The Marriage Contract

Philippe Bastien and Ava Dubois are engaged before they have met. Philippe is the only heir to the Bastien conglomerate that Émile Bastien built in Paris, and he grew up getting whatever he asked for. The family fortune rests on an old pact between a circle of business partners, and its terms require the heir to marry a daughter of one of the other members so the alliances renew and the money stays where it is. Ava is the only daughter of Martin Dubois, another wealthy French businessman. She has never liked the world she was born into. She avoids parties, displays of money and the photographers who follow the families around, and she keeps out of public view on purpose, so being summoned to honour a marriage contract comes as a shock. She finds Philippe's playboy reputation hard to stomach and agrees to the wedding only to satisfy her father. Philippe, who is used to polished women, is thrown by how plain she looks and cannot work out how someone from the Dubois family dresses and behaves like that. They clash almost at once, and neither expects the marriage to be a quiet one.