He got up and walked to the window, with his back to her. He said, “One condition.” His voice pierced through the air like a knife. “You must never, under any circumstances, fall in love with me.”
The abrupt silliness made her almost chuckle. “That’s your condition? That’s what you’re worrying about?”
He turned around. Rock. “That’s all I want.” This is a deal between two businesses. I don’t want things to get complicated.
Her thoughts wandered to the beeping monitor and her mother’s feeble, need-filled breathing. To her own hands, which were calloused and scarred from stacking trays and shelves. It wouldn’t be a problem to fall in love. She would be as chilly as the contract. She could do this.
“Yes,” she said. “I agree.”
He handed her a business card. “My lawyer will call you tomorrow.” We’ll speed up the license. “Wedding in a week.”
“One week?” Her heart raced. “I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t have to know me.” You have to marry me.
The room felt smaller when he departed. The card was weighty in Emily’s fingers, and the words on it were strange: Henry Montgomery, M.D., Neurosurgery. A man who wandered down hallways she had only ever rushed by had just bought her silence with a contract. She should be thankful. No, she didn’t. She thought she had fallen off a precipice.
There was a fragrance of money in the penthouse.
The furniture was all white, gray, and glass, and it looked costly and mean. Emily put down two pieces of luggage and felt like a single moth in a chandelier. Henry’s house was all angles, shine, and distance. He came out of the kitchen still wearing scrubs. He had done Patricia’s surgery six days before, and the news was that she was doing better faster than predicted.
He continued, “Your room is down the hall,” in a hurried manner. “We’ll live separate lives.” Be seen together in public. Dinners with the family once a month. I will give you clothes and some money. If you keep your part of the deal, you will get the one hundred thousand dollars at the end of the year.
She opened the folder he gave her. It had twenty pages of legalese. “You want me to be faithful,” she murmured, astonished that the word came out.
“We keep the story going in public,” he said. “Faithful is a part of the picture.”
“And you? Are you loyal?”
He looked at her like a man who has practiced this look. “I don’t want to get involved in romantic relationships.”
“Tomorrow I sign a paper and stand next to you,” she added, getting hot, “and we lie.”
“Let’s not make it sound romantic,” he said. “This is business.”
She wanted to warn him that contracts couldn’t cover everything, like comfort, contact, or a hand on a bad day. Instead, she felt fury poke at the edges of her thanks. “I’ll do my part,” she said. “But when we’re alone, you can’t treat me like I’m nothing.”
He stopped and dropped the folder on the table. A hint of something—maybe loneliness—softened the look on his face. He said, “My mother will be at the ceremony.” “She’s hard to deal with.” You should know.
She giggled then, scared and little. “Seven o’clock is dinner time.” The kitchen is full. “Make whatever you want.”
He nodded once and then went. She came to the window and ran her fingertips over the glass while the city lights blinked like a promise she didn’t completely understand. The simple platinum bracelet with a solitary diamond that he left on her pillow later fit like a question. When her mother called later that night, she thought about the monitor’s constant beep and the warm, sleepy voice on the other end of the line.
“He’s really nice to me, Mama,” Emily said.
“Good,” Patricia said. “You deserve someone who knows how special you are.”
Emily put the ring on with a serious look on her face. Ms. Emily Scott will be Mrs. Henry Montgomery tomorrow. The word seemed heavy and little at the same time.
The ceremony at the courthouse was eleven minutes of rehearsed vows and stiff grins. Catherine Montgomery, Henry’s mother, wore pearls and was disapproving all the time. Henry’s younger sister Beth was the definition of kindness. She hugged Emily like they had been friends for years. Catherine asked questions during lunch as if each one were a knife. Emily was careful when she answered. She said, “I work at Morrison’s Grocery and a diner.” “My mom worked as a housekeeper.”
Catherine replied, “How hard-working,” with a smile that looked like a judgment.
Henry did his part by reaching across the table and squeezing her hand. He remarked, “I wanted to make sure before I introduced Emily to the family.”
“Are you sure?” Sure?Catherine pushed. “
He said, “I’m sure.” For a brief moment, his eyes met Emily’s, and something like honesty shook there, as if it had just been revealed by a minor tremor. Emily nearly thought it was true. That night, in the penthouse by herself, the city looked like a sparkling promise below her. She had saved her mom. She would play along. How hard could it be?
She discovered right away that pretending wasn’t easy.
They had different schedules. Emily worked a few shifts at the hospital café to stay independent and not let money define her. Henry lived on the edges, going into surgery and coming out measured and perfect. But minor things upset the distance he had built up, like the way he spoke about his grandmother Eleanor in a way that made him seem unreadable, or the way he sometimes stopped as if he were listening to a recollection. Emily once found him asleep on a couch in the doctors’ lounge, with a book open on his chest and a tired, vulnerable look on his face, like a boy who was still a child.
After a seventy-two-hour shift, she brought him noodles one night. He ate without pretending, and then, in the calm that followed, they talked like real people. They talked about medical school, the choices that had torn their lives apart, the things they had wanted, and the things they had given up.
He declared at one point, “I chose neurosurgery,” his hands wrapping around the plastic jar like it might burn him. “Jennifer left because she said I loved surgery more than I loved her.” She was right.
“And you?” he asked. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t done it?” He was asking with half a laugh, but the question hit him like a rock.
Emily answered, “No.” That kind of honest honesty stunned both of them into something that felt perilously close to the truth. “My mom is still alive.” That’s the important thing.
They comforted each other in simple, human ways that no contract could make them do. She started bringing him meals more often. He observed little things about her, like a scar on her knuckle and how she spoke softly when she talked about her anxieties. He kept these things to himself like a thief. Friends and coworkers started to notice the small amount of affection that ran through all of their time together. Beth, always up to something, purchased Emily the red dress that made her feel like someone was interested in her for the first time in a long time.
Beth was a gentle questioning of his armor. One afternoon, as they went about the Montgomery estate, the snow muffled their steps. She told Emily, “He’s not easy to love.” “But he’s worth it.”
Emily looked at the pond lit by the moon and thought about the little kid Henry had talked about, with Eleanor supporting him on skates until he stopped falling. Beth said, “Don’t give up on him.” “He’ll come around.”
He did start to come around, but not all at once. The kitchen sent plates out more often. At times, he stood in the doorway and watched the boring everyday life like a man looking at a map of a strange country. The pillows between them, which were their first agreement to stay apart, moved, got thinner, and then disappeared. At first, he was apprehensive to sleep in her room, but eventually he did so with love, making calm mornings feel like home.
But there was always a barrier. He could touch and hold, but he couldn’t promise. When his grandfather’s death certificate cleared probate, the trust fund was released. Once he had complete access, the need for the agreement went away. Emily started to feel the familiar worry twist up inside her: what would he do when he didn’t need her anymore because he had the money?
Then Catherine, who was good at cutting, came up to Emily in the hospital café.
She said, “I don’t think this marriage is real,” with a sharpness that cut through. Emily’s stomach sank.
Catherine pushed a tiny envelope across the table. She answered, “There are five hundred thousand in there.” “Take it and leave without making a sound.” No scandal.
Five hundred thousand. Enough to be free. Enough to change the world. Emily looked at the envelope as if it may turn into one true thing. She remembered how her mother sounded on the phone. She remembered Henry’s hands, the book on his chest, and the night he sat in the hospital room with her because he couldn’t handle his sadness on his own.
“No,” she answered, and the word astonished her with how steady it was. “I’m not leaving him for money.”
Catherine replied, “You married him for money.”
Emily stated, “I married him because he saved my mom’s life.” “Because he gave me a way out when I didn’t have one.” Because he’s smart and alone, and he needs someone who sees it.
She shook as she left the café. She had unintentionally gone into a place she shouldn’t have. In the middle of dinners and hospital vigils, she realized she wasn’t faking it anymore. She was in love with him. The admission came over her like a wave she couldn’t stop.
She hadn’t told him yet. When Henry found out about Catherine’s envelope, he didn’t say anything. He called her to the hospital chapel at night, when the lights were dim and the pews smelled like wax and aged wood.
“You told me to protect my heart,” he continued. “You signed a deal. “You said you would.”
“You didn’t tell me everything,” she said. “You said the condition was your grandfather’s. No, it wasn’t. It was you.
He stopped moving. ” Finally, he said, “I was protecting myself.” “I was scared.”
“What?” she inquired.
“Of feeling,” he said. “Of losing everything I built.” He gazed at her the way you would look at a fragile object. “I lied by not saying anything. I felt that rules would protect me.
A truth broke between them. Beth noticed another part of the will that Henry hadn’t told her about: if he got divorced within five years, he would lose everything. The provision made things quite complicated. He had protected himself not only from getting injured but also from losing the whole inheritance he had received if the marriage didn’t endure.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” me?””Emily inquired in the empty chapel.
“Who do you tell?” He said, “”Who do you tell about something this big?” I was worried you might leave before we even started.
“You could have trusted me.”
“I was afraid you’d leave because you were thankful, not because you loved me.”
The confession hung between them, bare and raw. Emily’s voice was thin. “I love you.”
Be quiet. Then Henry’s voice, which was little and scared. “You love me?” He sounded like someone who had been informed the sun had come up after a long winter.
“Yes,” she said. “I fell in love between visits to the hospital at midnight and the pasta you ate with your tired hands.” Henry, I attempted to maintain my word. I tried not to care for you. I couldn’t.
He shut his eyes. “I love you,” he whispered, out of breath and shocked that he had said it. “God help me.” I love you. I adored you from the moment you showed up in that silly coat and carried my dinner to the lounge at three in the morning. I attempted to stop myself from doing it. “I failed.”
They stood in the chapel and let themselves shake as they thought about what they had done. He was scared of being hurt, and she was scared of being used for what she needed instead of who she was. There were grounds for both of them to be scared. They both decided to try then, in that silence.
“Say it,” she said. “Three words.” That’s all I need.
He first said, “It’s not that easy,” and then, after swallowing, he repeated it again. “I love you.”
The words weren’t quite right. They were clumsy, honest, and real, and their voices resonated through the chapel like an answered prayer. He kissed her, not the fast, fake kiss of a fake marriage, but a real kiss that was tense and important.
Henry didn’t suddenly become a man who knew everything there was to know about love. He was a man who would make an effort. He cut back on his hospital hours, learned to cook badly but with good intentions, and let Emily into the tiny parts of his life, including images of Eleanor, ticket stubs, and a child’s drawing hidden in a box on his bedside. He spoke the phrases over and over again until they felt like boulders that had been turned into a foundation.
Catherine, who was still hesitant, looked into it until her doubts turned into a reluctant acceptance. “You make him happy,” she murmured one afternoon, her eyes harsher but softer. “I can see that.”
They got married again in the same hospital chapel where they had told the truth. This time, the promises were real. Emily wore the crimson outfit that Beth had told her to wear. This time, Henry’s ring was his own. He made a commitment without a lawyer watching over him or any conditions. Patricia sat in the first row, looking healthy and happy. Beth cried out loud and happy. Dr. Rebecca Torres and a few of her coworkers applauded like they were family.
They filled the barren rooms in the penthouse with pictures, plants, and a lot of live things that made the property feel like a home. Emily finished nursing school thanks to the money she had earned from the settlement and the support of the Montgomery Foundation, which she had once been paid to pretend to work for. They talked of clinics, funding, and a life they would share.
Emily walked across a stage to get her nursing certificate a year after that first frantic handshake across a consultation table. Henry sat in the crowd with Patricia and Beth, cheering like a man who had faith in her before she did. He had learned how to be there. Not perfect, but here.
Emily asked him gently, “Would you do it all again?” late at night in their dirty kitchen, where pasta was cooling on the counter and a plant was drooping in the corner. Could you please go back to the nurse’s office where you made me an offer?”
He stretched for her hand, and his thumb found the little scar on her knuckle. “Every moment,” he said without a second thought. “Even the ones that hurt.” They brought me to you.
She smiled, and the full, tangled, redemptive truth of their lives curled around the curve of her mouth. “Me too,” she said. “Next time, though, less angst.”
“And what would be the fun in that?” he inquired.
They fell asleep in a bedroom with bookcases, books, and the excessive number of cushions that Emily insisted on. They were holding each other. The city hummed outside. Two persons who had made a deal with fate and slept inside. The deal started with an impossible condition and finished with a true promise.
Years later, when they told their story about how an emergency and a shaky contract had brought their lives together, people would ask the one question that made it hard to tell if they were being rude or just curious. Would you marry someone for money if it meant keeping your family safe? Is it possible for phony sentiments to become real?
Emily would always tell the truth she had learned: that love frequently comes in the form of desperation, and that sometimes the only way to find what counts is to risk everything. She would remark that the heart knew what the intellect couldn’t always plan, and that honesty—awkward, daring, and repetitive—was the only thing that could change a conditional deal into a life.
Henry would quietly say that regulations were occasionally there for a reason, but not the proper one. He would remark that they could keep a man who had been injured before safe, but they could also stop him from living. He would modestly say how much he still needed to learn.
Both of them had learned how to be patient, how to show up, and how to untie the tight little knots of dread. They had discovered that love could still be the most practical thing in the world, even when it wasn’t easy, clean, or good for business. It could save a life, heal old wounds, and fix up a house.
And sometimes, late at night, when the city lights seemed to weave themselves into the curtains, Emily would grin at Henry sleeping and listen to his soft, steady breathing, which she had pledged not to return with her heart. She would reach out and touch the hair at his temple, a small, intimate gesture from a woman who had given up everything for an uncertain future and, in the process, become very rich.
