Married at First Sight Episode 5

📖 The Story Continues

Jess studied Christian Norton’s photograph over Summer’s shoulder and groaned. Mr. Norton was famous not only for refusing interviews but for making reporters regret receiving one. His blunt answers and intolerance for foolish questions had destroyed more than one carefully prepared feature. Even if Summer reached him, surviving the conversation would be another challenge.

“What did you do to set that old witch off?” Jess asked. Penny’s seventy-two-hour ultimatum was too calculated to be ordinary management. Summer insisted she had done nothing, but the denial sounded uncertain even to her. She had made one powerful enemy recently; she simply did not know that enemy and Penny were related.

In Penny’s office, Nancy supplied the missing explanation. She complained that Summer was ruining her life, conveniently omitting the betrayal, insults, and money thrown across the café floor. In Nancy’s account, the iced coffee had been a vicious attack by a jealous ex-girlfriend who refused to accept defeat.

Penny gathered her niece close and promised to handle Summer. She called Nancy her favorite niece and assured her that there was nothing she would not do for her. The impossible interview was not a test of Summer’s professional ability. It was the first move in a personal campaign to force her out.

Unaware of the conversation, Summer took her phone to a quiet corner. Christian’s number waited on the screen, both a lifeline and a reminder that she had married him without knowing the most basic facts about his life. Asking for help so soon felt shameless, but losing her job would leave her with nowhere to turn.

She placed the call. Christian answered with amused warmth, asking whether she missed him already. Summer’s anxiety collided with his effortless flirtation, and for a moment she forgot the speech she had rehearsed. He sounded pleased to hear from her, as if calls from his brand-new wife were something he had been expecting.

“You’re Christian Norton?” she demanded once she recovered. Saying the full name gave the discovery weight. The stranger from the sidewalk and the billionaire every journalist wanted were somehow the same man, and he had allowed her to sign a marriage certificate without explaining it.

Christian showed no sign of guilt. “You never asked,” he replied. The answer was technically true and completely infuriating. Summer had been too busy surviving his grandmother’s interrogation and the sudden wedding to request a résumé, but most people considered billionaire status worth mentioning before marriage.

He heard the tension in her silence and asked whether something was wrong. Summer almost told him exactly what she thought of his omission, but Penny’s deadline pressed against her anger. She admitted that she needed to ask him for a small favor, then corrected herself. It was, in fact, a very large one.

Christian’s tone softened. She was his wife, he reminded her, and there was no need to speak of favors between them. “Talk to me.” The simple invitation unsettled Summer more than arrogance would have. Vincent had treated every sacrifice as her voluntary burden; Christian, a near stranger, made helping her sound natural.

Summer gathered her courage and explained that the publication where she worked wanted to invite him for an exclusive interview. She avoided mentioning the threat of dismissal at first, afraid it would sound like emotional pressure. Yet Christian was too perceptive not to hear the urgency beneath her careful professional phrasing.

For him, granting the request would be easy. His schedule was crowded, but no assistant or board member could overrule him. What interested him was that Summer had called at all. She had rejected the easy intimacy of his bank card and demanded a divorce timeline, yet when trouble came, she had chosen to trust him.

Summer waited through a pause that lasted only seconds but felt much longer. She imagined Penny watching the deadline count down, Nancy celebrating her dismissal, and Jess trying to help her pack. Her future depended on a husband she scarcely knew and a marriage neither of them had properly defined.

Christian let the silence stretch, unable to resist teasing her. “Well, I am a very busy man,” he said gravely. The statement was true, but the reluctance was an act. He already knew he would agree; he merely wanted to hear how much this interview mattered to her.

Summer’s fragile hope sank. Of course he was busy. Billionaires did not rearrange their lives because a woman they had met yesterday needed to impress her vindictive boss. Being legally married did not entitle her to his time, influence, or public cooperation.

She began preparing an apology, ashamed that desperation had made her presume upon their arrangement. Christian had asked her to fool his grandmother, not to solve every problem Vincent and Penny left in her path. Their relationship was a contract of convenience, and she had no right to mistake his earlier kindness for a promise.

Still, his words about being husband and wife lingered. There was no such thing as a favor between them, he had said. Summer could not tell whether the reassurance was sincere or merely part of his playful manner, and the uncertainty made the silence between them dangerously intimate.

On the other end of the call, Christian pictured the proud woman who had refused to pick up Nancy’s money. Summer would rather risk losing everything than beg someone who wanted to humiliate her. The fact that she was now asking him revealed how much courage the request had cost.

His teasing satisfaction faded. Whatever rules eventually governed their strange marriage, he did not want Summer to feel abandoned inside it. She had stepped into his crisis without demanding explanations, and he could return that trust with something far less costly than what she had given him.

Summer drew a quiet breath, ready to tell him to forget she had asked. Before she could speak, Christian’s voice returned through the phone, warm with amusement and carrying an answer that could either rescue her career or leave Penny’s trap firmly closed around her.