My Billionaire Husband Chose Another Woman After the Car Crash

Prologue

Karlie

The dress is too tight and I can’t breathe.

Not because of the boning in the bodice, though that’s not helping. It’s my father’s silence in the car, the way he stares straight ahead like he’s driving me to a funeral instead of a dinner party.

“The Hunts are old money,” he says finally, the first words he’s spoken since we left the house. “Terrence and I have done business together for thirty years. His younger son, William, is twenty-five. Heir apparent since his brother has no interest in the company.”

I watch the mansions roll by outside the window, each one bigger than the last. “You’re giving me his resume.”

“I’m giving you context.”

“You’re giving me a sales pitch for a man you want me to marry.” I turn to look at him, but he won’t meet my eyes. “I haven’t even met him yet.”

“You’ll meet him tonight.”

“And if I hate him?”

My father’s jaw tightens. That’s the only reaction I get. The only reaction I ever get. Howard Pembleton doesn’t do emotions. He does transactions.

“Your mother left you a letter,” he says. “And some of her things. Her jewelry, her journals. Things she wanted you to have.”

My throat closes. Mom died a year ago. A year of me rattling around that big empty house with a father who looks through me like I’m furniture, a year of waiting for him to say something, anything, about the woman we both lost.

“She left me a letter?”

“You’ll receive it after five years of marriage.”

I actually laugh, and it comes out sharp and ugly. “Five years. So this is a hostage negotiation.”

“It’s an incentive.”

“It’s blackmail.”

He finally looks at me. His face gives me nothing, like always. “Karlie. I am asking you to meet him. That’s all. If you truly can’t stand him, we’ll discuss alternatives.”

We both know that’s a lie. There are no alternatives. My father has never asked me for anything in my life, and the one time he does, it comes wrapped in my dead mother’s last words.

The car turns onto a private drive and the Hunt estate rises up ahead, all stone and ivy and old money arrogance. I count the windows to keep from screaming.

Twelve on the first floor, sixteen on the second. A house big enough to swallow me whole.

The dining room is cold and enormous and smells like furniture polish.

Cassidy Hunt sits at one end of the table, her smile tight and unwelcoming. Her husband Terrence anchors the other end, silver-haired and smug, watching me like he’s pricing me.

“Karlie.” Cassidy says my name slowly, and there’s no warmth in it at all. “Howard’s daughter. We’ve heard so much about you.”

No you haven’t, I think. My father doesn’t talk about me to anyone.

“All good things, I hope,” I say, because that’s what you’re supposed to say.

“Hmm.” She gestures to a seat, and not the one next to the empty chair that’s clearly meant for William. She points me across from it instead, like I’m here to interview for a position. “Please. Sit.”

I sit down. The chair is antique and uncomfortable, and so is everything else in this house.

“William will be down shortly,” Terrence says. “He’s finishing up a call. The company doesn’t run itself.”

I nod like I understand completely, even though I don’t know anything about their company beyond the fact that it makes my father’s company look small.

“And this is Logan,” Cassidy says, waving a hand toward the man sitting to my right. “Our eldest.”

Logan Hunt grins at me, and it’s the first warm thing I’ve encountered all evening. He’s golden-haired and easy, with an open face and kind eyes.

“The disappointment of the family,” he says cheerfully. “No interest in the company, much to everyone’s despair. I’m basically decorative at this point.”

“Logan,” Cassidy says sharply.

“What? It’s true.” He turns that grin on me, and I feel some of the tension in my shoulders ease. “Don’t look so terrified. We don’t bite. Well, I don’t bite. The jury’s still out on my brother.”

“Logan.” This time it’s a different voice, female, smooth and cold.

I turn, and there she is. Helen.

She’s beautiful in a hard, polished way. Dark hair swept back from a perfect face, a dress that costs more than my car, seated at William’s right hand like she belongs there.

“You must be Karlie,” she says, and her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Howard’s daughter. I’ve heard you’re studying art history?”

“I finished my degree last year, actually.”

“Oh, how nice. And what do you do with an art history degree?”

Absolutely nothing, if you ask my father. “I’m figuring that out.”

“Hmm.” She tilts her head, that cold smile still in place. “Well. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet. Girls like you usually do.”

I don’t know what “girls like me” means, but I know it isn’t a compliment.

“Helen’s family and ours go way back,” Cassidy says, and there’s warmth in her voice that wasn’t there when she said my name. “She and William practically grew up together.”

“Like siblings,” Helen says sweetly. “Only not.”

I feel the subtext land. She’s marking territory before I can get a foothold.

Logan catches my eye and makes a face that clearly says: ignore her, she’s awful. It startles a real smile out of me, and Helen’s eyes narrow.

“So, Karlie,” Terrence says, leaning back in his chair. “Your father tells me you’re quite accomplished. Top of your class, fluent in French, accomplished pianist.”

He’s reading off a list, checking boxes as he goes.

“I’m adequate at the piano,” I say. “And my French is mostly just good enough to order food and insult people.”

Logan laughs. Cassidy’s smile goes fixed. Helen looks at me like I’ve just confirmed everything she suspected about my breeding.

And then the door opens, and I forget how to breathe.

William Hunt is not what I expected.

I expected someone slick and polished. Another Logan, maybe, all charm and easy smiles, or worse, another Terrence, smug and appraising and cold.

William is none of those things.

He’s tall and dark, with black hair and black eyes and a strong jaw.

He moves like he owns every room he walks into, not because he’s arrogant but because he genuinely doesn’t notice other people enough to care what they think.

His suit is immaculate, his expression unreadable, and when his gaze lands on me, I feel it in my chest.

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t say hello. He just looks at me, and I have the sudden wild thought that he can see straight through my too-tight dress to the terrified girl underneath.

“William,” Cassidy says. “This is Karlie Pembleton. Howard’s daughter.”

“I know who she is.” His voice is low and flat. Not rude, exactly, just completely uninterested in pleasantries.

He sits down across from me, and Helen immediately leans toward him, her hand brushing his arm. “Darling, you look exhausted. Was it the Singapore call? I told you to let the team handle it.”

Darling. She calls him darling.

“It’s handled,” William says, and he doesn’t look at her. He’s looking at me.

I hold his gaze because I refuse to be the one who blinks first. Interest flickers in those dark eyes, or maybe surprise, and then it’s gone, and he’s reaching for his wine glass.

The dinner is torture.

Cassidy grills me about my “prospects” while making it clear she finds them lacking.

Terrence talks business with my father and ignores me entirely.

Helen drops little comments into the conversation: William’s busy schedule, inside jokes I’m not part of, lingering touches that make it clear she considers him hers.

And William says almost nothing. He eats and drinks and answers direct questions with as few words as possible. But every time I look up, he’s watching me.

“Excuse me,” I say finally, pushing back from the table. “I need some air.”

I don’t wait for permission. I just go, weaving through the house until I find a door that leads outside. The terrace is cold and dark and blissfully empty, and I suck in air like I haven’t had any all night.

What am I doing here? What am I agreeing to? My mother’s letter isn’t worth this, sitting in that room being evaluated, watching Helen stake her claim, enduring Cassidy’s condescension.

Except it is worth it. That’s the horrible part. My mother’s last words are worth almost anything, and my father knows it.

I wrap my arms around myself and stare out at the manicured gardens. I’m shivering in my too-tight dress, but I can’t go back in there. Not yet.

“You looked like you were about to start throwing dishes.”

I spin around. William is standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching me.

“I considered it,” I say. “Decided the china wasn’t ugly enough to waste.”

His mouth twitches. Not a smile, but close. “The china is eighteenth century. My mother would have you killed.”

“Good to know where the line is.”

He steps out onto the terrace and the door closes behind him. We’re alone out here, and the realization makes my pulse jump.

“My father told you why you’re here,” he says. It’s not a question.

“He gave me the highlights. Arranged marriage. Business alliance. My dead mother’s letter as leverage.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Which part?”

“Any of it.”

I turn to face him fully. In the dim light from the windows, he looks less guarded. Still impossible to read, but there’s curiosity in the way he’s studying me.

“All of it bothers me,” I say. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’d think less of you if it didn’t.”

I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with any of this. The cold air, the dark garden, the man standing three feet away who might be my husband by the end of the year.

“Helen seems to think she has a claim on you,” I say. “Should I know about that?”

“Helen has been with my brother for four years. She’s a family friend. That’s all she is.”

“That’s not what she’s projecting in there.”

“I can’t control what she projects.” He takes a step closer, and I catch his scent, clean and expensive and warm. “I can tell you that whatever she thinks is happening between us exists only in her head.”

“And your mother? She seems to think Helen belongs at that table more than I do.”

“My mother thinks a lot of things.” His jaw tightens. “People in my world don’t say what they mean or mean what they say, and I’m tired of it.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

We stare at each other and the silence stretches. I should fill it with polite conversation, but I’m so tired of appropriate.

“Why are you out here?” I ask.

“Because you looked like you needed rescuing.”

“I don’t need rescuing.”

“I know.” Another almost-smile. “That’s why I came.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I shiver again, and before I can wrap my arms around myself, William is shrugging off his jacket and draping it over my shoulders.

His hands linger for just a second. The jacket is warm from his body, and it smells like him, and I feel my breath catch.

“Look,” he says. “This situation is what it is. Our fathers made a deal, and we’re the ones paying for it.

I won’t pretend I’m happy about the circumstances.

” He meets my eyes. “But there’s no reason we can’t make the best of it.

I’ll treat you well. I’ll be faithful. I won’t lie to you or manipulate you or make you feel small.

That’s more than most marriages in my world can promise. ”

“That’s a low bar.”

“It’s an honest one.” He’s so close now, close enough that I can see nothing but black in his eyes, depthless and intent. “I’m not offering you romance, Karlie. I don’t know how to do that. But I can offer you respect. Partnership. A life that’s yours to shape however you want.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then you say no. I’ll tell my father it didn’t work out. No one will force you into anything.”

I search his face for the lie, for the angle, for the trap. I don’t find it.

What I find instead is a man who’s just as trapped as I am, offering me the only thing he knows how to offer. Honesty. In a room full of people who deal in everything but.

It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.

But when I open my mouth, what comes out is: “Okay.”

His eyebrows rise. “Okay?”

“I’ll marry you.” The words feel surreal leaving my lips. “But I have conditions.”

“Name them.”

“No lying. Ever. Even when it’s hard. Even when you think I don’t want to hear it.

” I pull his jacket tighter around my shoulders.

“And you have to actually try. Not just coast through this like it’s a business arrangement.

I’m not going to wither away in some loveless marriage like my mother did.

If we’re doing this, we’re doing it for real. ”

His face softens, just a little. “Deal.”

He holds out his hand, and I take it. His grip is firm, and when he doesn’t let go right away, I don’t pull back.

“Okay,” I say again, softer this time. “Let’s go tell them.”

We walk back inside together, his jacket still around my shoulders. The dining room falls silent when we enter. Cassidy’s eyes narrow at the jacket. Terrence looks smug. My father’s expression doesn’t change at all.

And Helen’s wine glass stops halfway to her mouth, her eyes locked on me.

I don’t look away.