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Chapter 4
Data de publicação:
2026-04-14 21:57:18JENNA
The next few weeks pass in a blur of tension so thick I can barely breathe.
Every day, I sit outside his office, typing reports, answering calls, pretending I don’t feel his eyes on me every time he walks past. Pretending I don’t replay that almost‑moment in his office every night before I fall asleep.
Pretending I’m not falling.
Fast.
And he’s not helping.
Not when he watches me like he’s starving.
Not when his voice drops when he says my name.
Not when he stands too close, breath brushing my neck, pretending it’s accidental.
We’re both pretending.
Until the night we stop.
**
It’s late. Everyone has gone home except me and Jaxon. I’m finishing a report when I hear his office door open.
“Jenna.”
I look up.
He’s standing in the doorway, jacket off, tie loose, eyes dark with something I’ve seen building for weeks.
Something dangerous.
“Come here,” he says.
My heart stutters. “I—I’m almost done with the—”
“Now.”
The word sends a shiver down my spine.
I stand slowly, walking toward him. He steps back into his office, and I follow, pulse racing.
The moment I cross the threshold, he closes the door behind me.
The soft click feels like a lock on my fate.
He turns to me, jaw tight, eyes burning. “I can’t do this anymore.”
My breath catches. “Do what?”
I'm thinking, I'm done. I'm going to be fired any moment now.
“Pretend I don’t want you.”
The air leaves my lungs.
He steps closer, backing me up until my spine hits the wall. His hands cage me in, palms flat on either side of my head.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs.
I can’t.
I don’t.
He leans in, lips brushing my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my mouth.
“Jenna,” he whispers, his voice breaking, “I want you. I’ve wanted you since the night I saw you in that bar.”
My knees nearly buckled.
“But you’re my boss,” I breathe.
“I don’t care anymore.”
“You said we had to be professional.”
“I lied.”
My heart slams against my ribs.
He presses his forehead to mine. “I want you in my bed. In my arms. In my life. I want you everywhere.”
I swallowed hard. “Jaxon…”
He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes.
“I’ll take care of you,” he says. “All of you. Everything you need.”
My stomach flips. “I don’t need—”
“I’ll pay for your apartment.”
“No.”
“I’ll cover your bills.”
“Jaxon—”
“I’ll make sure you never worry about anything again.”
My voice shakes. “I don’t want your money.”
His eyes soften. “I know. That’s why I want to give it to you.”
I blink, confused. “That makes no sense.”
“It does,” he says quietly, “because you’re the first woman who hasn’t asked me for anything.”
He lifts my chin gently.
“Let me do this,” he whispers. “Let me take care of you.”
My resolve crumbles.
I nod.
His lips crash into mine.
The world disappears.
**
The next month becomes a secret I wear under my skin.
At work, we’re professional.
Cold.
Distant.
Untouchable.
But the moment we clock out—
He picks me up in a different car every night.
He takes me to his penthouse.
He kisses me like he’s starving.
He touches me like I’m something precious.
He holds me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
And I fall.
Hard.
One night, his friend Hayes calls me.
“Jenna? It’s Hayes. You need to come get him.”
My stomach drops. “What happened?”
“He’s drunk. Really drunk. He can’t drive.”
I rush to the bar.
Jaxon is slumped in a booth, head tipped back, eyes half‑closed. Hayes stands beside him, looking apologetic.
“He wouldn’t let anyone else call,” Hayes says. “Only you.”
My heart twists.
But Beckett—Jaxon’s other friend—leans against the bar, smirking.
“Well, well,” he drawls. “So this is the girl. I remember you.”
I stiffen. “I’m just here to take him home.”
He steps closer, breath smelling like whiskey. “You sure you’re not here for something else?”
I ignore him.
He laughs. “Relax. I’m just saying—Jaxon doesn’t do relationships. Don’t get attached.”
Hayes shoots him a glare. “Beckett. Enough.”
I help Jaxon up. He leans heavily on me, murmuring my name like a prayer.
“Jenna…”
My heart breaks a little.
I take him home.
I tuck him into bed.
He grabs my wrist before I can leave.
“Don’t go,” he whispers.
I stay.
**
A week later, on my day off, I met Faith for brunch.
She stares at me across the table, eyes wide. “You’re glowing. Spill.”
I hesitate.
Then I tell her.
Not everything.
But enough.
Her smile fades. “Jenna… he’s your boss.”
“I know.”
“And he’s rich.”
“I know.”
“And he’s older.”
“I know.”
“And he’s… Jaxon Vale.” Those two words, Faith uttered in a whisper.
I swallow. “I know.”
She leans forward, voice soft but firm. “I’m worried he’s playing you.”
“He’s not.”
“You don’t know that.”
I look down. “I trust him.”
She sighs. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. And if the company finds out—”
“I’ll be fired,” I whisper.
Faith squeezes my hand. “Just be careful.”
I nod.
But deep down, I know it’s already too late.
I’m in too deep.
And I don’t want out.
Último capítulo
Rejected by the Billionaire, Returned With His Child Chapter 49
JAXONThe investigator's preliminary findings on Vivienne arrive on Hayes's desk on Friday, and I am there when he opens the file because I have stopped being able to sit in my own office waiting for information that affects my son."The gate mechanism was tampered with," Hayes confirms, reading from the security firm's report. "Manually disabled, then reset to look like a malfunction. Whoever did it knew the system." He looks up. "It wasn't Vivienne directly. There's a payment trail to a maintenance contractor — small amount, cash, untraceable on the surface. But the timing lines up exactly with her visit to the museum two days before the incident.""She was there," I say. Not a question."Logged in the visitor system under a different name," Hayes says. "Donor relations meeting that doesn't exist on the museum's calendar." He sets the report down. "It's circumstantial. Good circumstantial, but circumstantial. We'd need more to take it anywhere formal.""I don't need formal yet," I s
Rejected by the Billionaire, Returned With His Child Chapter 48
JAXONI rehearse what I'm going to say four separate times on the drive over and abandon every version before I reach the hotel.There is no version of this conversation that I can practice my way into. I have negotiated billion-dollar acquisitions. I have sat across from boards that wanted my company in pieces and talked them out of it. None of that prepares a man for walking into a hotel suite to be introduced to his five-year-old son as his father for the first time.Jenna told him yesterday. She called me last night to say it went — her word — "well," delivered in a tone that suggested well was doing a great deal of work. I did not press for details. I trust her to have handled it the way she handles everything, which is carefully and completely and with more grace than the situation strictly requires.I knock at exactly four in the afternoon, the time she suggested, because she said Zion does better with new information when he has had a nap and a snack and is not tired or hungry
Rejected by the Billionaire, Returned With His Child Chapter 47
JENNAEleanor takes Zion without asking questions.This is one of the things I love most about her. She reads the situation — one look at my face when I come through the hotel door, Zion asleep on my shoulder, Jaxon's name hovering unspoken in the air between us — and she simply opens her arms for him and says, "Come. I'll read to him." No interrogation. No raised eyebrow. Just the quiet competence of a woman who has navigated complicated things for eighty years and knows when to step forward and when to step back.I settle Zion into her bed. He doesn't wake. The scrape on his knee has been cleaned and bandaged and he has eaten half a bowl of soup and declared himself fully recovered, which is the kind of resilience that belongs exclusively to five-year-olds and which I have spent the last three hours being quietly, fiercely grateful for.I close Eleanor's door.I stand in the hotel suite living room and I look at the clock. Seven fifty-eight.I am as ready as I am going to get, which
Rejected by the Billionaire, Returned With His Child Chapter 46
JENNAThe afternoon is ordinary right up until the moment it isn't.It is a Wednesday, the kind of mid-week afternoon that has no particular significance — clear sky, mild air, the city doing its usual thing. Priya and I have finished a working session early and I have exactly two hours before I need to be back at the hotel for a call with the London team, which is enough time to collect Zion from the museum program Faith enrolled him in last week. A children's science exhibit three blocks from Vale Industries. He has been going every Wednesday for two weeks and coming home full of facts about dinosaurs and space and the water cycle delivered at high volume with the breathless energy of a child who cannot believe this information has been available all along and no one told him sooner.I am half a block from the museum when my phone rings. Faith."Hey — are you coming to get him?" she says. There is something in her voice. Not panic. The thing before panic, the thing that keeps its sh
Rejected by the Billionaire, Returned With His Child Chapter 45
JAXONI do not sleep on Saturday night.I try. I go through the motions — the shower, the quiet penthouse, the bed at a reasonable hour, the deliberate effort to let my mind settle. None of it works. I lie in the dark and the ceiling is there and the city hums outside and all I can think about is a small boy on a rooftop terrace holding a balloon dinosaur with a compromised neck, looking up at me with eyes that I know.I know those eyes.I have been telling myself since the first time — since I saw him, three seconds of contact before Faith swept him away — that I was imagining it. That guilt makes you see things. That a man who has spent five years wondering what happened to a woman will find her face in strangers, find echoes of himself in children who happen to have dark hair and dark eyes because dark hair and dark eyes are not rare, they are not evidence of anything, they are just a child at a party with a balloon dinosaur and I am a grown man who should be capable of rational th
Rejected by the Billionaire, Returned With His Child Chapter 44
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