Hillbilly Girlie Marries a Billionaire – Episode 05
Emily read the first page too quickly, distracted by the figure written beside compensation. It was enough to clear the hospital debt, fund treatment, and keep her mother safe for months. Formal phrases about duties, confidentiality, and a one-year term blurred together beneath the pressure of that promise.
Lucas sat opposite her, unsettled by the relief on her face. Most women introduced through his social circle concealed ambition beneath practiced indifference. Emily concealed nothing. Whatever had brought her there mattered more than his name or wealth, and he respected the honesty even as he wondered what burden she carried.
He asked whether she understood the arrangement. Emily nodded, then asked how soon the first payment could reach the hospital. Lucas promised to transfer it after the registration was complete. The word registration sounded clinical enough to fit the process she imagined, so she did not question it.
“There will be expectations,” Lucas continued. She would live at his residence, appear beside him in public, and attend family functions. Emily’s eyes widened at the idea of moving into his home. She had expected appointments and examinations, not shared breakfasts, but wealthy clients might protect secrecy in strange ways.
She asked whether his wife approved. Lucas regarded her in silence, trying to decide if she was joking. “You would be my wife,” he said. Emily’s mind lurched. The agency had not mentioned marriage, but she reasoned that perhaps the family required a legitimate child and wanted to avoid scandal.
“So you want us to have the baby naturally?” she blurted. Lucas nearly dropped his pen. Before he could demand what baby she meant, Emily rushed to add that she had assumed doctors would handle everything. Heat flooded her face until she could no longer meet his eyes.
Lucas realized some explanation had gone badly wrong, yet the absurdity caught him off guard. He told her there would be no child and no requirement for intimacy. The relief that crossed Emily’s face was so profound that his suspicion sharpened. She had arrived expecting to become someone’s surrogate, not anyone’s bride.
At that moment, raised voices sounded outside the suite. A glamorous blonde swept past reception, berating an assistant for scheduling the meeting before she finished at the salon. Sophie had been selected as Lucas’s contract bride, and she considered punctuality a rule for people without beauty or connections.
She paused outside the wrong office and boasted into her phone that Lucas Anderson would forget every contractual boundary once he saw her. Emily overheard enough to piece together the error. The woman outside was the bride; Emily was in the wrong room. She pushed back her chair, mortified.
“I think there’s been a mistake,” she said. Lucas looked through the glass wall at Sophie, who was nearly an hour late and treating his employees like servants. Then he looked at Emily—the woman who had risked herself for a stranger, asked only for help with a hospital bill, and arrived before the appointed time for a job she feared.
Perhaps there had been a mistake, but Lucas no longer believed it was Emily’s presence. He closed the contract and asked whether she needed the money to save her mother. When Emily hesitated, he revealed that he had glimpsed the hospital notice. Shame made her stiffen, but he offered no pity.
He proposed a corrected arrangement: a one-year legal marriage, separate rooms, public appearances when required, and full payment of her mother’s medical expenses. Emily searched his face for deception. His terms were extraordinary, yet they demanded less from her body than the choice she had already prepared herself to make.
“Why me?” she asked. Lucas answered with the truth he understood: she had proven courageous, she was outside his family’s political games, and she needed what he could easily provide. He did not mention that he trusted the memory of flying corn more than any agency background check.
Emily thought of Kevin turning her sacrifices into shame. Marrying a stranger sounded reckless, but Lucas had shown her more decency in one day than Kevin had shown in years. Most important, the hospital deadline left no room for a safer miracle. She asked for one guarantee—that her mother’s treatment would begin immediately.
Lucas called Adam and ordered the deposit transferred before Emily signed. Minutes later, the hospital confirmed receipt. Emily’s knees nearly weakened with relief. Her mother would receive care, and for the first time since reaching the city, the future contained something other than loss.
Sophie finally entered, wearing a brilliant smile that collapsed when she saw Emily beside Lucas. She introduced herself as his selected bride and held out a manicured hand. Lucas did not take it. He informed her that the position, as she called it, had already been filled.
Humiliation transformed Sophie’s charm into fury. She looked Emily over and accused her of scheming to steal a wealthy husband. Emily opened her mouth to explain the mix-up, but Lucas rose and told Sophie that being late had consequences. He would not entrust even a false marriage to someone who treated commitments as optional.
Sophie warned him that their families expected the arrangement. Lucas replied that his marriage was none of her concern. Then he guided Emily past her with a hand at the small of Emily’s back. The contact was light, yet it sent a confusing warmth through Emily’s fear.
In the car, Adam asked where they were going, still struggling to understand how one candidate had become another. Lucas answered without hesitation: the county clerk’s office. Emily gripped the contract in both hands as the towers slid past the window, wondering whether she had just exchanged one impossible future for another.
At the registry desk, the clerk placed two marriage certificates before them and asked if they entered the union willingly. Lucas signed first. Emily lifted the pen, heard her mother’s grateful voice in her memory, and wrote her name beside his—unaware that Sophie was already outside, promising to make the country girl regret becoming Mrs. Anderson.