Twelve months with him

Harper's kitchen table had never been designed to hold the weight of a life-changing decision, but there it was: forty-seven pages of legal documentation spread across the worn surface like evidence at a crime scene.

Jessie sat across from her, reading glasses perched on her nose, highlighter in hand. She had been at it for two hours, occasionally making small noises of surprise or concern while Harper paced the tiny apartment and tried not to think about the clock ticking down.

Forty-eight hours. Sebastian had given her forty-eight hours, and she had already burned through twenty of them in a state of paralyzed indecision.

"This is actually legitimate," Jessie said finally, setting down her highlighter. She had called in a favor from a lawyer friend who specialized in contract law, and they had spent the past hour on speakerphone going through every clause. "Like, weirdly legitimate. And surprisingly fair."

Harper stopped pacing. "Fair how?"

"You keep the Adriatic regardless of how the marriage ends. The five million and renovation funding aren't loans; they're structured as gifts with no repayment clauses. You're not liable for any of his debts or business obligations. There's even a clause protecting your personal assets if Colton Industries faces legal issues." Jessie flipped through several pages. "The only real requirement is that you stay legally married for a minimum of twelve months and make it look convincing enough that his grandfather's will requirements are met."

"And what happens after twelve months?"

"You can divorce with no financial penalty to either party. You walk away with the hotel, fully restored, debt-free. He gets to keep control of his company." Jessie looked up, her expression unreadable. "Harper, this is either the most generous prenup I've ever seen or there's something we're missing."

Harper sank into a chair. "There has to be a catch."

"The catch is that you have to actually marry him. Live with him. Appear in public as his wife. Lie to everyone you know for an entire year." Jessie pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "That's not a small ask."

"No. It's not."

They sat in silence for a moment. Through the thin walls, Harper could hear her upstairs neighbors arguing about something involving a credit card bill. The radiator clanked and hissed, struggling to heat the apartment against the November chill.

"What do you know about him?" Jessie asked. "Beyond the business magazine profiles?"

Harper had spent most of the previous night doing research. "Sebastian Colton, thirty-four, CEO of Colton Industries for the past five years. His father started the company doing community development projects, affordable housing, schools, that kind of thing. His dad died when Sebastian was twenty-six, and the board pivoted to luxury developments because they're more profitable. His mother died when he was twelve. One younger sister, Claire, who runs some kind of foundation."

"Family baggage," Jessie noted. "What else?"

"He's been engaged once before, about three years ago. Vanessa, I couldn't find her last name. It ended badly, apparently. There were rumors he called it off three weeks before the wedding." Harper pulled up an article on her phone. "One of the business profiles called him Seattle's most ruthless developer under forty. Another one said he lacks his father's humanitarian vision but exceeds his business acumen."

"Charming."

"Yeah." Harper set her phone down. "Everything I've read suggests he's exactly like a billionaire developer who cares more about profit margins than people."

"And yet he's offering you a way to save the Adriatic instead of just waiting for you to fail and buying it from the bank."

"Because he needs a wife to keep his inheritance."

"He could find a wife anywhere." Jessie leaned forward. "Why you, Harper? Really think about it. He's rich, reasonably attractive, and powerful. He could probably find a dozen women who would marry him for real."

Harper had been asking herself the same question. "He said he needs someone who won't get the wrong idea. Someone who understands it's just business."

"Or someone who's desperate enough to say yes but principled enough to keep her word." Jessie's voice was gentle. "He's choosing you because you're in an impossible situation and he knows it."

"That doesn't make him evil. That makes him practical."

"It makes him someone who's willing to use your desperation to solve his own problem. That's not the same as helping you."

Harper stood up again, resuming her pacing. The apartment felt even smaller with the weight of the decision pressing down on her. "What would you do? If you were me?"

"I'm not you, thank God. My life is boring enough without fake marriages." Jessie smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but it faded quickly. "But if I were? I'd ask myself what Aunt Margaret would want."

The question hit harder than Harper expected. She stopped by the window, looking out at the Seattle skyline. Somewhere out there was the Adriatic, crumbling and beautiful and running out of time.

"She'd tell me to save the building," Harper said quietly. "No matter what it cost."

"Even this?"

"I don't know." Harper pressed her forehead against the cool glass. "She always said buildings were like people. They deserved to be loved back to life. But she also taught me that integrity matters. How you do something matters as much as what you do."

"And is this integrity? Marrying someone you don't love to save a building?"

Harper turned to face her friend. "Is it worse than letting it be demolished? Then walking away with money while someone erases forty years of my aunt's work?"

Jessie was quiet for a long moment. "I can't answer that for you."

"I know."

"But Harper? Whatever you decide, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Not just because you're afraid of losing the hotel. Not just because you feel guilty about your aunt. Make sure this is something you can live with."

After Jessie left, Harper sat alone at the kitchen table with the contract. The apartment was silent except for the ticking of the wall clock, a cheap thing she had bought at Target years ago, but right now it sounded deafening.

She pulled out her phone and opened the photo album she kept of the Adriatic. Pictures of the geometric windows catching morning light. The ballroom with its high ceilings and ornate moldings. The original terrazzo floors. Her aunt was standing at the front desk, smiling at the camera, looking proud and tired and happy.

The last photo was from the day Harper had found her. She had taken it without really thinking, needing to document the scene for herself before the paramedics took Margaret away. The ladder. The gold velvet curtains pooled on the floor. The afternoon light streaming through those beautiful windows.

Harper's vision blurred with tears she had been holding back for eight months.

"I don't know what to do," she whispered to the photo. "I don't know if you'd be proud or horrified. I don't know if this is saving your legacy or destroying mine."

The photo did not answer. The clock kept ticking.

Harper opened her laptop and pulled up everything she could find about contract marriages, prenuptial agreements, and marriage fraud. Most of what she found was either completely irrelevant or deeply concerning. The legal forums were full of people asking variations of the same question: Is it illegal to marry someone for reasons other than love?

The answer seemed to be: technically no, as long as you're not defrauding the government for immigration purposes or other benefits. Marriage was a legal contract. People married for all kinds of reasons: financial security, social status, family pressure. Love was traditional but not legally required.

That didn't make it feel less wrong.

Harper looked at the clock. She had twenty-eight hours left to decide.

She pulled on her jacket and grabbed her keys. The Adriatic was only a fifteen-minute drive, or it would have been if her car wasn't dead. Instead, she walked, letting the cold November air clear her head.

The hotel looked different at night. The streetlights cast shadows across the art deco facade, making the geometric patterns seem to shift and move. A few of the windows on the upper floors still had lights on, guests who had checked in before Harper inherited the place, people who would probably have nowhere to go when the bank foreclosed.

She let herself in through the side entrance, the one only staff used. The lobby was empty and quiet. Someone had left a lamp behind the front desk, casting warm light across the old mahogany.

Harper walked through the first floor slowly, running her hand along the walls the way she always did. The building felt alive somehow, breathing and settling around her. Or maybe that was just the old pipes and foundation.

She climbed the stairs to the ballroom on the second floor. The door creaked when she opened it, another thing that needed fixing. The space was dark except for moonlight streaming through the tall windows, painting silver patterns across the worn floor.

This was where her aunt had died. Where Margaret Vale had spent her last conscious moments hanging curtains, making the building beautiful, refusing to give up on it even when any rational person would have walked away.

Harper sat down in the middle of the floor, right where the ladder had been.

"Tell me what to do," she said out loud, her voice echoing in the empty room. "Give me a sign. Something. Anything."

The building was silent.

Harper pulled out her phone and looked at the contract one more time. Forty-seven pages of legal language that boiled down to a simple question: Was she willing to compromise herself to save something else?

She thought about Sebastian Colton in his expensive office with his tired eyes and his pragmatic solutions. About how he had said he understood being backed into a corner. About the way he had looked when he said he was still figuring out whether he had compromised or survived.

She thought about the silver-haired man who had left Sebastian's office, the one who had looked at her with such dismissive contempt. Marcus Hyland, she had learned from her research. Sebastian's grandfather's former business partner, now trying to take over the company. A man who apparently believed sentiment was weakness and progress meant demolition.

She thought about what would happen to the Adriatic if she said no. The bank would foreclose. Sebastian would buy it from them. Within six months, the building would be rubble. Within a year, luxury condos would rise in its place, and it would be like the Adriatic had never existed.

Like her aunt had never existed.

Harper stood up, decision crystallizing in her chest like ice.

She walked out of the ballroom, down the stairs, through the lobby. She locked the door behind her and stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the building one more time.

Then she pulled out her phone and typed a message before she could second-guess herself.

"I'll do it. When do we start?"

The response came within thirty seconds, like he had been waiting.

"Tomorrow. 10 AM. My office. Bring the signed contract."

Harper stared at the message for a long moment, then typed back:

"One condition. I tell my best friend the truth. She signs whatever NDA you want, but I'm not lying to everyone."

She watched the typing indicator appear and disappear several times before his response came through.

"Acceptable. See you tomorrow, Ms. Vale."

Harper pocketed her phone and started the long walk back to her apartment. The city was quiet around her, most people already home for the night. She felt disconnected from it all somehow, like she was watching herself from a distance.

In twelve hours, she would walk into Sebastian Colton's office and sign away twelve months of her life.

In twelve hours, everything would change.

Harper climbed the stairs to her apartment, went inside, and pulled out a pen. She sat at the kitchen table with the contract spread in front of her, forty-seven pages that would save her aunt's legacy and compromise her own integrity.

She signed her name on the final page, her handwriting surprisingly steady.

It was done.

For better or worse, Harper Vale was going to marry a stranger to save a building.

She just hoped she would still recognize herself when it was over.