All Chapters of Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Morning came like a soft exhale, the kind that makes your shoulders finally drop. The penthouse smelled like coffee and the faint, comforting tang of lemon from the kitchen cleaner Marcus favored. He woke before me, as always, a private sunrise curled around his face. For a moment I simply watched him breathe — the slow, steady inhale that felt like a promise I could lean against.He turned and caught my stare, that familiar flash of mischief lighting his eyes. “Thinking about the baby?” he asked, voice still rough with sleep.“Trying not to panic,” I admitted, and the admission came out half laugh, half prayer.He padded across the room and slid under the covers, pressing a warm, steady weight against my back. His hand came to rest on my belly like a compass. “Perfectly normal to panic,” he murmured. “Also normal to be delighted. Both are excellent.”We lingered there — a little nest of warmth and courage — until the morning wore its way straight through the curtains and demanded act

There are days you plan for, and then there are the ones that feel like someone pressed a bright, ridiculous button and the world rearranged itself into something softer.This morning started like most others: slow, breath-rich, the kind of dawn that made it impossible not to press my face into Marcus’s neck and memorize the map of him. He had that look again—half mischief, half solemnity—and when I asked what he was scheming he only smiled and said, “You’ll see.”I pretended not to be curious, which is to say I failed spectacularly. He kept stealing glances at me over his coffee like a man who wanted to memorize my face for the rest of his life. When he stood and murmured something about a “quick errand,” I almost demanded to come, but he shook his head and kissed me that special way he has for when he wants me to trust him without protest.“Be ready by six,” he said, leaving the words like an incantation. “Wear something you can run in.”By five-forty I had a dress—something easy, c

Morning came like a benediction again: soft light, the hush of the city that felt, for one blessed hour, like it belonged to us. Marcus was already up when I opened my eyes, sprawled on his back with one arm thrown over his forehead like a man who’d slept a little too long and was reveling in it. The sight of him — bare chest, hair mussed, that urgent, easy smile he reserves for me — hit me with the same small, electric lurch it always did.“You look like trouble,” he said, voice thick with sleep and some private pleasure.“You look like home,” I answered, because words felt cheap next to the way my ribs kept wanting to break open with gratitude for him.He rolled toward me and kissed my mouth like a promise — slow, hungry enough to make my knees go soft but gentle in the way he always was when he wanted to make sure I felt seen. We moved together like two people who’d learned how to be kind in the middle of obsession: deliberate, searching, worshipful. His hands memorized the small c

The morning light found us like an encore — soft, indulgent, and impossible to refuse. Marcus woke with his arm thrown across my waist, the kind of way that made the whole bed feel like a harbor. I lay there for a long moment, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest, memorizing the small geography of him the way someone collects treasures.He opened his eyes and smiled as if he was seeing me for the first time. “Morning, trouble,” he murmured, voice thick with sleep and something that felt dangerously like contentment.“Morning, home,” I answered, because that had become the easiest, truest thing to say. He kissed the tip of my nose like a thief and then crawled over me with a mischief that made my heart stutter. We tumbled into a delicious, languid heat — the kind that wasn’t urgent because the rest of the world had already burned itself out; it was urgent because we were finally making time for ourselves. His hands were patient and wildly skilled; every touch felt like an excus

The Willow Inn woke us like a benediction — sunlight knitting itself through the slats of the shutters, birds arguing about breakfast, the smell of wood smoke and something baking down the hall. I pressed my forehead into Marcus’s chest and listened to him breathe: steady, ridiculous, wholly mine. The tiny pendant he’d given me slept warm against my skin, and somewhere beneath it two tiny comets kept time like a private metronome.We had promised ourselves slow mornings here, and the inn delivered. There was no city roar, no fleet of security cars — only the far-off clink of plates from the breakfast room and the soft creak of floorboards where the house remembered footsteps. Marcus padded into the little kitchen in socks and an apron he’d insisted on wearing despite our protests, hair sticking up in a way that made him look exactly like what he’d always been: impossibly handsome and domestically dangerous.“Do you want coffee or something more spoiling?” he called, flourishing a jar