Hillbilly Girlie Marries a Billionaire – Episode 12
Emily stepped into the master suite and heard the door close behind her. The room was elegant enough for royalty, but her attention remained fixed on the bed. She and Lucas had managed separate rooms at his private mansion. Here, every servant reported to the family, and even an untouched pillow could become evidence against them.
Lucas checked the adjoining dressing room and found a narrow couch. He said he would sleep there. Emily objected that a man of his height would wake unable to move, but he preferred discomfort to making her feel trapped. His immediate respect unsettled her more than pressure would have; kindness kept weakening the defenses the contract was supposed to preserve.
A knock summoned them back downstairs for the family’s first dance, a tradition Grandfather Anderson claimed had been postponed by the rushed wedding. Noah waited in the ballroom and offered Emily his hand before Lucas reached her. He promised to teach her, adding that Lucas had apparently neglected even basic introductions.
Emily accepted one step only to avoid causing a scene. Noah guided her easily and asked whether Lucas always made decisions for her. She replied that marrying him had been her decision. Noah smiled as if the distinction interested him, then murmured that contracts could make free choices look surprisingly complicated.
Lucas appeared beside them and took Emily’s hand from his brother. “I’ll take it from here.” Noah observed that he had arrived first. Lucas answered that Emily was not a seat to be claimed, yet the possessive tension in his grip contradicted his words.
The music began before the argument could sharpen. Emily warned Lucas that she had never learned ballroom dancing and had worn heels for less than a day. He told her to look at him instead of her feet. The instruction should have been practical, but his gaze made the crowded room disappear.
She stepped on his shoe during the first turn. Lucas absorbed the mistake without flinching, adjusted his hold, and guided her into the next measure. Emily began to trust the pressure of his hand at her back. Around them, family members who expected awkwardness watched the pair move with growing ease.
Noah watched too, his smile fading. In his pocket rested photographs an investigator had taken of Emily entering the surrogacy agency and signing papers with Lucas. Released publicly, they could destroy his brother’s claim to the company. Yet Emily’s honest laughter when she missed another step made using her feel less like strategy and more like cruelty.
The dance ended with Emily stumbling as one heel caught beneath her gown. Lucas caught her and lifted her off the floor before she could fall. Grandfather Anderson applauded, pleased by what looked like practiced intimacy. Emily heard herself laugh against Lucas’s shoulder and wondered when pretending had begun to feel so natural.
Outside on the terrace, Lucas asked whether she had enjoyed the evening. Emily admitted it felt like stepping into a dream. He told her she was not Cinderella borrowing magic until midnight. Everything he had given her would still exist in the morning.
“Because it’s written in the contract?” she asked. The question dimmed his expression. Lucas said not everything between them needed a clause. Emily wanted to believe him, but wanting made the answer dangerous. She reminded herself that a year would end whether her feelings were ready or not.
Across the courtyard, Noah’s assistant asked permission to send the photographs to a reporter. Noah looked through the images again: Emily outside the agency, Lucas leading her into the registry office, the rushed certificate. The evidence could remove Lucas from power and place Noah within reach of everything he had wanted.
He ordered the files destroyed. His assistant stared in disbelief. Noah claimed he intended to defeat Lucas without ruining a woman who had done nothing to him. Even as he spoke, he knew the decision was not entirely honorable. Something about Emily’s courage had made her more than collateral damage.
Inside, Grandfather Anderson announced that Lucas and Emily would remain in the master suite until further notice. He also instructed the staff to treat Emily as lady of the house. Several servants bowed, while one maid named Mia exchanged a covert glance with Sophie near the service entrance.
Sophie had entered the estate using an old family invitation and watched the dance from the shadows. She could not understand why Lucas looked at Emily as though the performance were becoming real. The contract she wanted had once been a path to status; now rejection had turned it into an obsession.
When Lucas left to retrieve an extra blanket without alerting the servants, Emily wandered toward the dessert table. A folded copy of the surrogacy advertisement lay beside her phone. She opened it, and her own application details appeared beneath a handwritten message: A wife—or merely a paid womb?
Rose and Sophie emerged from opposite sides of the room. Their alliance was new and born from shared resentment. Rose mocked Emily for turning from betrayed girlfriend to purchased bride, while Sophie asked how much the Andersons had paid for the child she was expected to produce.
Emily insisted no child agreement existed. Sophie read selected lines from the application loudly enough for nearby guests to hear. The language about health screenings and compensation stripped Emily’s desperate choice of all context. Whispers spread faster than truth.
Rose threatened to inform the hospital that Emily had obtained payment through fraud unless she apologized publicly and left Lucas. Sophie extended one jeweled shoe and told Emily to kneel if she wanted her mother protected. Emily’s shame ignited into fury, but two security men loyal to Sophie blocked her path.
Sophie seized Emily’s wrist and forced her downward. Before Emily’s knee touched the floor, Lucas’s voice cut through the room like steel. He stood in the doorway holding the blanket, his gaze fixed on Sophie’s hand—and the quiet promise in his face made everyone step back except the woman foolish enough to believe he would choose family alliances over his wife.