All Chapters of Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

He makes a face like a man who’s both offended and delighted. We fall into one of those urgent, private pockets we’ve been collecting for months: the kind of sex that is simultaneous relief and celebration. It’s soft where it needs to be, fierce where the day has left us hollow. He is careful — his hands certain in the places that need tenderness now, lips urgent on the places that still demand worship. I am brazen and small at once, choosing him and letting myself be chosen. When he lifts me, I feel the exact gravity of our life: huge, precarious, bracingly beautiful.We don’t stay long — the clock is a merciless host — but the shared breath afterwards is a talisman I tuck into my pocket. He smooths my hair, murmurs a joke about teal pancakes, and then the two of us rise and go back into the light.Back in court the afternoon slogs through cross-examinations that try to fray Nora’s credibility: has she ever benefited from the inn? Did she alter files? Had she told anyone before? The

There is a kind of heat that is not only physical; it’s the wild satisfaction of being chosen in public and private repeatedly. Tonight it was there in spades: every touch a translation of the small vows we’d been making for months. He worshipped the new curves my body carried, as if my belly were an altar and the rest of me the prayer. I wanted to mark him as mine with everything I had: laughter, noises that are only honest in the dark, soft curses, the names we keep for each other that nobody else is allowed to pronounce.When we came apart we were tangled, breath heavy and the room smelling faintly of thyme and him. The twins fluttered in answer, sharp and delighted, and I let a laugh bubble up because the moment felt holy and absurd at once.He pulled me close, fingers carding through my hair. “You’re fierce,” he whispered. “And weirdly gentle. Please don’t ever change either.”“I promise,” I said, wrapping my hand around his neck like a small rope I refused to let go of. “Unless

That night, when the inn hummed to sleep and the lanterns guttered into pools of safe light, Marcus took my hand and led me to the garden. The willow’s branches bowed like a cathedral; the air was thick with the small sounds of cicadas and the far-off murmur of someone turning pages inside.He had set up a low blanket, a silent tea, and a tuck of fairy lights that made the world look like an old photograph. “I thought we could practice being small in public,” he said, which made me grin because that’s how he insists on teaching me courage by making it delicious.We lay back and watched the small stars blink between the tree’s leaves. He told me stories he’d never told anyone else not the boardroom ones, but the childhood ones: nights fishing in a borrowed canoe, a stray dog he’d once smuggled home, the first terrible origami boat he’d made as a promise to someone who’d been gone a lifetime. His voice turned ordinary things into filigree. I answered with my own: the cardboard helmet a

“Close your eyes,” he said, breath warm at my ear.I obeyed because practice had taught me that surprises from him were usually good. I felt his hand on my neck, then the brush of paper. When I opened my eyes he had that ridiculous photobooth picture tucked into a napkin and a second, thinner envelope beneath it.“For days you may doubt me,” he said, “open the photo. For the other days you might want a reminder of promises I’ve made in secret.” He kissed me, then slid the paper across my palm.The envelope’s flap had been sealed with wax and stamped with an unfamiliar crest — a tiny willow leaf framed with a looping R. I knew the Hales’ sigil; this was different. My throat made an anxious sound I intended to disguise as laughter.“You wrote me a note?” I asked, surprised because Marcus writes lists and contracts and occasionally love notes but he never wax-seals anything. The flourish felt ceremonial.He hesitated just the tiniest breath and then said, “Open it.”Inside was a single p

Claire — if you are reading this, then Maggie trusted you enough to let this small thing live under her floor. There are things families do not say aloud. There are obligations they mistake for rights. If ever the inn is threatened in a way that feels like greed rather than need, come to this box, and trust the kinship of strangers who keep watch. The R is for a friend, not a master. If you find his mark, know it means help without demand. Keep the inn loud and kind. — R.Marcus read it aloud slowly, and somewhere between his voice and the pages the room felt full of old sunlight. The “R” had been a shadow in the margins of Maggie’s journal; here it was a signature shaped like a promise.“Who is R?” I asked, though the letter had already answered. A friend, not a master. Help, not control. A loyal hand forwarded across generations. I couldn’t help but think of Roderick — his name had been in the ledger — but more than names I felt the sentiment: someone had been guarding the inn the w