Marriage after one night

The noisy Night Star bar was known as one of the least crowded bars in Boston and had few customers, especially on weekdays. However, that didn’t stop Rose Davison from going in and spending what little money she had left on vodka shots.

“Ma’am, I think you need to stop. You’re clearly losing your balance, and it doesn’t look like you came here with anyone who can take care of you. You should go home,” said the bartender who had served her the last four shots.

Rose looked at him, her eyes narrowed simply because her vision was blurred from all the drinking, and quipped, with a slur in her speech, “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. Not anymore. I’m just dying anyway! Now, stop talking so much and pour me another shot.”

“Ma’am, you’re not making sense, pleas—”

A haunted look flashed in her eyes, but it disappeared quickly, and she was back to her cheeky drunken self. “Just give me what I want, will you?”

The bartender gave up and poured her another shot. Rose quickly downed the drink and started swaying and singing aloud with the music playing in the bar. She loved the song and was just losing herself in the music when suddenly there was a thud.

She realized she had stumbled against a table and knocked something off. She turned around to see a laptop lying on the ground.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Rose stumbled on her words as she tried to pick up the laptop. Its owner was a sleek-suited man, looking at her with calm, calculating eyes that couldn’t mask his irritation at the inconvenience.

“We’re the only two people in this huge bar, and you decided to bump into my laptop?” he said tersely. She tried to pick the laptop up, but the room swayed the moment she decided to bend down. The man heaved an exasperated sigh, picked it up, and checked if it was still working. A glow of light from the monitor brought a smile to Rose’s face.

“It’s not broken, so you can’t be mad at me. Who comes and works at a bar anyway? Why are you here?”

The man ignored her, clearly not wanting to continue conversing with her, but Rose was too drunk to take the hint. She looked at him, noticing his strong, handsome features and bone structure. The man had a face like a Greek god, with a strong jaw and nose. “You have such nice bone structure,” Rose blurted out accidentally.

He looked up at her as if she was a problem he could do without.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just came to Boston recently on a mission. But of course, I didn’t have any luck and failed. But you know, I don’t really have any luck left, and life hasn’t been kind to me, so I thought, ‘Honestly, who gives a damn anymore? Let’s get a drink!’ And this is the first place I found.”

The man pinched the bridge of his nose, barely hanging on to his patience as he muttered, “Thanks for clarifying. If you could now just stay away from my laptop?”

Instead of going away, Rose moved closer to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “Do you believe in Lurphy’s Maw?” She was so drunk that her words were starting to get jumbled.

“In what?”

“You look so educated, I thought you’d know. I am a living example of Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong in my life. I mean, why else would I be here, orphaned and drowning in poverty?” She looked around as if telling him a secret. “Honestly, I can’t afford to come into this bar, let alone have a drink here. But it doesn’t matter anymore! Why should I try to fix things, right?” She kept talking, slowly caressing the man’s hair with her hand. His hair was incredibly soft, and he smelled of a pricey cologne.

“Honestly, what are you even talking about?” the man asked, slight exasperation mingled with irritation in his voice.

“Life, my friend. My life is like a car crash. I know it’s all going down toward a painful end, but watching a car crash can be really exciting, don’t you think? I think it’s thrilling and fun.”

“I don’t think it would be fun to watch a car crash, but I do understand how it could be thrilling,” he replied.

“Do you want to watch my car crash?” Rose asked him, slowly sliding onto his lap.

“Excuse me? What do you think you're doing?” The man was clearly annoyed by her actions. “I need to leave. Get off me.”

“Will you really just leave me all alone here?” she asked.

Rose didn’t know what she was saying. All she knew was that she was beyond caring. As she finished her sentence, a bunch of rough-looking men walked into the bar.

“Maybe I’ll go ask one of those men to take me somewhere safe! That one with the brown leather jacket looks nice, right, Laptop Man?” Rose exclaimed and started walking toward the group.

However, before she could move too far, her laptop man wrapped his hand around her waist and stopped her. “Fine. I’ll get you someplace safe. But after that, you better leave me alone,” he whispered in a stern voice.

He picked up his phone and made a call. “Book one luxury suite, please. I'll be there in five.” Before he could finish his call, Rose passed out in his arms. He looked down at her—her innocent features, her dark lashes fanning her cheeks, her bow-shaped lips—and for the first time, he softened his expression. When he picked her up in his arms, he saw a jade locket resting on her chest, and his eyes darkened.

Rose woke to a light tapping on her cheek and a man’s voice asking her something. She opened her eyes to see the same man she had met in the bar standing by the bed she was lying on, looking down at her. She closed her eyes again.

“I’m asking you again, where did this jade locket come from?”

Rose's eyes opened slightly, and she looked again at the man in front of her. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe she just got lucky, but this guy seemed way too handsome. His face looked even better in the brightly lit room than it did in the bar.

She couldn’t concentrate on what he was asking. All she could think was, Why die a virgin when I have a beautiful man standing next to me in this luxurious room?

She sat up and ran her hands around the lapels of his shirt, undoing the buttons as she said with a forced seductiveness in her voice, “You want to know where my jade locket came from? Well, you’re gonna have to treat me really well if you want any answers from me.”

The man's face showed obvious impatience. He frowned and pushed her away.

However, Rose wasn’t one to give up so easily. She grabbed his tie and yanked on it to pull him toward her. They fell on the bed together. Then, she grasped his neck between her hands and kissed his cold lips. After a few moments of passionate kissing, she slowly pulled away. “You’re enjoying this, mister. You can lie to me, but your body can’t,” she whispered in a sultry voice before pressing her lips against his again.

When Rose woke up the next day, she was sore and dizzy. She looked at the quilt, and then down at her naked body. Oh God, what have I done now? she thought. Her memory was blurry, but she remembered going into the bar, getting drunk, and her encounter with the man.

She saw some aspirin and a glass of water on the nightstand next to her handbag. Courtesy of the thoughtful stranger, she thought. She looked at the aspirin, reached for her handbag, and opened it, taking out several other pills. Then, with a grim look on her face, she popped them all in her mouth and washed them down.

Two weeks earlier, she had been diagnosed with an advanced brain tumor. With only one month left to live, she had sold her minimal possessions and traveled all the way to Boston to look for her biological parents. However, once she got there, she had no idea how to find them. She didn’t have the money or resources to start looking for them properly, but she had tried. After a few days of failure, she had gone to the Night Star bar the previous night and knocked that guy’s laptop on the floor. Everything after that was a blur in her head.

She got out of bed, and as she paced around the suite, trying to remember what had happened the night before, she saw her satchel lying on the floor. She had a miniature camera attached to the satchel’s belt, which she had been using to record the process of finding her parents. She was all alone, so she wanted to record everything for safety reasons.

She connected the camera to her phone and looked at the video from the previous night. As she watched the events on her screen, she cringed. She saw herself passionately kissing the stranger. Did I really seduce a stranger last night? Jeez, Rose, get your act together! she thought. She got up and walked toward the bathroom mirror to check for any marks or scars. Her eyes immediately widened in shock when she looked at herself in the mirror.

Her precious jade locket was missing!

In a wave of panic, she rushed back to the bedroom and turned the bedding over and over, looking for it. She looked in every nook and corner of the room but couldn’t find it. Rose was utterly flustered. The locket was the only valuable thing left to her by her birth parents; she couldn’t possibly have lost it because of one drunken nightmare!

Suddenly, her phone buzzed. She had received a text from an unknown number.

[I have the locket. If you want it, come to the Hendricks and Co. office.]

Rose dressed, left the hotel in a rage, and quickly hailed a taxi to Hendricks and Co. She was so mad that she was sure she could punch the man if he refused to give back her locket. Of all the people she could seduce in a bar, she had to seduce a thief. Damn you, Murphy! She angrily thought.

When she reached the office, she mentioned her name to the receptionist, and a polite-looking man came up to her. Rose asked him coldly, “Where’s my necklace?”

The man smiled at her and politely said, “Oh, you misunderstood me. It’s Mr. Joseph Hendricks you’re looking for. I’m just his assistant, Jared Watson. Please follow me.”

Jared took Rose to the elevator. They rode it to the eighth floor and finally came to the CEO’s office.

He knocked on the door. “Come in,” said a deep voice.

Jared helped Rose open the door and made a gesture to invite her to step in, while he stayed outside.

Jared closed the door behind her. Rose stood in the bright, spacious office and looked at the man behind the big desk. He was wearing a stylish, dark blue, handmade suit, a clean white shirt, and a striped tie. This guy clearly swims in money. What the heck does he want with my locket? Rose thought to herself as she stood nervously in front of him.

As if reading her thoughts, he asked, “Where did you get this locket?”

“Why should I tell you?” loudly, she replied back.

“You don’t have a choice.” His gaze was piercing, his expressions inscrutable as he said, “How could you have such a valuable thing? Did you steal it?”

“Look, Laptop Man, I've been wearing this necklace since I was a child. If anyone has stolen anything, it’s you!”

Joseph sighed, “Pretty sure you know my name by now. You can stop calling me weird nicknames. And this,” he said, showing her the locket, “will remain with me until I’m sure you didn't steal it.”

Rose’s blood boiled, but she tried not to let her emotions show. She wasn’t some naïve, sheltered girl. Living on the streets had taught her a thing or two. She gave him a look and said, “If you do that, the whole world will be calling you weird names. I’ve got a video of us from last night, and I’ll share it. People like you don't want to have that kind of scandal, right?”

Joseph laughed. He took out a stack of business cards from his cardholder and threw them in front of her. “This is the contact information for the editors of the major entertainment websites. Go ahead.”

Rose narrowed her eyes slightly. Was he not even a little scared?

She didn't want to send out images of herself. She selected a clip from the video, edited it into an email attachment, and wrote four or five emails in a flash, before placing her mobile phone in front of the man.

“If you return my locket, I'll delete the video. If you don’t, I’ll send it right away.”

Joseph went back to his chair and gave her an indifferent look.

I’m gonna die in a few weeks anyway. Might as well just create a sex scandal before I go, Rose thought furiously as she pressed the send button.

Joseph didn’t even look in her direction.

“If you don't have anything else to do, you can wait here for a while and see if this scandal really was the right move,” he suggested blandly.

Rose immediately sat down on the leather sofa in his office. She didn’t intend to leave without the locket anyway. In five minutes, the video spread like the plague. She quietly looked at the news, feeling a little dizzy. After a few more minutes, her phone was bombarded with all kinds of threatening and insulting phone calls and texts from strangers.

Joseph’s fangirls had already dug up all the information there was on Rose and even sent her a death threat. [If you don't leave Joseph, you will die!] they wrote.

Joseph was the young, handsome CEO of a billion-dollar company. Of course he would have a bunch of crazy fangirls. Rose felt extremely stupid.

How could I not see this coming? Double damn you, Murphy! she thought in frustration.

Joseph just sat in his chair, typing away on his laptop, unaffected. It dawned on Rose that she had majorly messed things up, again. She was supposed to die in a few weeks, but somehow, she had managed to risk bringing that forward! At this rate, she was unsure if she could even leave Boston without getting stabbed by these crazy fangirls, let alone get back the locket.

Since Joseph was so calm, Rose could tell that he probably knew how to suppress this issue. She walked up to him, feeling a weight in her chest, and pleaded, “I don't want the locket. Please just suppress the news.”

Joseph’s lips curved into a smile that was gone in a flash. He continued working on his laptop, ignoring her.

“You must have a way to quiet down the scandal. Tell me, what do you want me to do?” Rose pressed on, getting more and more impatient.

Joseph looked up, leaned back in his chair, and said, “Let's make a deal. If you meet my requirements, I will return your locket and ensure your future safety.”

Rose gritted her teeth and said, “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

Joseph walked up to her and, in a cold, stern tone, said, “Marry me, Rose.”