LOGINShare
CHAPTER 23 Section Thirteen
publish date:
2026-11-09 13:00:31❄ · ❄ · ❄
By noon on the thirty-first, there were forty reporters at the gates of Hollin Hall, and someone in the house had put them there.They stamped in the lane in the thin snow, their breath smoking, their cameras trained on the iron bars like rifles. A Boston television van idled at the curb with its antenna raised like a hand asking a question.“It’s Anders,” said Julian.He stood at the drawing-room window in his dark suit, unslept and perfectly com
Latest chapter
THE BILLIONAIRES 31-DAY CHRISTMAS CONTRACT CHAPTER 24 The Vote Nobody Expected
❄ · ❄ · ❄Nobody breathed for one long second after she said yes. Then the dog sneezed, and the whole room broke.It was not a polite noise. It was a roar, a flood, a hundred people deciding all at once that they were allowed to breathe. Rafe was on his feet shouting something unprintable. The twins were clapping. The deaf great-uncle, who had apparently understood every word, banged his cane on the floor like a gavel. Tobias wept with his whole face. At the back, Cordelia’s bespectacled fiancé put one arm around her shoulders, and Cordelia, laughing and crying together, hid her face in his terrible sweater.Julian had not moved. He knelt on the ballroom floor with the ring box open on his palm, staring up at her as though she were the only fixed point in a spinning world. Elodie took the little band from its velvet. Her hand was shaking. She held it out, and he took it, and his fingers were trembling so badly that it took him two tries to slide it onto he
THE BILLIONAIRES 31-DAY CHRISTMAS CONTRACT CHAPTER 23 Section Thirteen
❄ · ❄ · ❄By noon on the thirty-first, there were forty reporters at the gates of Hollin Hall, and someone in the house had put them there.They stamped in the lane in the thin snow, their breath smoking, their cameras trained on the iron bars like rifles. A Boston television van idled at the curb with its antenna raised like a hand asking a question.“It’s Anders,” said Julian.He stood at the drawing-room window in his dark suit, unslept and perfectly composed, and beneath the composure a muscle in his cheek was jumping.“We don’t know that,” said Elodie.“We do. The photograph came from the ballroom terrace, and the contract came from my briefcase. Tobias had access, but Tobias doesn’t know a single journalist. Anders was in the house on the twenty-sixth. He told me, the day he left, that he was sorry about what was coming. I thought he meant the storm.”“It isn’t Anders,” said a voice from the doorway.They
THE BILLIONAIRES 31-DAY CHRISTMAS CONTRACT CHAPTER 22 A Ring Is Only a Promise With Weight
❄ · ❄ · ❄Julian Hale, who had once settled a Rotterdam port strike in four hours, could not get Elodie Marchetti through a jeweler’s door.“I don’t need a ring,” said Elodie, for the third time.“Everyone needs a ring.” Julian held the door for her. The little brass bell above it jingled. “It is, as I understand, a standard component of an engagement. I read about it.”“You read about it.”“There was a pamphlet.”The village of Hollin Ferry consisted of a church, a general store, a post office the size of a cupboard, and a jeweler named Mr. Abernathy, who had been repairing watches in the same narrow shop on Main Street since the Carter administration.She laughed. It had become easier lately, the laughing. It was the thirtieth of December, and the sun on the snow was dazzling, and the Hale family’s Christmas guests had departed one by one in a procession of mud-spattered cars, leaving behind a slightly dazed and weary
THE BILLIONAIRES 31-DAY CHRISTMAS CONTRACT CHAPTER 21 What Winifred Wanted
❄ · ❄ · ❄“I knew,” said Odalys.She said it so plainly that for a moment nobody took it in. The old woman sat very upright, with her chin raised and her white hair gleaming in the thin gray light, and she looked around the room as though she were a general reviewing troops.“I knew from the first night,” she went on. “At dinner, the girl told me how they met. It was a very good story. It had the great virtue of being almost entirely true, and the tiny flaw of being rehearsed. I have been lied to by professionals. I can tell when a person is leaving out a chapter.” She turned her cool gray eyes on Julian. “I did not, however, know what the chapter was. I confess I had hoped for something more romantic. A secret wedding, perhaps. I am eighty-one. One cannot be choosy.”Rafe made a strangled noise.Tobias had gone the color of old candle wax. The folder holding the seven pages slid from his fingers and fanned across the floorboards, and not one person in the room bent to pick it up.“Wh
THE BILLIONAIRES 31-DAY CHRISTMAS CONTRACT CHAPTER 20 Tobias Reads the Fine Print
❄ · ❄ · ❄The trouble with winning a small victory is that it makes you careless.For one bright day, Elodie and Julian lived inside the glow of it. The blizzard cleared. The snowplows came and went, and the roads were dug out, and in the sudden bright quiet after the storm the whole house seemed to exhale. Admiral recovered, grumbling, and spent his afternoons enthroned on the hearth rug like a convalescent king. Julian walked with her in the garden each morning, a careful foot apart, and they talked about nothing, about ships and caramel and the proper temperature for tea. Once he made her laugh so hard that she had to sit down in the snow. Once, passing in the corridor, his fingers brushed hers, and neither of them pretended it was an accident.It was Tobias who ruined it.She did not understand how, at first. She came down on the twenty-eighth to find the house oddly quiet, the cousins gathered in the long drawing room with that peculiar rapt
THE BILLIONAIRES 31-DAY CHRISTMAS CONTRACT CHAPTER 19 What the Dog Knew
❄ · ❄ · ❄Admiral was gone by morning.It was Anselm who noticed. The younger twin came down the great stair at seven in his socks, white-faced, and announced to the sleeping drawing room that the dog's bed was empty, the garden door was ajar, and there was a long trail of paw prints leading out across the snow and into the trees.Julian was on his feet before the sentence was finished.“He wouldn't,” he said. “He's sixteen. He doesn't leave the hearth.” He was already pulling on his coat, boots half laced, one glove in his hand. “The pond. He goes to the pond when he's unhappy. My father used to walk him there.”“Julian, there's three feet of fresh snow,” said Rafe. “And the wind…”“I know what the wind is.”“I'll come.”“Stay with Odalys.” He did not look back. The garden door banged behind him, and a gust of white blew in across the flagstones.Elodie did not decide to follow. Her body decided for he
You May Also Like
One Night With Mr Billionaire
Sun girl818.8K viewsSatisfying Her Darkest Fantasies
Shile1.0M viewsBillionaire's Ex-wife is Mommy of Twins
Lami274667.9K viewsOne Night Stand
Favor V April1.0M viewsHis Wife or Her Grave
Rolakewrites 129 viewsNever surrender to an arrogant playboy again
Ivinegar89 viewsThe Playboy’s Dangerous Bet
Momo248 viewsThey Abandoned me Now They Beg For My Return
Fireflies234 views
