บททั้งหมดของ SURROGATE FOR THE COLD BILLIONAIRE: บทที่ 81 - บทที่ 90

Dominic's POV Sunday morning she sleeps in. I know because I'm up at six and her door is still closed at seven and at eight and I make coffee and read and work through the Reyes final draft and at nine fifteen I hear her moving. She comes out with her hair loose and her eyes still half in sleep and she goes directly to the coffee, pours a cup, realizes halfway through that she's not supposed to have full caffeine, makes a sound of genuine irritation, and pours half of it out and tops it with the decaf blend I started keeping for exactly this. She doesn't know I started keeping it for exactly this. She drinks it without looking at the label. I watch all of this over the top of my document. She turns and catches me watching. "Not a word," she says. "Good morning."

Dominic's POV The Reyes closing takes four hours. Marcus handles the room the way he always does, efficient and precise, and I sign where I sign and speak when it matters and the rest of the time I'm present but somewhere underneath the present I'm thinking about Emma in the window seat yesterday saying *I know you* like it was the simplest fact in the world. I know you. Nobody has ever said that to me and meant all of it. People know versions. The CEO. The negotiator. The man in the right suit in the right room. Marcus knows more than most. Mrs. Kowalski knows what fifteen years of proximity gives you. Emma knows me from the inside. Three months. That's all it took. Three months of her paying attention without agenda and she has more of me mapped than people who've known me a decade. I signed the final page. Reyes is done.

Dominic's POVShe doesn't mention the word on the way home, neither do I.It sits between us in the car, not awkwardly, just present, the way significant things sit after you've said them. They don't need repeating. They just need time to settle into the shape of the room.She looks out the window at the city and I drive and our hands are joined on the console between us and I can feel her thinking. Not anxious thinking. The deep kind, where she's taking something apart carefully to understand it.I let her.At the apartment she goes to change and I pour water and stand at the kitchen counter and think about the fact that I said the word to a woman who is carrying my child in the best table of a restaurant and didn't preface it with a question or follow it with logistics and felt completely calm doing it.Daniel would be unbearable right now.I almost smile.She comes back in soft clothes, face clean, hair up, t

Dominic's POVI call Dr. Reeves myself after Emma goes to rest, not to interfere. Just to understand. There's a difference and Emma would agree with the distinction if I explained it, which I won't unless she asks because she doesn't need to know every way I'm paying attention.Dr. Reeves is professional and measured and tells me what the markers mean in clinical terms and what the next three weeks require and I listen and take notes the way I take notes on everything that matters and thank him and hang up.Sit at my desk.The relief of it is not something I expected to feel at this volume. Lily is Emma's sister. I've met her twice. By any external measure my investment in her recovery should be adjacent, supportive, secondhand.It isn't.Lily is Emma's whole heart outside her own body. Loving Emma means Lily's markers are a thing I feel in my own chest.This is what love does, apparent

Dominic's POVShe said yes in a parked car on a Wednesday and I drove us home with her hand in mine and neither of us said much and the quiet was the fullest quiet I've ever sat in.I keep returning to the moment she said ask me now.Not at a restaurant. Not with a ring. Just here.She didn't want the architecture. She wanted the real thing, undecorated, which is the most Emma request she could have made and exactly why I said yes before I'd finished processing that she was asking.Yes I'll ask you. Yes right now. Yes to all of it.Marcus calls at four.I let it ring.He calls again.I answer."The Lau revision came through," he says. "Sixty days confirmed. He's satisfied.""Good."Pause. "You sound……." He stops. "Something happened.""The Lau revision is good news. Send my confirmation.""