The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Chapter Fifteen

Divorce Rumors

The gossip columns moved quickly.

By Friday: Source close to the Lancaster family says the marriage is "struggling."

By Saturday: a photograph of Lucas and Vanessa at lunch — a working lunch his assistant had confirmed, arranged through channels Vanessa had carefully cultivated — ran on four different entertainment sites with four different captions, all of which said the same thing.

By Sunday, Vanessa called me.

I don't know how she got the number. I answered because the name wasn't in my contacts and I thought it might be a supplier.

"Sophia." Her voice was warm in the way that expensive knives are warm when they catch light. "I thought we should talk. Woman to woman."

"I don't think we should," I said.

"You're very brave," she said, as if I hadn't spoken. "Taking all of this on. But you have to understand — Lucas doesn't do feelings. He never has. This was always going to be temporary." A pause. "Let him go with some dignity, darling. For your sake."

I hung up.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time.

The thing was — she wasn't entirely wrong about the facts. He didn't do feelings. He'd said so himself. He'd written it into a contract. I'd agreed to the terms.

And I was sitting here eight months later, counting the seconds he'd held my hand in a lobby, remembering what it felt like when he checked my temperature in the dark.

I got up. Went to my closet. Pulled out the overnight bag I'd used for industry trips.

Started folding things into it.

Not all of it. Not dramatically. Just — a few things. Enough to go somewhere for a while. Enough to put some distance between myself and the man sleeping forty feet away who made me feel things that a contract said I wasn't allowed to feel.

I was a self-respecting woman. I wasn't going to stay somewhere I wasn't chosen.

I zipped the bag.

I put it by the door of my room.

Then I sat back on the bed and looked at it.

And didn't move it.

Not yet.