1. Fourteen days

Claire's POV

The receptionist smiled as she handed me a small envelope. "Don't lose that," she said. "Most mothers end up keeping their first ultrasound forever."

I looked down at the photograph tucked safely inside the envelope and felt something tighten deep inside my chest.

Forever.

It was such a simple word, such an ordinary word and yet it seemed to belong to a life I had never allowed myself to imagine.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

The receptionist's smile softened as she wished me luck before turning her attention to the next patient.

A few moments later I stepped out of the clinic and into the heart of Manhattan.

The city moved around me with its usual relentless energy. Yellow taxis crawled through traffic, businessmen hurried along the sidewalks with coffee cups in hand, and somewhere nearby a siren wailed before disappearing into the distance.

Everything looked exactly the same as it had an hour ago. Nothing about the city had changed but everything about my world had.

I slipped a hand inside my purse until my fingers found the envelope again.

Pregnant.

The word still didn't feel real.

A few days ago, I had stood alone in my bathroom staring at a pregnancy test, convinced it had to be wrong. This morning I'd walked into the doctor's office expecting to hear there'd been some mistake.

There hadn't been. I was carrying a baby. My baby and Damien's baby.

Warmth spread through my chest so suddenly that I couldn't stop smiling. Almost without thinking, my hand drifted to my stomach. There was nothing to see yet and nothing to feel just the quiet knowledge that a tiny life had already changed mine forever.

The happiness lasted only a few seconds before reality quietly found its way back in.

Finding out I was pregnant had been the easy part but telling Damien now that was the part that terrified me.

I stopped walking and looked across the street at the mirrored glass of an office building.

My reflection stared back at me.

To everyone else I looked exactly the same. No one walking past me would ever guess that my entire future had changed before lunchtime.

My future.

The words lingered in my mind.

For four years I had trained myself not to think too far ahead because the contract had made that impossible. My marriage had never been forever.

It had an expiration date.

Four years.

That was what Damien had offered me. Four years as his wife. Four years of appearances. Four years of pretending and then we'd walk away.

It sounded so simple back then, so clean and so professional. The only problem was that somewhere between our wedding day and our fourth anniversary, I'd made the mistake of falling hopelessly in love with my husband and despite everything I'd never regretted it.

A quiet laugh escaped me.

Anyone walking past probably thought the woman standing outside a fertility clinic smiling at nothing had finally lost her mind.

My phone buzzed inside my purse. I pulled it out, expecting another email from work, but instead a calendar notification filled the screen.

The date.

The smile slipped from my face.

Fourteen days.

That was all we had left.

Fourteen days before the contract expired. Fourteen days before I stopped being Claire Laurent. Fourteen days before Damien and I sat across from a pair of lawyers and signed the papers that would officially end our marriage and for the first time since I'd seen those two pink lines I found myself wondering whether my baby would ever know what it felt like to grow up with both parents under the same roof

For months, that number had felt like a countdown to heartbreak but today, for the first time, it felt like something else. Maybe the future wasn't as fixed as I'd always believed and maybe a baby changed things and maybe Damien would look at that tiny ultrasound photograph and realize that what we'd built together wasn't just a contract anymore.

Maybe...

I stopped myself before the thought could go any further.

Hope was dangerous and hope was how people ended up with broken hearts and yet, as I climbed into a taxi and gave the driver the address of Laurent Group headquarters, I couldn't stop smiling.

Tonight I was going to tell my husband that we were having a baby.

Laurent Group occupied forty floors of glass and steel in the heart of Manhattan's financial district. The building had become as familiar to me as my own home. After all, I'd spent years working there before becoming Damien's wife, and if I was being honest, I still spent enough time inside those walls to qualify as an employee.

The elevator doors opened onto the executive floor, and the first thing I noticed was the silence and the second was Emma hurrying toward me. Relief spread across her face so quickly that I knew something was wrong before she even opened her mouth.

"Thank God."

I frowned. "That's usually not how people greet me."

"Your husband is in one of his moods," Emma said with a sigh.

I laughed. "That narrows it down to absolutely nothing at all."

She pointed toward the conference rooms. "The board meeting."

My stomach dropped. "The quarterly board meeting?"

Emma nodded. "Apparently."

The uneasy feeling in my stomach deepened. Three weeks ago, I'd rescheduled that meeting because Damien had a conference in Chicago, and more importantly, Damien had personally approved the change.

Twice.

I knew because I'd saved both emails. Experience had taught me that keeping a paper trail where Damien Laurent was concerned wasn't paranoia.

It was survival.

"How bad?" I asked.

Emma grimaced. "Let's just say the board isn't thrilled."

I let out a quiet sigh. "I'll handle it."

Emma smiled. "You always do."

The words were meant lightly, but they stayed with me long after she'd said them.

You always do.

The truth was I did.

Somewhere over the years, managing Damien had become as natural as breathing. I knew which meetings he dreaded, which clients tested his patience, and which coffee he'd reach for when he hadn't slept enough. I knew the tiny crease that appeared between his eyebrows whenever he was worried, even when he insisted everything was fine, and I knew exactly how to calm a room before anyone realized he'd lost control of it.

Most people saw Damien Laurent, the billionaire CEO but I saw the man behind the tailored suits. The man who carried the weight of an entire company on his shoulders.

The realization should have made me sad but instead it made me smile because despite the contract, despite the expiration date hanging over our marriage and despite knowing this arrangement had always been temporary somewhere along the way, it had become real.

At least it was for me.

I pushed open the conference room door. Every conversation stopped. The board members looked annoyed and Damien looked relieved. The sight caught me completely off guard and for the briefest moment, before he remembered who he was supposed to be, something softened in his expression.

It wasn't much, just the slightest easing around his eyes. The faintest hint of relief then, almost as quickly as it had appeared it was gone again

"Claire."

I folded my arms and smiled. "Damien."

One of the directors let out an exaggerated groan. "Oh, thank goodness you're here."

Another pointed dramatically toward Damien. "Please explain to your husband that this meeting was moved."

I looked at Damien just as he looked back at me. "You approved the change on March third."

His expression didn't change. "I don't remember approving any changes."

The room fell completely silent.

I raised an eyebrow. "You approved them on March third."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

He sounded so stubborn that, for one ridiculous second, he reminded me of a little boy refusing to admit he'd been caught stealing cookies.

Several people around the table exchanged amused looks.

I unlocked my phone.

One of the directors quietly reached into his pocket and pulled out his own phone. "I'm recording this," he announced with a grin.

"Frank," another director muttered, laughing. "You're going to get us all fired."

"Claire," Damien warned, though there wasn't nearly as much authority behind the warning as he probably intended.

I ignored him. Finding the email, I walked over and held my phone out to him. "Read it."

His eyes moved slowly across the screen. No one said a word. The silence that settled over the boardroom was almost ceremonial. Everyone knew exactly what was happening.

Damien Laurent was discovering he'd been wrong.

One of the directors finally leaned forward. "Well?"

Damien handed my phone back without saying anything for several seconds then he sighed. "You informed me."

I smiled sweetly. "Three times."

Laughter rippled around the room.

"You approved it twice," I added.

His jaw tightened ever so slightly. "Apparently I did."

The room erupted.

One director laughed so hard he had to remove his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes, while another leaned back in his chair muttering, "I never thought I'd live long enough to see this."

I tried not to laugh, I really did but it was impossible and when I looked back at Damien, I caught him watching me. The irritation had disappeared from his face and in its place was something softer and something warmer for the briefest moment, it wasn't the CEO of Laurent Group looking at me, it was simply Damien.

The man who always claimed he hated being wrong but somehow never seemed to mind quite as much when I was the one proving him wrong.

The moment only lasted a heartbeat then someone cleared their throat, chairs scraped across the floor, and just like that the boardroom returned. People gathered their files, exchanged amused comments and slowly filtered out until only Damien and I remained.

He loosened his tie before dropping heavily into his chair. "I blame you for this."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You should've reminded me."

A laugh escaped before I could stop it. "Damien, I emailed you three times."

"You know I don't read half my emails."

"That sounds like a personal problem."

The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile, it rarely was but after four years, I'd learned to treasure every tiny crack in the walls Damien kept around himself.

Even now that almost-smile was enough to make my heart skip.

"I suppose you're enjoying this," he said.

"A little."

"A little?"

I smiled. "Alright... quite a lot, actually."

He shook his head, though I could tell he was fighting his own smile now then he stood. The room suddenly felt much smaller, it always did whenever Damien was close.

I hated that after four years I still noticed ridiculous things like the way he rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirts when he was stressed, or how his voice dropped just a little whenever he was tired.

Most of all I hated that I loved him because loving Damien Laurent hadn't changed the one thing that mattered. The contract was still ending.

The clock was still ticking and in fourteen days I was going to lose my husband

"We should head home," Damien said.

"I still need to stop at a few stores," I replied. "Go ahead. I'll meet you there."

He looked at the watch on his wrist before his phone buzzed in his pocket. With a quiet sigh, he pulled it out and frowned at the screen. "I've got one last call to take," he said. "I shouldn't be too long."

I smiled. "I'll see you at home."

He gave a small nod before answering the call, and within seconds his attention had shifted completely to whoever was on the other end of the line. I watched him walk back toward his office, already discussing numbers and deadlines as though the board meeting had never happened.

For a moment, I simply stood there watching him then I headed for the elevator.

Home.

The word settled somewhere deep inside me.

For four years, I'd heard Damien use that word without ever allowing myself to believe it truly belonged to us. The penthouse had always felt borrowed somehow, as though I was living inside a life with an expiration date already written into it but today… Today was different.

For the first time, I let myself imagine something I'd spent years refusing to hope for.

Maybe tonight, when I told him about the baby home would stop feeling temporary and maybe it could finally become forever.

That evening, I stood alone in the penthouse kitchen, staring at the tiny pair of white baby shoes I'd bought on impulse while wandering through the baby section of a department store after leaving Laurent Group.

Buying them had been completely ridiculous and completely unnecessary and yet every time I looked at them, I found myself smiling.

I picked one up and turned it over carefully between my fingers. It was impossibly small. Our baby would wear something this tiny.

The thought filled me with so much happiness that I couldn't stop smiling.

Tonight.

Tonight I was finally going to tell him.

The sound of the front door opening echoed through the apartment, and my heartbeat immediately quickened.

He's home.

I quickly placed the little shoes inside the kitchen drawer before turning toward the hallway. A moment later Damien walked into the kitchen. He stopped just inside the doorway. His eyes moved slowly around the room, taking in the candles flickering on the dining table, the meal I'd spent far too long preparing, the bottle of wine waiting beside two glasses then his gaze settled on me and suspicion appeared almost immediately.

"What happened?" he asked.

I laughed. "Why do you automatically assume something happened?"

He loosened his tie as he walked toward the table. "You cooked."

I placed a hand against my chest. "That's offensive."

"It's unusual."

"I cook."

"You supervise takeout."

I couldn't help smiling. "That happened once."

"It happened last week."

"It still counts."

A quiet chuckle escaped him as he pulled out a chair and for one perfect moment everything felt normal.

I took a slow breath, this was it, this was the moment. Almost without thinking, I reached for the kitchen drawer. My fingers closed around the tiny baby shoes hidden inside.

Three words. That's all it would take.

We're having a baby.

I could already picture his face. The surprise and the disbelief and maybe even a smile. I looked up and my heart was racing so fast I was certain he could hear it.

I was terrified, hopeful and happier than I'd ever been. I opened my mouth but then Damien spoke first.

"There's something we need to discuss."

The words were quiet and calm but something in his voice made every hopeful thought inside me disappear.

The smile slipped from my face slowly and I let go of the baby shoes. My hand slid out of the drawer empty.

Damien pulled out a chair and waited for me to sit before taking the seat opposite mine and neither of us spoke. The silence stretched between us until it became almost unbearable.

Finally, Damien folded his hands together on the table and looked directly at me.

"We need to discuss the divorce arrangements this week."