Todos los capítulos de THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

Nathan's POV"If you leave right now, Ellie Hartman, I am fairly certain I will spend the rest of tonight regretting every version of tomorrow where I did not say this," I said, standing in her doorway at eleven at night.I told myself I was only there to drop off the final paperwork, a folder Sophie had insisted needed both our signatures before morning. That was the story I gave my driver, the story I gave myself the entire ride to Brooklyn.It was not the truth.The truth was I could not sleep, and every time I closed my eyes I saw Ellie laughing in my kitchen with Lily, Ellie standing in that bakery with flour on her hands, telling me sharply not to say something I would regret. I had spent eight years building a wall precise enough that nothing could get past it.She had gotten past it in three weeks."You could have just texted," she said, opening the door in an old sweater, hair loose around her shoulders, looking nothing like the polished bride from the fitting photos and some

Nathan's POV"You may not believe in promises made forty years before either of us was born," I said, my voice unsteady in front of three hundred watching guests, "but I believe in the one I am making to you right now."I had signed nine figure contracts without my hands shaking once, and yet standing at the front of that ballroom, waiting for the doors to open, I could not keep them still.Marcus, standing beside me as my best man, must have noticed, because he leaned in close enough that only I could hear him. "You are allowed to be nervous, you know. Even you.""I am aware.""Good. Because you look like a man about to negotiate the largest deal of his life.""In a sense, I am."Then the music began, and every practiced response I had ready for that thought disappeared the moment I saw her.The ballroom looked like something out of a dream neither of us had ever let ourselves have, white flowers cascading down every column, candlelight flickering against gold walls, and Ellie walkin

Nathan's POV"If anyone in this room still doubts what this marriage means, then let me say it plainly, in front of every person Gerald Cross hoped would turn against us today," Ellie said, stepping toward the microphone herself, and I stood back and let her, because some things a person has to say for themselves.The room was still buzzing with whispers when she took the microphone from the stunned officiant's hand. I could see her hands trembling slightly around it, and I had never in my life wanted so badly to cross a room and stand beside someone, and never felt so certain that the bravest thing I could do was let her stand there alone."I grew up in a bakery my grandfather built with his own hands," she began, her voice shaking at first, then steadying with every word. "I know what it means to build something real out of very little. I know the difference between something built on love and something built on convenience, because I have spent my whole life watching my grandmother

Nathan's POV"You are doing it wrong," Lily announced, marching into the kitchen like she owned it, hands already reaching for the bowl. "Ellie showed me the real way yesterday."I had not expected to find my ten year old sister standing on a step stool at seven in the morning, flour dusted across her pajama sleeves, correcting my technique on something as simple as pancake batter. I had also not expected to enjoy it as much as I did."Enlighten me," I said, stepping back from the counter."You fold it," she said, demonstrating with the exaggerated seriousness of a surgeon. "You do not stir it like you are angry at it."Ellie appeared in the doorway then, hair pulled back, wearing one of my old shirts because hers apparently still smelled like smoke from a candle mishap two nights before, and something in my chest did the thing it had been doing more and more often lately, a kind of quiet unraveling I did not have a name for yet."She is a better teacher than I expected," Ellie said,

Nathan's POV"Read it to me again, slowly, because I need to understand exactly how much they know," I said, standing in the middle of my office at midnight with my phone gripped so tightly my knuckles had gone white.Marcus read the message aloud a second time, though I had already memorized every word the moment Ellie's phone lit up on our nightstand an hour earlier.Tell your bakery girl to enjoy the renovation. It will not last long, and neither will she.The renovation. Nobody outside this apartment knew we had started quietly drawing up plans to fix the bakery's roof, the plumbing, the ancient ovens Rose refused to replace out of stubborn pride. It was supposed to be a surprise, something small and private I had been arranging for weeks, a gift with no strings attached, unlike everything else in Ellie's life since the day I met her."Someone close to us knows about the renovation plans," Marcus said. "That was not public information.""Who has access to my personal correspondenc