All Chapters of She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife: Chapter 391 - Chapter 400

(Julian)"If this is committee business, I've already told Gloria I'm not reading a poem, Natasha would hate it.""It's not committee business."Sonia holds her door half open and looks at the garment bag over my arm and doesn't open the door any wider."Then what is it?""Can I come in, or do we do this in the hallway with your neighbor pretending to water that dead fern?"She lets me in.The flat's too tidy.Nobody her age has a flat this tidy unless something's wrong, but I didn't come here to be observant, so I keep it to myself.I lay the bag flat on her table."This has been in my car for four months," I say."I kept meaning to bring it. Then I kept driving it around instead. Yesterday I got in the car and it annoyed me, which is how I knew it was time.""Julian, what is it?""Open it."She unzips the bag halfway and stops.Black leather.She knows exactly whose it is.Everyone who ever saw Taylor in it knows exactly whose it is.She wore it to a christening once. The priest sti

(Natasha)"We’ve been approved," Gloria says, instead of hello."The letter came this morning. We're officially on the list.""Gloria. That's enormous. Congratulations!""It only means we’ll be considered, not that anything will happen anytime soon. Could be a month. Could be two years. The woman on the phone said, and I quote, try to live your life."A pause."I've put the letter in a drawer so I stop reading it. Anyway. That's not why I called. Sit down.""People keep telling me to sit down. What now?""The hotel fell through.""Which hotel?""The last one. The ballroom with the ceiling. The one the committee spent two weeks calling a cathedral because Eleanor said the word once and it stuck."I switch the phone to the other ear."Fell through how?""Renovations," Gloria says, in the voice of a woman reading a word she doesn't believe."Sudden, urgent renovations. To a ballroom that got redone eighteen months ago. Deposit's back already. They're very sorry. They sounded sorry the wa

(Julian)"I'm giving a toast," I tell Gloria."Nobody asked you to give a toast.""Which is exactly the kind you want. The requested ones sound like hostage videos.""Is this the poem conversation again? Because the poem was vetoed.""The poem was your idea, and I vetoed it myself, on Natasha's behalf. This is a toast. Different genre entirely."There's a pause where I can hear her deciding whether this is a fight worth having."There's no line for a toast on the schedule," she says."There's no line for me on the schedule at all. I checked. I'm correcting an oversight.""Fine. You go after the food, before the dancing. How long do you need?""As long as it takes.""Two minutes.""We'll see.""Julian.""Gloria."She hangs up.So that's settled. I owe the happy couple a toast.I sit down at the kitchen table with a pad and a pen and write Natasha and Chase at the top and underline it twice.Then nothing happens for a while.Everything I try comes out wrong.To the bride and groom gets

(Chase)"You said one dance," I remind her, against her hair."I'm renegotiating.""You can't renegotiate mid-dance.""Watch me. Lily's asleep on your mother, and if I wake her to say goodbye she'll scream, and then I'll cry, and this makeup was applied by professionals.""So we just leave our daughter?""With her grandmother, who's always angling for more time with her. Don't look at me like that, it's one night."My mother is predictably delighted about keeping Lily for the night, and scandalized that we want to sneak off.She tells me to drive carefully, twice.We make it up the beach at a pace just under suspicious.Julian spots us and turns the music up to distract the others from our exit, because he misses nothing and tells no one.Then we’re in the car, speeding along the dark road, and my wife is sitting with her shoes off and her feet on the dash, eating cake off a napkin she stole on the way out."Is that my slice?" I ask."It's community property now. Keep up."My wife.I

(Natasha)"She's not wearing the right shoes.""Of course she is, what are you talking about?""The list said black.""The list said black or brown. You've read that list eleven times, and I'm starting to worry about you. Is old age addling your mind prematurely?"Chase is in the hallway with his phone up, filming our daughter, who is on her fourth minute of the same piece of toast.He keeps recording while turning his head to frown at me for the old age jab."You labeled her socks," he says, like that’s a suitable rebuttal."The list said label everything.""It said label her belongings. Socks aren't going to walk off.""Socks are the first thing to walk off. The second kids take off their shoes they just toss them anywhere and can’t find them again. You probably rolled yours neatly."His ears turn pink, which means I absolutely hit the hammer on the nail there. It’s so adorable I want to kiss him, but we have to leave soon."Lily. Two more bites," I try to hurry her along, already k