All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Contract Wife Can't Let Go: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Alex POV: Jodie Wants A Marriage I get back to the office and sit down and do not pick up a single call.Not from the front desk or from my California office. Jodie’s name appears on my screen twice in the space of five minutes while I stare at the wall.Her text comes through eventually.“Just checking in, you didn't sleep much. Are you doing okay? Is Dana alright? Did she come in today?”Jodie has been asking about Dana more frequently lately. Small questions. They’re casual, but accumulating. It’s always about Dana: did she come in, is she nearby, how is she. I used to think it was consideration. Now I'm less sure what it is.I leave the message unanswered and lean back in my chair and try to put things in their proper order.The flowers were a mistake. Not because they were a bad idea, because they weren't. It’s because I let them mean something when I handed them over, and meaning something is not a luxury I currently have. Dana is my employee. She is pregnant by someone else. S

Dana POV: Alex Is Everywhere I Go "You should enter for an exhibition," Charles says, staring at my painting. "With the way you pai— "He stops, turns and breaks into a jog toward the front of the shop."Lessie! Lessie! Where's that flier you showed me the other day?" he asks. Lessie, behind the counter, holds one up without looking. He snatches it and brings it back to me at something close to a run, pressing it into my hands. Then he begins pulling out his phone, and starts scrolling urgently.I look down at the flier and my jaw drops open an inch. It's a flier advertising the New York exhibition, the one Alex's company organized. "I knew I'd seen your face somewhere," Charles says, grinning now. "I was sure you weren't a singer or an actress, but I knew I'd seen you. Now I know where."I fold the flier and hold it, mildly delighted by the illicit pleasure of being recognized for something I've hardly ever been recognized for.He hold his phone before my face, showing me the scr

Dana POV: The Negotiation For Cillian Begins Alone in my room, I tell myself I'm just scrolling with not intent. I open Instagram and go to Alex's profile. There's nothing new there. His last post is from three days ago, something corporate about the New York stock exchange and I'm about to close the app when my screen lights up with a Facebook notification.It says: ‘Jodie Bae tagged you in a post.’I stare at the name for a moment. I don't know anyone called . . .Oh.I almost don't click it. I sit there gaping at the notification for a long, sensible moment, fully aware of what clicking it will cost me, and then I click it anyway because I have apparently learned nothing tonight.It's a photo of her hand wearing the ring. The same ring I stood in Alex's office and looked at for exactly the appropriate number of seconds this afternoon. It is photographed now from the most flattering angle, the stone catching light in a way that suggests the photo was taken several times before thi

Alex POV: Jodie Is Getting Ahead Of Herself The food on my plate has gone cold. I've been looking at it for the better part of ten minutes without eating any of it, moving it once with my fork to create the impression that I'm engaged in a meal rather than conducting a silent, circular argument with himself.Jodie is sitting across from me, wine glass held in both hands, watching me with slightly narrowed attention."Alex."I look up."You haven't said a single word since you sat down." She sets her glass down. "What is it?""Work," I say. "There was meeting today."She accepts this, but incompletely. I can see the partial acceptance in the way she bends her head and purses her lips. Jodie is not unintelligent. She notices things. I pick up my fork and eat but taste nothing.At four-thirty this afternoon I walked down Fifth Avenue. After going out with Jodie and spent most of the time thinking about Dana. I came back to the office and didn't do much. I'd been angry at that meeting.

Dana POV: The Wormhole Theory The wine loosens everything, the way good wine does.It starts with Eddie asking Charles about the Italian political landscape, whether the current coalition would hold, whether the agricultural subsidies were affecting smaller producers, and Charles gives an answer that makes Eddie sit forward, which is how you know Eddie considers you worth talking to. Eddie only leans forward for people who know things."The issue isn't the subsidies themselves," Charles says, turning his glass slowly. "It's the inconsistency of application. The larger estates absorb the bureaucracy. The smaller ones drown in it.""Same pattern everywhere," Jack says. "You see it in the States with the farm bills. The language protects small producers on paper and dismantles them in practice.""Because the people writing the language have never set foot on a small farm," I say.Everyone looks at me."Or a small vineyard," Charles adds, and the look he gives me when he says it is warm