The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife (Blair and Grayson) novel Chapter 260

Chapter 260

LORETTA-

I saw him the second I opened the door and stepped inside.

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The café was quiet. A handful of people were scattered at the far tables, heads down over laptops or coffee, none of them looking up. Maybe that was why he had chosen it. Privacy, fof a man whose face had been on every sports broadcast recently.

Marco looked too handsome for someone who had recently crashed and injured himself. He watched me cross the room and I wasn’t sure why my body reacted.

I hated that I noticed his looks. I hated it every time.

I sat down in front of him before I could talk myself out of being here.

A plate was already waiting on my side of the table. Toasted sandwich, cut in half. Beside it, a small bowl of fries and a glass of something that looked sweet.

He had not ordered food for himself. Just coffee, untouched.

“You ordered,” I said.

“Yes.” His voice was lower than I remembered from Barcelona. Flatter. Not as lively. “Considering I made a mess of your food more than once, I thought I should get something for you.”

Heat climbed my neck.

I reached for a fry before I could decide whether I was offended or grateful.

Food made me happy.

I took another. Then half the sandwich. He did not comment. He only watched, one brow slightly lifted, as if he had expected exactly this and had no interest in pretending otherwise.

The contract was already there. Printed. Waiting beside the plate.

“You printed it already?”

He nodded. “Read it. Look at the rules yourself. If you want another one, we add it before anyone signs anything.”

I wiped my fingers on the napkin and picked it up. The paper was warm from sitting in the sun coming through the window.

The first thing I saw was the term.

One year. We would be married for exactly one year from the date we both signed. Then a divorce, unless both parties agreed in writing to extend.

That was the first rule.

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I swallowed a bite of sandwich that suddenly felt too large.

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1. He was not entitled to anything that had been mine before the marriage. I was not entitled to anything that was his. Separate property stayed separate. Anything acquired during the year would be split only if we both put our names on it, which neither of us intended to do.

Three. No one could know it was a contract. Not friends. Not family. Except his brother and his brother’s girl, who already knew, and one person I trusted enough to tell. No one else, Not a colleague. Not a cousin. Not someone I got drunk with and forgot myself around. If the story leaked because of me, the agreement ended and the protection it offered ended with it.

I looked up. He was still watching me, something had changed since our meeting in Barcelona. Did it have something to do with the crash? He didn’t seem like himself.

Four. In public we were husband and wife. In private we were an agreement with an end date. Photographs when they were unavoidable. Hands when cameras were close. No improvising affection for an audience that was not there.

I reached for the sandwich again without meaning to. The second half disappeared faster than the first. My face was warm. I could feel it.

Five. Separate rooms, unless visitors came and the performance required one bed and two people who knew how to look as if they had slept in it.

Six. We would live together for the entire marriage. His place, primarily, because it was already secured. Mine only when staying apart would raise questions we could not afford.

I set the fry I had been holding back on the plate.

“Live together?”

He lifted a brow. “Do you have a problem with that? We will be married. Married couples live together.”

“It isn’t a real marriage.”

“But it has to look like one,” he said. “If we want our families to believe it is real, then we have to do what married couples usually do.”

There was no teasing in it. In Barcelona he would have said it with that half-smile, which gave me butterflies that I didn’t like admitting.

I went back to the paper before my face could get any redder at the thought of the two of us in the same apartment, night after night, even with a wall between the rooms. I ate the last of the fries because my hands needed something to do and because he had been right, which irritated me more than the rule.

Seven. I needed to be present for every race after I signed. The places a wife was expected to stand. Exceptions only for illness or something else he approved in advance.

I knew the first month would be different. He could not drive like this. The doctors had been clear.

“I need to attend your races?”

“You do.” He said it like there was no other option. “A wife who never comes to watch her husband race, especially a new wife, would look strange. We need this to be believable.”

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“For a year?”

or a year.”

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I studied his face again, he didn’t look happy. I wondered, stupidly, whether the crash had taken that from him. His carefree behavior. Whether the seriousness was pain, or caution, or the simple fact that he was asking me to stand in front of cameras for twelve months while the world decided what kind of wife I was.

I wondered why I was worried about him at all. This was a transaction.

Eight. Public appearances outside of race weekends would be limited and scheduled. Dinners with his family. One event with mine, if I wanted it. No spontaneous outings that could be photographed without a plan.

Nine. No contact with any other man. No private messages.

My stomach tightened. I drank from the glass.

“What about you? I can’t be the only one not allowed to see other people during the contract period.” I pointed out

“The same goes for me.” He assured me.

Then I found the line that made my entire face

go hot.

Ten. Absolutely no sex. No sexual contact. No expectation of it. No renegotiation of this clause without both signatures and a lawyer present.

Breach by either party voided the protections of the agreement.

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