” I said. “The board needs to see proof, not rumors.”

“And the timeline?”

“Two weeks.”

Marcus blinked. “Two weeks for an entire wedding?”

“I do not have the luxury of a long engagement, Marcus. Thirty one days remain.”

He made a note and hurried off, and I stood alone in the hallway for a moment longer than necessary, staring out at the city through the glass wall.

I kept thinking about the way she had looked at me in my office three days ago. Not intimidated. Not impressed by the building or my name or anything that usually made people soften around me. Just furious, and honest about it.

It had been a long time since anyone had been honest with me about anything.

That evening I drove out to the house to see Lily before the news broke publicly. She was sitting at the kitchen island doing homework, her nanny hovering nearby, and she looked up the second I walked in with the kind of hope on her face that always made my chest tighten.

“Are you staying for dinner?” she asked.

“For a little while.”

“You always say a little while.”

“I know.” I sat down across from her. “Lily, I need to tell you something before you hear it from someone else.”

She set her pencil down, suddenly serious in the way ten year olds get when they sense something important is coming.

“I’m getting married,” I said. “In two weeks.”

Her eyes went wide. “To who?”

“Her name is Ellie.”

“Do you love her?”

The question hit harder than I expected from a child.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “It’s for the company. So Uncle Gerald doesn’t take everything Dad built.”

Lily frowned, and for a moment she looked so much like our mother it ached. “That’s sad,” she said. “Getting married should be happy. Not because you have to.”

“Sometimes things start one way and turn into something else.”

“Do you think she’ll like me?”

That question, unlike the others, I could answer honestly.

“I think anyone would like you, Lily.”

She smiled a little at that, and it was enough to loosen something in my chest that had been tight since the will was read.

Two nights later, Ellie came to sign the contract in person. My lawyer laid out the papers across the long table in my office, and she read every single line slowly, asking questions at every clause, refusing to be rushed even when Marcus checked his watch twice.

“This clause here,” she said, tapping the page. “It says I have full access to the joint account for household expenses, but it doesn’t say anything about my grandmother’s bakery being legally transferred out of the sale, only that the sale is paused.”

“You’re right,” I said, and turned to my lawyer. “Fix it. Full permanent removal from any future sale, in her grandmother’s name.”

She looked up at me, surprised, like she expected an argument.

“You’re not going to fight me on it?”

“You asked for something reasonable. I do not waste time fighting reasonable people, Miss Hartman.”

Something in her face shifted then, just slightly, like she was recalculating who I was.

She signed her name at the bottom of the last page, the pen scratching loud in the quiet room, and when she looked up at me again there was something steadier in her eyes than there had been three days ago.

“Well, Mister Cross,” she said. “I suppose we’re getting married.”

“So it seems, Miss Hartman.”

“Just so we’re clear,” she said, standing, gathering her copy of the contract against her chest like armor. “This doesn’t mean I like you.”

I almost smiled, the real kind, the kind I hadn’t used in a boardroom in years.

“Noted,” I said. “But you should know something before you walk out of this office.”

She paused at the door. “What?”

“People who sign contracts with me tend to find out I am full of surprises.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Is that a threat, Mister Cross?”

“No,” I said. “Consider it a warning.”

She left without another word, and I stood at the window of my office for a long while after the door closed, watching the small figure of her cross the street below, coat pulled tight against the wind, refusing even from four floors up to look like anything other than exactly who she was. Marcus found me there twenty minutes later and asked if everything had gone well with the signing.

“She read every clause,” I told him. “Argued two of them. Won both.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “You let her win.”

“I did not let her do anything,” I said. “She was right, and I do not waste time fighting people who are right.”