One Kiss, the Billionaire's Bride novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Her Terms

Bryony writes her own terms for a one-year marriage and signs, then finds Dwight and her mother waiting in the lobby.

Holbrook Draper's office was on the fortieth floor, and it had a view of every billboard Dwight Moody owned.

Bryony sat on a leather couch with flour still under her nails.

She had not agreed to anything yet.

"Say it again," she said. "Slowly."

Holbrook stood at the window with his hands in his pockets.

"My grandmother runs the family trust. Her will says I keep Draper Hotels only if I'm married by my thirty-fifth birthday."

"And if you're not?"

"My cousin Lyle takes the company. He'd sell the hotels off by spring."

"That's twenty-six days."

"Yes."

"And you have no girlfriend."

"I have a board, a calendar and a grandmother."

Bryony almost laughed, and it came out as a cough.

"You want me to pretend to be your wife," she said.

"I want you to be my wife. For one year. The will says the marriage has to last a year."

She stood up and walked to the desk.

There was a yellow legal pad on it, and she picked up his pen.

"Then I write the terms," she said.

He turned around.

"Go ahead."

She wrote the first line before she could talk herself out of it.

One: the loan is paid in full, to Dwight Moody, before Thursday.

"Done," Holbrook said, reading over her shoulder.

"Two," she said aloud as she wrote. "I keep my job at the bakery. I start at five and I'm not giving it up."

"You'll be driven there."

"I'll take the bus."

He didn't argue.

Three: separate bedrooms.

His eyes moved to her face and back to the page.

"Agreed."

Four: no sex.

"Agreed," he said, a little slower.

"Five," she said. "One year, and then I walk away, and the bakery building is mine and clear."

"The building goes into your name today," Holbrook said. "Not at the end. Today."

Bryony looked up.

"Why?"

"Because I'm asking you to lock yourself to me for a year," he said. "I'm not going to hold your family's roof over your head while I do it."

She wrote it down.

Then she stopped, because her hand was shaking.

"You don't even know me," she said.

"I know you stood up in front of a hundred people and picked a fight with a man who owns forty billboards."

"That was a bad idea."

"It was the best idea anyone has had in this hotel all year."

He pressed a button on his desk phone, and spoke into it.

A lawyer came in within minutes, a tired woman with a tablet, and she read the pad twice with her mouth getting smaller.

"He wants to do this," she said to Bryony. "I'm required to ask if you do."

"I want the loan paid," Bryony said. "I want my building. I want to keep my job."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's what I've got."

The lawyer typed for twenty minutes.

Bryony's phone buzzed on the arm of the couch.

Her mother.

Dwight called. He says you left with some man. Are you all right? Did you stay until four, like I said?

Bryony stared at the last line.

Dwight had wasted no time.

She read the last question again anyway.

She typed: I'm fine. I'll call you tonight.

She put the phone face down.

"Everything all right?" Holbrook asked.

"My mother wants to know if I stayed until four."

"Did you?"

"Close enough."

Something moved behind his eyes, and then it was gone.

"Read it," he said, and slid the printed pages across the desk.

She read all fourteen pages standing up.

Page six said he could not appear with another woman in public for the year.

Page nine said she could end it early only by giving up the building.

"Cross that out," she said.

"That's the clause that protects me from you."

"Cross it out, or I leave with Dwight's loan and my own two hands."

He took the pen and drew a line through page nine.

The lawyer winced.

Holbrook initialed it.

"Anything else?"

"Yes," Bryony said. "Public affection only. Not in private."

"That's already in the terms."

"Then you won't mind it being in twice."

For the first time, one corner of his mouth moved.

She signed at the bottom with flour still in the creases of her knuckles.

Holbrook signed under her.

His handwriting was small and neat and fast.

He read hers.

"Bryony Ridley," he said.

"That's me."

"Bryony Draper, as of Saturday."

"Saturday?" she said.

"The courthouse. Ten o'clock. I can't wait longer than that."

Four days to learn to be a bride, and one of them was Thursday.

He walked her to the elevator himself.

On the ride down, neither of them spoke, and the numbers counted backwards from forty.

The doors opened on the lobby.

Dwight Moody was standing in the middle of the marble in his camel coat, with his arms folded.

Next to him, in a cream cardigan, with her hands pressed together, stood Bryony's mother.

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