Flash Marriage To The Secret Billionaire CEO

The white daisies felt cool against Erin Mueller's clammy hands. She navigated the narrow grass paths, her eyes scanning the endless rows of weathered stone. Green-Wood Cemetery was a city of the dead, and she was hopelessly lost.

Her mother's directions had been vague at best. "Eleanor Vance. Somewhere near the big oak tree." Every tree here was a big oak tree.

Finally, her eyes landed on a simple, lichen-spotted headstone. Eleanor Vance.

A wave of relief washed over her. She knelt, the damp earth seeping through the knees of her jeans, and placed the daisies at the base of the stone.

"Hi," she whispered to the silent grave. "I'm Erin. My mom said we're related, somehow. Sorry it took me so long to visit."

The silence that answered was heavy, profound. It mirrored the silence in her apartment, in her life.

A lump formed in her throat. "Things are... not great," she confessed to the stone. "My design studio is barely breaking even, and my last date told me my ambition was 'intimidating.' So." She let out a humorless laugh.

She looked up at the sky, a flat, gray canvas. "If you have any pull up there," she said, the words a half-prayer, half-joke, "I could really use a win. Maybe send a good man my way? A kind one. And if it's not too much to ask, could he be a pilot?"

"What are you doing at my grandmother's grave?"

The voice was deep, resonant, and so close it vibrated through the soles of her feet.

Erin's heart leaped into her throat. She scrambled to her feet, spinning around so fast she almost lost her balance.

He was tall. Impossibly tall, dressed in a black suit so perfectly tailored it seemed molded to him. His face was all sharp angles and shadows, his eyes a startling, piercing blue that seemed to strip away every one of her defenses.

The kind of man she actively avoided. The kind who owned buildings, not rented apartments. The kind who never had to wish for anything.

"I-I'm so sorry," she stammered, her cheeks burning with a humiliating heat. "My mom, she said... Eleanor Vance..."

"This is Eleanor Vance's grave," he confirmed, his voice devoid of warmth. His gaze flickered from her face to the daisies, then back. The coldness in his expression thawed, just a fraction.

A knot of confusion tightened in her stomach. His grandmother? Was she at the wrong grave? But the name was right, and it was near a large oak, just as her mother had said. Maybe there were two.

He looked at the headstone, a strange, unreadable emotion in his eyes. "My grandmother had a dying wish," he said, his voice low and even. "She wanted me to marry the first kind girl I found placing flowers on her grave."

Erin stared at him. The world tilted on its axis. She must have heard him wrong. Or maybe he was a very handsome, very well-dressed lunatic. She