Lahat ng Kabanata ng Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

We timed contractions the way a clumsy couple times their step after reading a couple of frantic websites once too many. The first one subsided, then another, and then a third came in quick, white hot crescendos. I felt ridiculous and terrified at once. The twins had been our secret joy and our terror both; the idea they might be arriving early filled me with a pricking mixture of exhilaration and dread.Marcus’s face hardened with a focus that made something tender and fierce rise in my chest. He called the nurse we’d spoken to in the clinic — a soft, sensible woman who answered with the kind of voice you want at three a.m. — and we were moving faster than the storm outside. The staff at the inn became a flurry: Julian, the innkeeper’s apprentice, retrieved the emergency bag; Juliette shut windows and fed Bix and arranged a taxi because Marcus insisted it should be clean and quick.“Call Elena,” I told Marcus when he looked at me like the world had narrowed to a single decision. He h

He blinked, absorbing it. I knew enough about his world to know he’d learned to hedge and bargain and instruct. He’d never allowed anyone else to draw the boundaries for him. “We could do that,” he said slowly, and a cautious relief softened his face. “I can insist on governance. A trust. Firewalls. No board leverage. Real stipulations.”I felt the tiny beast of fear unclench in my chest. “And if he refuses?”“Then we keep building slower,” he said, lips curving into a defiant little grin. The spark in him returned then—mischief back in command. “Then I sell a watch or two and we hire more staff and we renovate on the scale of ‘we do not want to sleep on a mattress that sags like an office couch.’”We laughed, because levity is a good scaffolding for terror. The choice—and the twist in the morning—was not about money alone but about who they’d let into the small country they were making. He folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket like something that deserved to be kept close a

There are mornings that feel like a promise and mornings that arrive like a prayer already answered. Today was the latter. The inn breathed a quiet warmth: the smell of cinnamon from a tray of morning pastries, the low murmur of Juliette’s violin as she warmed up, and Marcus, ridiculous and precise, trying to tie a bowtie with such solemn concentration I wanted to laugh out loud until he lost his balance.“Need help?” I asked, leaning in with the kind of affection that has history stitched into it.He looked up, jaw softening into the smile that melts the edges of anything mean in the world. “Only if you promise not to laugh at the technique. It’s a family secret.” He pulled me forward and kissed me quick and good, the kind of kiss that says we have time and forever and we’re going to use both.Today we rehearsed. The small ceremony was two days away and we’d agreed to practice the shape of things: where we’d stand under the arch of lamp-post flowers, who would read, how long we’d pre

The morning after the reception felt like the quiet after fireworks — everything glittered a little and smelled faintly of sugar and smoke. The inn was slow, polite, and utterly ordinary in the best way: guests murmuring over second cups of coffee, Juliette tuning scales into something soft, the twins doing their gentle, insistent gymnastics against my ribs. Marcus moved through it all like a man who’d learned how to be small and spectacular at once — fetching plates, joking with a child who’d decided the dog’s name was “Bix the Brave,” kissing my temple when no one was watching.We were barefoot in the garden, hands in dirt and mouths full of stolen strawberries, when Julian — who’d become our unofficial guard of the premises — called down from the lane. “Something for you at the front, Miss Claire.”I wiped my hands on my jeans and walked up the path. On the welcome mat sat a small wooden crate, no label, no return, the kind of object that makes you both curious and ridiculous with

The morning after the journal felt like the world had been rearranged into a kinder order. The inn’s rooms smelled of boiling oats and lemon; Juliette played scales that made my shoulders unclench; Marcus moved like a man who’d slept with his conscience pressed to his chest and woken up gentler for it. That was the gift of last night’s discovery — the past had offered instruction, not indictment, and somehow that made the present less precarious.We started the day with small, ridiculous vows: Marcus vowed to stop buying ridiculously expensive coffee beans we both pretended to like; I vowed to stop stealing his socks (mostly). Between the negotiations about which napkins would be embroidered with the twins’ initials and the absurd debate about whether the nursery needed curtains or blinds, the envelope from Roderick’s chest sat between us on the kitchen island like a quiet thing that still needed saying.“It occurred to me last night,” Marcus said, tracing a line along the envelope as