Pale Moon Bay villa.
Nine in the morning.
Clara Ashford woke up sore all over, like she’d been run over twice. Bits and pieces of last night drifted into her head, blurry and broken. She froze, then yanked the blanket up to look underneath. The second she saw herself, her whole face flared red.
Her fingers shook as she grabbed her phone and opened the three-person group chat on WeChat.
“What do I do? I brought a man back to the villa. I totally cheated on Adrian Blackwell!”
“Oh my god, with how petty and ruthless Adrian Blackwell is, if he finds out I cuckolded him during the marriage, is he going to have me torn to pieces?”
Sophie Caldwell: “? Yinyin, is there a chance the man you brought back was Adrian Blackwell?”
Iris Mercer: “Yeah, Yinyin, your husband was the one who carried you away last night.”
What?
Adrian Blackwell was back in the country?
The second that thought hit her, Clara quickly turned to look at the other side of the bed.
Empty.
But the sheets were still rumpled, and there was a faint scent lingering there—cool, clean agarwood mixed with a trace of tobacco.
That was Adrian Blackwell’s smell.
Ding.
A new WeChat message came in.
Clara switched on speaker.
Sophie Caldwell’s voice burst out at once. “Yinyin, well? Did you and your husband finally have your wedding night or what?”
“Your Mr. Blackwell totally looks like the kind of guy with insane stamina. So? Was he good in bed?”
Good lord.
That damn Sophie—what kind of question even was that?
This contract husband of hers had flown abroad to handle business the very day they got their marriage certificate. He left for three full years and, no joke, never came back even once.
She barely knew him at all.
And honestly, in the past three years, Adrian Blackwell had been as cold as ever. Every message Clara Ashford sent went unanswered. Every call she made got ignored. Not once had he picked up.
Clara was long used to it. If he stayed overseas forever, even better.
Because from the very start, their marriage had been nothing more than a contract. Each of them wanted something out of it. That was all.
The Ashford family had gotten dragged into a construction case, and their cash flow had snapped clean in two. As long as she agreed to marry Adrian Blackwell, Old Mrs. Blackwell would step in and cover the five-billion gap for the Ashfords.
That way, her father and her brother could stay out of trouble too.
Of course, Clara had promised Old Mrs. Blackwell that she would act like Adrian Blackwell’s admirer, his fangirl, his hopelessly devoted pursuer. She didn’t dare tell the old lady that Adrian had already laid down his terms: contract marriage, five years, no more, no less.
When the five years were up, they would divorce on schedule.
So in these three years, Clara had done plenty of fake caring on WeChat, asking if he’d eaten, if he was resting, layering on that sweet, phony concern and pretending she liked him, loved him, couldn’t live without him.
She had played her role well—
the woman who had to have him.
Last night, Sophie Caldwell and Iris Mercer dragged her to Velvet Note Bar to celebrate the three of them graduating from senior year.
And well... once she got happy, she drank too much.
Clara was the type who got drunk the second alcohol touched her lips, the kind who got tipsy fast and hit hard. But graduation was graduation. It was goodbye to a whole stretch of youth. No way was she leaving sober.
So when she saw Adrian Blackwell, her first thought was that her eyes were messing with her. She staggered after him anyway, heels unsteady, and called out for him to stop.
Adrian Blackwell didn’t slow down.
Because no woman had ever been able to make him stop.
He was ridiculously good-looking, and in Capitalis, he was the Blackwell heir who could practically cover the sky with one hand. The women who wanted to be with him could line up all the way to the other side of the ocean.
All kinds of pickup attempts came at him nonstop. He was beyond sick of it.
But Clara, a little drunk and weirdly stubborn, dug in.
In two or three quick steps, she cut in front of him and blocked his way.
The hotel was drenched in dim, cold-toned light. It slid across the man’s sharp brows and eyes, shadows shifting over his face, making him look even more distant, more untouchable.
He was tall. Seriously tall. Close to six-three.
Even though Clara Ashford had dressed up for her graduation celebration that night and put on strappy high heels, she still had to tip her chin up just to look at him.
She was a little drunk.
"Why do you look so much like Adrian Blackwell?"
Her steps swayed as she drifted toward him. Adrian Blackwell frowned at once and stepped back, then said to the broad-shouldered man beside him, "Handle it."
The young man packed with muscle was Owen Fletcher, Adrian Blackwell’s personal bodyguard and secretary, the kind who followed him basically everywhere.
Owen glanced at Clara Ashford.
She was the kind of pretty that hit people right away, soft and sweet, the sort of face you didn’t forget after one look. And for some reason, she felt just a little familiar too.
He couldn’t help thinking, wow, even a girl like this still couldn’t get Mr. Blackwell to spare her one extra glance?