All Chapters of I AM BILLIONAIRE DAMON'S REPLACEMENT BRIDE : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The silence that followed was excruciating.I took a sip of water. It went down wrong and I had to fight not to cough. Damon's hand landed on my knee under the table, just for a second, just a brief touch—before disappearing again.The housekeeper appeared in the doorway. "Dinner is ready."Thank God.We moved to the dining room and I immediately wanted to go back to the living room because at least there I hadn't been confronted with six different forks.The table was set like something from a magazine. Or a movie about rich people. Multiple plates, multiple glasses, silverware I didn't know the names of. Everything gleaming and perfect and so far outside my experience I might as well have been on Mars.I sat down and stared at the array of forks in front of me.One of them was for salad. I knew that much. But which one?I reached for the one on the outside. That seemed logical."That's for salad," Catherine said. Her voice was gentle. Helpful, even. But everyone had stopped talking

I woke up Friday morning and for about three seconds, everything was fine.Then I remembered dinner. The forks. Catherine Sterling's smile. My mother agreeing with everything. The bathroom.Damon defending me.I pulled the pillow over my face and groaned.My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I grabbed it without looking.Jessica: Coffee? Need to debrief the dinner from hell.Right. I'd texted her last night after everyone left. Something incoherent about wanting to die and how could one dinner be that awful.Me: Yes. Please. I need to leave this apartment before I suffocate.Jessica: Meet you at the usual spot in 30?Me: Make it 45. Need to look less like a zombie.I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. The hot water helped. A little. Not enough, but a little.When I walked into the kitchen twenty minutes later, Damon was there. Already dressed for work. Drinking coffee and scrolling through his phone.We both froze when we saw each other."Hi," I said."Hi."Awkward silence.

I was in the middle of a design project Monday afternoon when Jessica appeared at my desk with that look on her face.The "we need to talk right now" look."Lunch," she said. Not a question. A command."I'm kind of busy—""Now, Eve."I saved my file and grabbed my bag.We ended up at the Thai place again. She didn't say anything until we'd ordered and were sitting in our usual booth in the back.Then she just stared at me."What?" I said."You're glowing.""I'm not glowing.""You're literally glowing. You look like someone who had a really good weekend. A really, really good weekend." Her eyes narrowed. "Did you sleep with him?""What? No!""Then why do you look like that?""Like what?""Like you're happy. It's weird. You've been miserable for two weeks and now you're over here looking all satisfied and smiley. What happened?"I took a sip of water to buy myself time. "We just... hung out. That's all.""Hung out.""Yeah. Saturday. We went to the farmers market. Walked around. Talked."

The kiss ended and we just stood there breathing hard, foreheads pressed together. "Fuck," Damon muttered. That one word snapped me back to reality. What the hell were we doing? I pulled back. Put space between us. My lips were still tingling and my heart was doing this crazy racing thing but my brain was finally catching up. "We shouldn't have done that," I said. "Probably not." "Damon, I'm serious. We just—we can't just—" I couldn't even finish the sentence. My thoughts were all scrambled. He ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah. You're right. That was stupid." "It wasn't stupid. It was just—" "A mistake?" The word hung there between us. Was it a mistake? It hadn't felt like a mistake. It had felt really, really good. But good things had a way of blowing up in my face. "I don't know what it was," I admitted. "I just know that five minutes ago we were having this intense conversation and now we're kissing and my brain can't keep up." "So what do you want to do about it?"

Three days.It had been three days of this new arrangement and I was losing my mind.Not in a bad way. In a "I can't stop thinking about him" way. In a "every time he looks at me I remember exactly what he looks like naked" way.We'd fallen into this routine. Work during the day. Pretend to be normal roommates in the evening. Then one of us would make a move and we'd end up in his bed.Or my bed.Or against the kitchen counter that one time.Just sex. That's what we'd agreed to.But it was getting harder to remember that when he did things like make me coffee in the morning exactly how I liked it. Or when he'd brush past me in the hallway and his hand would linger on my hip just a second too long. Or when he'd smile at me across the dinner table like we were sharing a private joke.This morning I woke up in his bed again.We'd fallen asleep after. Both of us too tired to follow the "no sleeping over" rule we'd supposedly established.His arm was around me. My head was on his chest. I