All Chapters of SURROGATE FOR THE COLD BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 41 - Chapter 47

Emma's POVFive weeks out, Mrs. Kowalski takes over.I don't mean she offers to help. I mean she arrives on a Monday morning with a notebook and a look that suggests anyone who argues with her will regret it, and she begins coordinating the wedding the way a general coordinates a campaign."The flowers," she says, sitting across from me at the kitchen island. "You said white and green.""White and green. Simple.""Simple I can do. The florist on Mercer owes me a favor." She writes something down. "The cake.""I'm making it."She stops writing. Looks at me over her glasses."It's what I do," I say. "I'm not having someone else make my wedding cake.""You're the bride.""I'm also a pastry chef. I'll make it the day before. It won't be complicated."She studies me for a moment then writes it down. "Fine. But I'm helping."

Emma's POV The reception is dinner at a long table in the room next door. Thirty people. Good wine. Mrs. Kowalski seated herself next to Grace, which nobody planned and everyone notices, and the two of them have been in what appears to be an intense and mutually satisfying conversation since the first course. Dominic's hand is on my knee under the table. Not possessive. Just there. Like he needs the contact point to confirm this is real, which I understand because I keep looking at the ring on my finger the way you touch a bruise, just to check. Marcus gives a speech that is genuinely funny and ends quietly and honestly in a way that makes Diane cry again and makes Dominic look at the table for a moment to collect himself. I file that away too. Lily speaks briefly. Three sentences. The last one is, "My sister taught me that love isn't a guarantee, it's a choice you

Emma's POV Vermont is four hours by car. Dominic drives. I have coffee and the aux cord and a playlist Lily made me called *honeymoon even if you're going to a barn* which is accurate because the inn is technically a converted farmhouse and I love it immediately. We don't talk the whole drive. Not because anything is wrong. Because we've gotten good at the kind of quiet that doesn't need filling. He has one hand on the wheel. I have my feet up on the dash which he allowed after minimal negotiation. Somewhere past Hartford he reaches over without looking and puts his hand on my ankle. Leaves it there. I watch the trees go by and think about nothing in particular. The inn is run by a couple in their sixties, Pat and Gerald, who greet us like they've been expecting family. Pat shows us around with the ease of someone who has done it a thousand times but hasn't g

Emma's POV Celeste adds two extra shifts and asks me to take one of them, which I do without hesitation because the kitchen in December is extraordinary. Everything smells like citrus and spice and there's a focused intensity that I've missed without knowing I missed it. Dominic notices I come home energized instead of tired. "Good shift?" he says Thursday evening when I walk in. "We did four hundred mignardises today. Celeste didn't correct me once." "Is that a record?" "For me, yes." He hands me a glass of wine and I sit at the island and tell him about the citrus tart variation Celeste let me develop and he listens with the attention he gives things that matter to him, which now includes whatever matters to me. I still notice it. I don't think I'll ever stop noticing it. The girls are obsessed with the