Five Years After Divorce, My Ex-Husband Wants Me Again

NORAI stood in the corridor of Mercy General, and I was soaked to the bone. My hair was plastered to my face, and every time I moved, my shoes made a heavy sound on the floor. The nurse who called me was waiting at the ICU doors. She looked at my wet clothes, then at my face, but she didn't say anything about the rain. She just opened the doors for me. Some kindness is silence."Miss Nora, she refused to let us call you for weeks," the nurse whispered as we walked. "She said you were carrying something heavy. She said you would come when you put it down. We were not to make you choose."She called me Miss Nora. Not Mrs. Sinclair. The staff here had known me for four years as Helena’s girl. To them, I was the woman who showed up every week with magazines and stories, not the wife of a billionaire. I had a whole life in those hallways that Charlie never even bothered to imagine.Inside the room, Helena looked tiny. She was smaller than I had ever seen her, almost swallowed by the white

THIRD POVCharlie was awake at five-forty in the morning. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched Nora sleep. The storm that had rattled the windows all night had finally passed. The power was back on, casting a soft, artificial glow over the room. The sheet was pulled around her shoulders, and her hair was scattered across the pillow.He had not seen her face this close in three years.He hadn’t meant for it to happen. He had gone down the back staircase looking for a bottle of something to dull the edge of the night. He had met her on the stairs instead. In the dark, she had said his name in a voice he had not heard since she was sixteen years old. Something inside him that he had spent three years standing on top of with both feet had moved under him in the dark.He had looked at her in the candlelight and remembered that he had known her his entire life. He had known her before he knew Celeste. He had known her before he owed anyone anything. There had been a girl in a white d

NORA The black SUV turned through the gates, the tires crunching over white gravel. Before the vehicle had even come to a full stop in front of the front step, the rear door handles clicked. "Lena, wait for the step," I said, but the warning was already useless. Lena spilled out of the car first, all flying dark hair and bright red shoes. She went fast and wide, the gravel spraying under her feet as she sprinted toward the front steps. Theo descended a second later, his small hands gripping the edge of the doorframe. He did not run. He stood on the bottom step of the vehicle, his oversized backpack pulling at his shoulders, and slowly took the house in from the foundation to the roof before his feet even touched the ground. Naomi was already out of the front seat, her tablet tucked under her arm. She didn't ask for instructions; she simply pointed the two trailing luggage vans toward the service entrance and began directing the movers with short, efficient hand gestures. She

NORA Edward said nothing about Gregory as we walked down the corridor. He had given his warning before the meeting, and he was not a man who repeated himself. "Your mother would not have done it better, Nora," he said softly as we reached the executive suite. "You stood your ground against those men. She would have been glad to see it." "Thank you, Edward." The words gave me some comfort, but the weight in my chest did not lift. The morning had taken a great deal out of me, and the day was only half over. He nodded and stopped in the hallway. "Rest your head for a few minutes. I will take the files to legal and start the paperwork for tomorrow's bidding." I watched him go before I opened the door to my office. The room was large, but it felt small. This had been my mother's office. She had taken what her family left her and made it vast, and she had spent almost her life inside these four walls doing it. I walked straight to the desk. On the corner of it sat a small bronze w

The Vance estate sat above the water on twenty acres of old trees and stone paths that had not changed in thirty years.Inside, the library lights were on.Edmund Vance sat in the same leather chair he had occupied since late afternoon. The television opposite him replayed Nora’s press conference for the third time that evening. The book resting open on his lap had not moved in nearly an hour.On the screen, Nora stood behind the Beaumont podium while reporters raised questions over one another.Vivienne crossed one leg over the other and glanced up from her wineglass.“She seems to have done very well for herself.”Edmund did not answer.The television cut to another angle of Nora at the podium. Cameras flashed around her while the headline moved across the bottom of the screen.NORA VANCE NAMED MADAM CHAIRMAN — BEAUMONT'S INVISIBLE HEIR Edmund’s thumb moved once against the arm of the chair.Vivienne watched him instead of the television now.“She looks like Margaret when she stand