All Chapters of SURROGATE FOR THE COLD BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Emma's POV The first week back at the patisserie Celeste approves two of my three menu proposals and tells me the third needs reworking without explaining why, which I've learned means she wants to see if I can figure it out myself. I spend three days reworking it and presenting it again and she looks at it for six seconds and says, "Better," and walks away. I text Dominic immediately. She said better. That's practically a standing ovation. I'm choosing to believe that. The third week of January Lily calls on a Tuesday evening and her voice is wrong immediately. Not panicking. Careful in the way she gets careful when she's managing something before telling me. "Talk," I say. "My last scan." A pause. "There's something they want to look at more closely." The kitchen goes quiet around me.

Emma's POVCeleste runs the kitchen like a military operation the first two weeks of the month. Every station has a purpose, every hour has an output target, and she walks the line twice a day with the expression of someone who will not be accepting excuses.I love it.I'm in charge of the petit gâteau program, six individual desserts that rotate through the Valentine's menu. Celeste approved all six in January and has since added a seventh at the last minute because a corporate client requested something specific and she decided I was the one to develop it.I tell Dominic this on a Tuesday evening while he's making coffee and I'm sitting on the counter which he has fully stopped fighting."She's testing you," he says."I know.""Can you do it?"I look at him. "Yes."He hands me the coffee. "Then stop analyzing it and do it."This is one of the things I didn't expect about being married to him.

Emma's POVlast week of February I finished my course. Not the certification exam, that's in March, but the coursework itself. The final portfolio submission goes in on a Wednesday morning and I close my laptop and sit at the kitchen island and feel the strange lightness of something that has occupied a corner of my brain for eight months suddenly not being there.Dominic is in his office. I knock on the open door."Done," I say.He looks up. Reads my face. Stands.He crosses the room and hugs me properly, both arms, the kind that means something rather than the brief contact of daily movement, and I press my face into his shoulder and exhale."How does it feel?" he says into my hair."Odd. Like I've been carrying something and put it down and my arms don't know what to do."He pulls back and looks at me. "Good odd or bad odd?""Good. Definitely good."He keeps his hands at my shoulders. "We should

Emma's POVThe certification arrives on a Tuesday. A white envelope in the stack of mail Mrs. Kowalski leaves on the counter. I see it when I come home from my shift, still in my coat, and I stand at the counter and open it with the particular care of something you've been waiting for but don't want to rush.The certificate is simple. My name, the qualification, the date. Clean and official and real.I hold it for a moment.Then I take a photo and send it to Lily before I do anything else.She calls before I've put my phone down."Emma." Her voice is the full version of my name, the one she uses when she means it completely."I know," I say."Mum would have framed it."The words land softly. Not painfully. Just true."I know that too," I say.We stay on the phone for a few minutes. She tells me about her latest checkup, all clear, and Daniel's new project, and I tell her about Singapo

Emma's POVThe second day belongs to food. We find the kaya toast place I noted the day before and sit at a small table outside in the morning heat with coffee and soft boiled eggs and the coconut jam spread thick on charcoal bread and I eat two portions without apology.Dominic watches me eat the second portion."Don't," I say."I didn't say anything.""You were going to.""I was going to order you a third," he says.I look at him. He signals the server.The third portion arrives and I eat half and give him the rest and he eats it without comment because he's learned that food given is different from food offered.The morning goes slowly in the way that mornings in heat tend to. We walk without a specific destination, finding ourselves down a street of old shophouses painted in colors that have faded into something better than the original, terracotta and pa