Chapter 1
Three years ago, Grant divorced me while I was pregnant.
That same day, I was in a car accident, and our baby didn’t survive. Grant never found out because he was celebrating another woman’s birthday.
Three years later, he decided that the son I had raised was his. He took the boy away without permission and exposed him to a cat, triggering a severe allergic reaction that nearly killed him.
When Grant finally knelt and begged me to take him back, I told him only one thing:
“I stopped loving you a long time ago.”
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Grant Ashford looked at me, and his smile deepened.
“Still angry?”
He set a bouquet of roses on the coffee-shop counter and reached for my hair, as casually as if the last three years had never happened.
I stepped out of reach.
“Mr. Ashford, please show some respect. I have a husband.”
His hand stopped in midair. He studied my face for several seconds, then gave a quiet laugh.
“You’re really going this far?”
He did not believe I was married. In his mind, every word was just another punishment for what he had done three years ago.
Back then, Sienna Vale had proposed her so-called test at a private members’ club. Everyone at the table warned Grant not to treat his marriage like a game.
I was four weeks pregnant.
Before we left for the club, Grant had rested a hand on my stomach and promised to take me to my first prenatal appointment the next morning.
But when Sienna asked whether he dared to divorce me, he hesitated for only a few seconds.
“Evelyn is carrying my child. She won’t leave me.”
He signed the divorce agreement in front of everyone. Then he laughed and suggested we schedule our remarriage three years in advance.
He believed a pregnant woman could never build a life without him, so he never asked whether I agreed to his test.
It never occurred to him that our baby would not survive the day the divorce became final.
“Evelyn.”
Grant stepped closer.
“Tell me what you want. A vacation? Another wedding? A new house? I’ll give you anything if you stop this.”
“I don’t want anything from you. I want you to leave.”
The smile slipped from his face.
The woman I had been would never have spoken to him that way. I had pursued him for two years. When his company was close to collapse, I stayed and gave him every dollar I had saved.
Even after we married, no matter how often we fought about Sienna, I never truly left.
I had loved him so completely that he eventually mistook my love for a permanent condition.
Grant frowned.
“It was a test. We divorced to prove to Sienna that our relationship was real. I never cheated on you, and I never planned to abandon you.”
His gaze dropped to my stomach.
“Where’s the baby? The child should be a little over two now.”
Even after three years, the memory of the baby I had lost could still knock the breath out of me.
Grant read my silence as hesitation. Satisfaction warmed his eyes as he reached for my face again.
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
I stepped back.
“That has nothing to do with you.”
“The baby—”
His phone rang before I could finish.
Grant answered at once. “What happened?”
Sienna’s frightened voice carried through the phone.
“My car broke down in an underground garage. It’s dark, and there’s a man staring at me. Grant, I’m scared.”
Concern transformed his face.
“Lock the doors and stay in the car. I’m coming.”
He ended the call and grabbed his keys.
“Sienna’s in trouble. I need to get her.”
I watched him in silence.
It had always been this way. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, one call from Sienna was enough to make him leave me behind.
At the door, he glanced back.
“I’ll come by later. Stop pretending you have a husband just to make me jealous.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Then tell me who he is.”
I said nothing. Grant had no right to Matteo’s identity, much less to the life I had built without him.
My silence only fed his certainty.
“Once I’ve taken care of Sienna, we’ll discuss our remarriage.”
He hurried out.
I picked up the roses and dropped them into the trash.
