Love by the Contract

Two years of marriage.

That was the deal to secure his inheritance.

No strings attached.

And yet Emma’s hand trembled as she stared down at the pregnancy test in her hand, the two pink lines glaring up at her as if mocking her. The tiny strip, barely the size of her palm, had just shifted her life in an unimaginable direction. She stood in the cramped bathroom of her apartment, fingers gripping the edge of the sink as she tried to steady herself.

Pregnant.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in a temporary marriage, and not with Alex.

She could practically hear Alex’s cold, unfeeling voice if he found out, insisting that this was never part of the arrangement. Nothing about a baby.

She forced herself to breathe, to think past the panic and the thousand tangled questions in her head. Her fingers relaxed just slightly, her grip on the sink loosening. This wasn’t the first time she’d managed a crisis, but the stakes had never been this high.

Her mind slipped back to the night that had changed everything, the night that had taken their arrangement from a distant businesslike understanding to something far more complicated.

* * *

Two months ago, they’d been on a business trip to Shanghai.

The memory of it washed over her with crystal clarity. It had started with a hotel mix-up – the Peninsula's last available suite during a packed international convention week. Emma remembered standing at the check-in desk, exhausted after a fourteen-hour day of merger negotiations.

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Barrett," the manager had said. "We have only the Peninsula Suite available."

She'd started to protest – they always maintained separate rooms during business trips. It was one of their many unspoken rules. But Alex had surprised her.