The Billionaire's Contract Wife
To secure a drama-free marriage, cold billionaire Lucas Lancaster demands a wife who wants convenience, not love. Heartbroken Sophia Bennett fits his criteria perfectly. After their wedding, Lucas flies to Europe, keeping their relationship strictly professional. But distance changes everything. When a tipsy Sophia accidentally mutters her ex’s name during a rare, passionate embrace, the ice prince completely loses his cool. Consumed by jealousy, Lucas begs her to forget the past and love him. In this captivating billionaire romance novel, he is the first to fall—and he falls hard.
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Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The Contract
I found it in the drawer where I'd seen him put the extra house keys.
I wasn't looking for it. I was looking for a pen — my studio pens were all at the studio, and I needed to mark a fabric sample, and it was a Sunday morning and the apartment was quiet and Lucas was out running.
The contract.
My copy. The one I'd been given on signing day, which I'd folded and not looked at since.
I stood at the drawer and looked at it for a moment. Then I sat down at the dining table and opened it.
It read the same as it always had. Of course it did. Documents don't change.
But I read differently now.
This arrangement will terminate after thirty-six months from the date of signing.
Thirty-six months. I'd been here eight.
Neither party shall develop romantic attachment or act in any manner inconsistent with the business nature of this arrangement.
I read that clause three times.
Then I set the contract down on the table and looked at it.
Neither party shall develop romantic attachment.
I thought about a hand at my waist at a fashion preview. About noodles with no cilantro. About a man asleep in a chair after a fever night, still dressed, having canceled something he'd described as unimportant.
I thought about last night on the couch, working in silence, and the way he'd handed me my tea without being asked, already the right temperature.
I called Lily.
She answered on the second ring. "You never call before noon on Sundays. What's wrong?"
"Nothing." I stared at the contract. "I think I'm falling for my husband."
A long pause.
"Sophia—"
"Don't say it."
"He doesn't—"
"I said don't."
She was quiet for a moment. "How bad?"
I looked at Clause 14. "The contract says this arrangement is a business decision."
"And?"
"And I can't remember the last time it felt like one."
Lily said nothing for a beat. Then: "What are you going to do?"
I folded the contract. Carefully. Put it back in the drawer.
"Nothing," I said. "There's nothing to do. I signed the same paper he did."
I got off the phone. Made coffee. Sat in the kitchen and drank it.
When I heard the elevator — Lucas back from his run, keys in the bowl, the sounds of him moving through the apartment — I didn't look up from my mug.
I went to the bathroom. Ran the tap.
Cried quietly for about four minutes.
Then washed my face and went back to the dining table and worked on my sketches until my hands remembered what they were doing.
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9.1
He was a ruthless CEO who always got what he wanted until he noticed her, a homeless girl surviving outside his office building. Quietly proud, clever, and impossible to read, she became the one woman who refused to fall at his feet, forcing him to chase for the first time in his life.
As she steps into his workplace, she faces ridicule, betrayal, and a wealthy woman determined to erase her from his world. While his family pushes him toward an arranged marriage with an entitled heiress, his heart is already bound to the girl everyone underestimates.
In a world ruled by power and status, she must prove her worth through strength and integrity, while he learns that love cannot be bought, controlled, or inherited.
7.8
Amara Daniels doesn't believe in destiny or happy endings; having survived from the dark shadows of her past, her life no longer has room for mistakes or attractive billionaires like Ethan Cole.
Ethan enters her life with his charming persistence, and she becomes worried after he meets her four-year-old son, her past that she has carefully buried.
He is her dangerous distraction.
But their chemistry conceals shocking secrets and connecting fates - that might either bring them together or set them apart forever. In a game where hearts and careers collide, can she have it all or will passion cost her everything?
9.2
She's stubborn, young, and craving love.
He's rich, famous, and impossible to read.
When 19 year old Liana Harper is suddenly arranged to marry Ethan Blackwell, the continent's most popular pop idol and heir to a vast empire, their worlds collide in a storm of arrogance, cold stares, and fiery clashes.
Thrown together by family pressure, mismatched personalities, and high expectations, Liana and Ethan must navigate a life neither of them chose filled with secrets, jealousy, and unexpected emotions.
Can a stubborn girl and a grumpy superstar survive a forced marriage? Or will their differences tear them apart before love even has a chance?
Enemies forced into marriage sparks everywhere.
8.1
On her eighteenth birthday, Arabella's life was destroyed when thugs attacked her and left her reputation in pieces. Brenton played the hero, sent the men to prison, and married her, becoming the man she trusted most.
For two years, she believed he had saved her, until one overheard confession shattered everything. "If she had pushed a little harder, she might've figured out Brinley was behind the whole thing. That's the only reason I married her. Lucky for me, she's so easy to fool."
He had only married her to protect the woman who truly mattered to him. When that woman came back, Arabella chose divorce without hesitation.
Brenton expected her to come crawling back. "How can she even survive without me?"
Instead, she rose in the tech world, untouchable, brilliant, and far beyond his reach-just in time for another powerful man to claim her heart.
Then Brenton begged, "Baby, I messed up. Just give me one more chance. Please."
But the tycoon pulled her into his arms. "Baby? Please. She's my wife now."
8.4
To save my toxic family's bankrupt company, I was sold for fifty million dollars to marry Arch Rush III, a notoriously ruthless and paralyzed billionaire.
Because of my severe face blindness, I couldn't even recognize my new husband. I was just a cheap, replaceable pawn. Yet, while my own parents physically abused me and treated me like livestock, my terrifying new husband actually protected me.
But entering the Rush family estate was like stepping into a snake pit. His aristocratic relatives mocked my cheap clothes and even tried to disfigure me with boiling tea.
To further humiliate me in front of a world-renowned neurologist, his grandmother pointed a bony finger at me.
"Go massage his muscles, this is your daily duty now."
Arch glared at me with a lethal warning, but I had no choice. Trembling, I pressed my hands into his thigh.
My heart instantly dropped. Beneath his expensive suit, there was no soft, withered flesh. The muscle contours were tight, dense, and incredibly firm.
How could a man completely paralyzed from the waist down have the legs of an athlete?
Before I could process the terrifying truth, my strong fingers dug into a nerve cluster. Under my touch, his "dead" muscle violently twitched.
The doctor dropped his pen in absolute shock, and I realized I had just accidentally exposed the ruthless billionaire's deadliest secret.
9.2
I was a broke freelance copywriter, tortured for three sleepless nights by an impossible corporate client.
Needing to vent, I typed out a wild, highly inappropriate rant mocking the brand's stiff heritage.
But in my exhausted, sleep-deprived blur, I accidentally sent the massive block of text to the wrong chat.
The recipient wasn't my friend. It was Emerson Beard, the elite, ruthless brand consultant I was supposed to desperately network with.
I waited for the professional execution, terrified of the massive five-figure penalty fee hanging over my head.
Instead, he didn't block me. He critiqued my unhinged draft.
He saved my career through late-night, encrypted phone calls, his deep, commanding voice becoming my only lifeline.
But when I heard a woman with a sultry French accent knocking on his hotel door during our call, my ugly jealousy flared.
I yelled at him and hung up, completely humiliating myself.
I thought I was just a pathetic, annoying workaholic interrupting his romantic getaway.
But he texted back to clarify he was entirely single, and in the process, realized I was actually twenty-five, not a fresh-out-of-school teenager like he had assumed.
The cold, distant mentor instantly vanished.
In his place was a man radiating a raw, aggressive, and predatory energy that bled right through the screen.
"Texting is too inefficient. The full integration requires face-to-face communication."
He dropped a location pin for an ultra-exclusive Manhattan club, demanding I meet him to save my contract.
Wearing a desperately bought emerald silk dress, I pushed open the heavy oak door, stepping right into the trap of a man who had just taken off his leash.