All Chapters of Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The morning woke soft and slow, like someone had decided the world could be polite for once. Light pooled through the curtains in a way that made everything look gilded at the edges. Marcus was already awake, propped on one elbow, watching me with a devotion so plain it hurt. The sight of him—his jaw relaxed, hair mussed in that perfectly imperfect way—made my chest ache with a tenderness that felt like a physical thing.“You’re staring,” he said, amused and proud in equal measure.“I’m cataloguing you,” I answered, because the truth was ridiculous and I wanted him to know I was keeping him safe in the warm place in my head where I stored everything important. “You look… like someone I can build a life with.”He laughed, a short, delighted sound, and crawled across the mattress to press small, careful kisses along my collarbone. The kisses began the way he always began—slow, reverent—then quickened into something hungrier as if he’d been saving minutes for exactly this hunger. I let m

Morning is a private religion when you live in love’s hush, and today the altar is our bed. Marcus wakes before me, as if the world has trained his body to arrive early wherever I am. He watches me with that look that first made me forget how to breathe — like I am the best decision he’s ever made and he wants to memorize me all over again.He slips his hand under my pillow and pulls out the little linen-wrapped thing I thought he’d hidden away forever: the tiny music box that once sounded like a scratchy lullaby and now feels like prophecy. He winds it, and the first crooked notes spill into the room. I laugh — the sound is half-joy, half-swoon — and he grins like the man who gets to be the only person who knows the shape of my heart.We spend the morning as if we have all the time in the world we’ve been fighting for: weekend pajamas, coffee that tastes like safe, slow luxury, and the ridiculous debate over which pancakes are the most forgiving. He kisses me like punctuation — short

The elevator doors opened and his private security guard appeared, holding an envelope. “From Mr. Hamilton’s lawyer,” the man said, tone clipped. “He said it was urgent.” Marcus took it, dismissed the guard, and broke the seal with his thumb. His face changed as he read — the controlled billionaire gone, replaced by something raw. “What is it?” I asked, heart pounding. He handed me the letter. The handwriting was unmistakably my father’s. Marcus — I know she’s with you. I trusted you with my daughter once. Don’t make me regret it now. Protect her, but stay away from her, or you will lose me forever. The words landed like a slap. My stomach twisted. “He knows?” I whispered. Marcus’s jaw clenched. “He knows enough.” I shook my head. “What does he think is happening?” He stepped closer, cupping my face, eyes fierce. “What’s happening,” he said, “is that I’m in love with you and trying to protect you at the same time. And your father is asking me to choose.” “And what will you ch

We woke to a morning that felt like a private benediction — the kind that arrives only after hard vows have been spoken and some small mercy decides to stay. Marcus’s arm was a band across my waist, his breath a slow tide against my hair. I let my palm rest on the soft swell of my belly and felt, for the thousandth time, that ridiculous, miraculous flutter that made the world tilt in the best possible direction.“You okay?” he asked, the question more careful than any policy memo he’d ever drafted.“Better than okay,” I mouthed, and his laugh was the hot, delighted sound of a man who’d been given a second chance at ordinary.We moved like people who had learned how to cherish minutes: coffee that tasted like nothing but presence, a lazy ritual of dressing and kissing in the hallway like an insurance policy against the day’s noise. He kept stealing looks at me the way you watch a secret you’re not supposed to tell — awed and greedy. I found it impossibly sexy. It’s the small things tha

The morning light fell through the blinds in soft bars, and for a second the world looked like a promise someone had finally kept. Marcus was across the room, half-dressed, the way he always was when he’d been up late thinking instead of sleeping. He looked at me like sunlight looks at a curved surface—curious and grateful—and I felt that ridiculous warmth rise in my chest again.“You okay?” he asked, stepping closer until his shadow warmed my knee.“Yeah,” I lied at first, because some anxieties are habits and old habits want the shape of voices. “I’m… just thinking.”He settled on the edge of the bed and took my hand. His fingers were still callused where he’d gripped a pen in the night before, and the steadiness of him was a kind of prayer. “Tell me.”I did tell him, because the truth was the only thing we’d agreed to trade in now: raw and untidy and honest. I told him about the dream that woke me last night—one where he’d given everything away and then one morning simply wasn’t th