Secret Billionaire’s Contract Bride: Marrying My Enemy’s Lover

Chapter 23

POV: *Damon*

I’d first met Adelaide when I was six. And since that day, I threw myself

into her trap.

I’d run out of another one of my father’s lessons, hiding in the gardens between our houses. She’d crawled into a hole between the massive shrubs, ending up on our side of the spacious gardens.

She had wide, pretty eyes and long silky hair pulled into a single braid. Even covered in mud with twigs sticking in her hair, I remember I thought she was cute. She bent down to my eye level as I sat curled up with my back to one of the shrubs.

“Why are you crying?” she asked, so innocently.

I glared at her, my eyes perfectly dry.

“Leave me alone,” I spat.

“How rude,” her red cheeks puffed up with air as she placed her hands on her hips. “I’m only trying to help. That’s not very nice.”

“So?” I looked away, sulking. I didn’t want her help.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, her face crumbling up as if she was in pain. I was startled at the time to see tiny diamond-like tears fill the corners of her eyes. Was she crying for me?

She reached up one of her hands to touch my bruised and battered cheek, and I flinched away on impulse.

“I’m sorry,” she said, mournfully.

I stared at her, confused and wary of the strange girl who had appeared out of nowhere. Her eyes lit up all of a sudden, and she grinned. Her grin alone was enough to make me feel at ease with her.

“I know! My mama used to do this to me when I got hurt,” she told me, proudly before leaning forward and placing a tender kiss on my cheek.

“Pain, pain, go away!” she recited, throwing her hands into the air like it was a magic spell.

I grabbed the cheek she had kissed, stunned to my core as I stared at her.

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My cheeks began to warm-growing hotter and hotter.

“What’s your name?” I demanded, scrubbing her kiss off my check in my embarrassment. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She beamed, seemingly not caring about my threat. Even then she had the most beautiful smile.

“My name’s Addeway,” she said, her tongue slipping at the end. She frowned, repeating the word, but she was missing her two front teeth and she kept whistling out the end of her name.

She looked adorable, all frustrated as she kept trying to say her name and failing.

“Okay. Addeway,” I raised an eyebrow at her, trying hard not to smile.

“No, Adellay!”

“Sure thing, Addellay.”

finally shouted, her cheeks

myself, and I burst into laughter, raising my head to the sky as I laughed for the first time in what

and stuck out her tongue at

“Adelaide!”

we heard the harsh sound of a man screaming for her over the hedge wall.

your lessons,

close to my father’s. Her face fell as she glanced at her dress and shoes all

mad at me,” she

was mad at me, I didn’t want her to have to go through that. I could see the fear hidden in her eyes.

her eyes so

I told her. “I messed it

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did it all.”

smiled brightly.

the mud, she smelled like strawberries- so sweet and sugary.

grinned at me, waving to me as she made her way back through the hedge wall and

hedge wall was replaced with a metal fence twenty feet high after

I could never forget her after

the only light I had in the house full of shadows. Every time my father’s lessons left me battered

could even hear it in her voice. It always made

every time I got hurt and sang it to myself, the pain always

streaming into the

of the morning breeze blew through the open bay window, the white curtains softly

bed, my back against the headboard as I watched the sunrise, my hands brushing through her hair in a soothing motion. It was so soft, and I loved waking

buzz on the nightstand. I grabbed it quickly to keep it from making

voice to the phone, careful not to wake the sleeping woman in my bed. Adelaide was still asleep from the long, wonderful

like to work with you,” the representative on

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sign the contract on

look forward to working with you on

he

mind. A huge smile formed on my face as a deep feeling

wanted. The multi-million dollar contract was mine. We wouldn’t need money from our families; I’d made

soft and innocent look on her face. I was reminded of how young

long hair, pressing a soft kiss to the ends of it and drinking in the smell of her shampoo, it

now, but she could never know how long I had loved her, how

my arms. She was finally mine.

me. She grabbed onto the nearest pillow, cuddling into it

engagement ring. I couldn’t wait for the moment when I could put my mother’s ring

until my sweet angel would

week? Only one

the wall and groaned. Neither of us had planned anything

my phone, already calling the number I knew could help me out. She owed me a favor anyway.

mumbled voice came through the phone, clearly

Chapter 23