Chapter 1

Claire Parker couldn’t have children.

The moment she got the results, she texted Nathan Brooks.

‘Let’s get divorced.’

She put down her phone and felt something inside her loosen.

She’d barely had time to process the diagnosis when her mother-in-law called and told her to come over. Claire agreed. With the Brooks family’s connections in medicine, she wasn’t surprised they’d heard already.

The sky was gray on the way there. Claire stared out the window, her eyes dry and sore.

She and Nathan had met on a blind date.

People said sex was the quickest way to a woman’s heart. A woman never forgot her first man, especially when that man was her husband.

Claire hadn’t forgotten hers.

How could she? Nathan was a medical prodigy and the youngest chief of neurosurgery in Riverton.

His younger sister was the first person Claire saw when she arrived.

Sophie Brooks looked at her with open disgust.

As far as Sophie was concerned, an ordinary woman from a small town had no business marrying her brother. Claire had dragged him down from the start. Now she couldn’t even give him a child.

“If you can’t have kids, why did you marry my brother? Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?”

Claire held up her test results. “I only just found out.”

She walked past Sophie. There was no point arguing with her.

“Lily’s coming back. Everyone in Riverton’s medical community knows. Do yourself a favor and divorce him. It’s better for everyone.”

Claire stopped. With her back still to Sophie, she gave a small smile.

Of course Nathan would want children. A man like him wouldn’t give that up. But Claire had never been the woman he wanted to have them with.

That was Lily. Lily was the woman he wanted, the woman he wanted to be the mother of his children.

Sophie had no idea Claire had already texted him about the divorce.

The Brooks family had practiced medicine in Riverton for generations. They were wealthy, respected, and particular about appearances.

Claire came from a small northern town and worked at a biotech research institute. Her supervisor, who had also helped support her, happened to be Nathan’s mentor and an old friend of his grandfather’s. That was how she’d been introduced to Nathan.

No one had expected anything to come of it. Her background alone was enough to make the Brooks family hesitate. The fact that she’d been raised by a single mother made them like the match even less.

Claire hadn’t expected Nathan to be interested either. Surely someone in his own circle would have caught his eye long before she did.

But Nathan agreed to date her. A month later, they were married.

Everything happened so quickly that Claire barely felt she’d had a say in it.

Only later did one of Nathan’s colleagues tell her what had happened on the day of their blind date. Nathan had just been dumped.

His first love, Lily Quinn, had left him and gone overseas to pursue her dream of becoming one of the world’s top neurosurgeons.

Nathan got drunk on their wedding night.

In the bed he was supposed to share with Claire, he called Lily’s name again and again. He kept saying he was sorry.

Claire tried to undo his shirt buttons so he could sleep more comfortably. He knocked her hand away.

Usually so calm and put together, Nathan looked at her with red eyes and said, his voice thick with alcohol, “Claire, I’m never going to be happy again.”

He sounded devastated.

It was their wedding night. Claire couldn’t help feeling hurt, though she had no idea what she’d done wrong.

She sighed and almost said something to comfort him.

‘Even if you’d married Lily, that wouldn’t guarantee you’d be happy.’

But the words died in her throat.

Nathan was crying.

A tear slipped down Claire’s cheek as the memory faded. She wiped it away, then realized there was another.

She looked around the room.

The tasteful furnishings and dark wood showed just how much money the Brooks family had. Sitting there, Claire felt the weight of all of it.

The family was waiting on the sofas. None of them looked pleased to see her.

Her mother-in-law, Margaret Brooks, got straight to the point.

“Claire, Nathan is our only son. He needs to have children. I’m sorry this has happened. Tell us what you want in the divorce.”

Claire could ask for whatever she wanted. The divorce itself had already been decided.

She held the test results in her lap, calm. She’d imagined this conversation hundreds of times since the night Nathan told her he would never be happy.

“I understand why you want the divorce. I didn’t bring any money into the marriage, and your family paid for both the car and the apartment.

“I can’t give back the $500,000 your family gave me when we married. I can sign an IOU.”

Sophie let out a sharp laugh behind her.

“An IOU? And how exactly would you pay it back? Don’t worry. Our family had planned to give Nathan’s bride five million. You only got $500,000 because you were…”

“Sophie!” Margaret cut her off.

She turned to Claire. “You don’t need to pay it back. That money was given to you. We’ll keep covering your mother’s treatment, too.”

Claire didn’t argue. People could look down on her all they wanted. She and her mother still had to live, and her mother still needed treatment.

Nathan could marry someone else and have children. He would be fine.

Claire didn’t have the same safety net. At least she wouldn’t leave the marriage with nothing.

Margaret took out a document several pages long.

“Claire, sign here.”

Claire nodded and carefully wrote her name on the divorce agreement.

The meeting took less than twenty minutes.

There was no shouting, no blame, no fight.

Her brief marriage was as good as over. The Brooks family was satisfied with how easily she’d agreed.

When Claire stepped outside, the clouds had parted. Shafts of sunlight fell across the ground.

She took a long breath, then carried the divorce agreement back to the apartment she’d shared with Nathan.

It was supposed to be their newlywed home. The large, beautifully furnished apartment looked more like a showroom.

Its two wings were at opposite ends of the living room. Claire lived in one; Nathan lived in the other.

They had sex once a week. Afterward, no matter how tired he was, Nathan always got dressed, went back to his own room, showered, and went to sleep.

Half an hour later, Claire left with two suitcases.

At a glance, the apartment looked exactly as it had before.

Her absence would make just as little difference to Nathan and his family.

—

Two days later, Nathan still hadn’t replied.

Claire was used to him ignoring her. But his family wanted the divorce settled quickly, and she didn’t want to put it off either.

She went to the hospital to ask when he could sign the paperwork.

At the neurosurgery department, she knocked on the door.

“Is Nathan here?”

His colleagues gave her curious looks.

When news of Nathan’s marriage had spread, it had broken plenty of hearts. More than a few women on the hospital staff, and even some of his patients, had cried over it.

Losing him to Lily Quinn, the department’s star surgeon, would have made sense to them. But if Claire Parker could marry him, why couldn’t they?

“Nathan’s away,” one colleague said. “You didn’t know?”

Claire frowned. “Away?”

Cameron Stone cut in impatiently. “He went to Mieda to bring Lily back. He didn’t tell you?”

Claire’s heart lurched.