chapter 5

Ellie’s POV

“You’re on the front page,” Sophie said, holding up her phone like it might bite her. “Front page, Ellie. Of the actual New York business section.”

I grabbed the phone out of her hand. There was a photo of me from the day I signed the contract, walking out of Cross Tower looking furious and windswept, next to a headline that made my stomach flip.

Cross Hospitality CEO to Wed Brooklyn Baker’s Granddaughter in Surprise Announcement.

“They make it sound like a fairy tale,” I said.

“It kind of is a fairy tale,” Sophie said. “The billionaire and the baker. People are going to eat this up.”

“People are going to eat me alive.”

I scrolled further down the article, my stomach twisting tighter with every paragraph. There were quotes from unnamed sources inside Cross Hospitality speculating about the marriage, a photograph of the bakery’s front window that someone had clearly taken without permission, and a small, cruel line near the bottom suggesting the arrangement was, in the reporter’s words, a convenient rescue for a struggling small business owner. I did not know whether to be more furious at the invasion or more embarrassed at how accurate, in its own clumsy way, the description actually was.

I was not wrong. By that afternoon my phone would not stop buzzing. Reporters had somehow found the bakery’s number. A woman claiming to write for a gossip site had actually shown up outside asking my grandmother questions through the front window until Sophie physically walked her off the property.

My grandmother, to my surprise, seemed to be enjoying the chaos more than she let on.

“Rose Hartman,” she said, answering the shop phone with theatrical patience, “yes, my granddaughter is indeed marrying Nathan Cross, and no, I will not be sharing the wedding cake recipe, thank you for calling.”

“Grandma, you’re loving this.”

“I am an old woman who has watched the same customers order the same croissants for thirty years,” she said. “Forgive me for finding a little excitement.”

That night Nathan called to check on me, which surprised me more than the reporters had.

“Are you handling everything all right?” he asked.

“Define handling.”

“The press.”

“I’ve had a stranger try to take a photo through my bathroom window, so no, I would not say I am handling it.”

There was a pause on the line, and I could hear him exhale slowly, the way he probably did before every difficult board meeting.

“I underestimated how quickly this would move once it became public,” he admitted. “I have handled hostile takeovers with less noise than a single wedding announcement.”

“Welcome to my world for the last four days.”

“I would apologize,” he said, “except I am not certain apologizing changes anything at this point. What would actually help you?”

The question caught me off guard. Nobody in the last four days had asked me what would help. They had all simply told me what was happening next.

There was a pause. “I’ll have security placed at the bakery and your apartment by tomorrow morning.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I signed a contract that says I do,” he said. “And I keep my word, Miss Hartman.”

“You could just call me Ellie, you know. We’re getting married in nine days.”

Another pause, this one different, quieter. “Ellie,” he said, testing the name like it was unfamiliar in his mouth. “All right. Ellie.”

I hated how much I liked the way he said it.

The next few days moved fast, faster than I could really process. A stylist arrived to fit me for a dress I would never have chosen for myself, all clean lines and quiet elegance, nothing like the girl who wore flour stained aprons six days a week. A planner arranged flowers and seating charts for three hundred guests I had never met. My whole life was being rearranged by people who worked for a man I barely knew, and I felt myself disappearing into someone else’s version of me a little more every day.

I tried, in small ways, to hold onto something of myself through it all. I insisted on choosing my own shoes, simple and flat, comfortable enough that I would not spend my wedding day wincing. I insisted on keeping my grandmother’s pearl earrings instead of the diamond ones the stylist suggested, even after she told me, not unkindly, that they would photograph better under the ballroom lights. Small victories, but they were mine, and in a week that felt like it belonged entirely to someone else, mine was the only thing I had left to hold onto.

Then, four days before the wedding, I met her.

I was leaving a fitting when a woman stepped directly into my path in the hallway, tall and polished in a way that made my simple coat feel suddenly cheap.

“You must be the baker,” she said, looking me over slowly.

“And you must be someone who thinks that’s an insult.”

Her smile did not reach her eyes. “Vanessa Cole. I’ve known Nathan since we were teenagers. Our families always assumed we would marry one day.”

“Well, that must be disappointing for you.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Vanessa said, stepping closer. “I don’t think you’re a threat. Nathan doesn’t marry for love. He never has. Whatever you think this is, in one year it ends, and things will go back to how they were always supposed to be.”

“Is that a threat, Miss Cole?”

She smiled again, colder this time. “Consider it a warning.”

The exact words Nathan had used to me, days ago, in his office.

I walked away from her with my heart pounding, telling myself it did not matter what she thought, that the contract was clear, that one year was one year and nothing more.

But that night, lying awake in my apartment four days before I married a man I barely knew, I could not stop thinking about the way she said it. Things will go back to how they were always supposed to be.

What if she was right.

I finally fell asleep somewhere near two in the morning, and I dreamed, strangely, not about Nathan or Vanessa or the wedding at all, but about the bakery, about the smell of bread rising before dawn, about my grandfather standing in the doorway the way he did in the old photograph, smiling like he already knew something I did not. I woke up before my alarm, unsettled and unsure why, four days closer to becoming somebody’s wife.