All Chapters of He Chose My Sister, So I Married His Enemy: Chapter 271 - Chapter 280

"The operations coordinator withdrew this morning," Claire said, no preamble at all, already moving with the particular briskness that meant she was somewhere between her front door and her car. "A legitimate reason, a family situation she can't put on hold. I don't fault her for it. But Grace's whole team is assembled for the readiness review, and we can't approve the pilot without the operations role confirmed.""I know what that means.""You need to be here. The board attached personal oversight to your approval. I'm heading in now."I hung up and stood there for a moment in the quiet kitchen, the satisfaction of last night still warm in my chest even as the morning's shape rearranged itself entirely around me. When I went back into the bedroom, Damien was already awake, propped against the pillows, and he read the whole thing off my face before I'd said a single word."You have to go.""I have to go." I sat on the edge of the bed, and he caught my wrist, holding on for an extra se

"Friday works," I said, and felt him relax slightly against me, though he still looked apologetic enough that I pulled him closer instead of letting him keep apologizing further."I know I keep asking you to move things.""You didn't move the board retreat, Damien. You just told me honestly the moment it happened." I kissed him once, easy and certain. "Friday belongs to us now.""You've claimed two consecutive weeks. Thursday last week, Friday this one." I raised an eyebrow at him. "You're becoming greedy about my calendar.""I intend to keep claiming evenings with my wife whenever the opportunity presents itself," he said, entirely unbothered by the accusation, and kissed me slow enough that any remaining trace of disappointment folded quietly into something warmer before we finally went to bed.Wednesday morning found us getting ready together, moving in the easy, practiced rhythm we'd built over the past weeks, him closing the clasp at the back of my dress while I fixed his cufflin

We stayed on the sofa a while after he said it, neither of us pushing for the day he'd deliberately left unnamed. Damien drew me closer, his chin resting against my hair, and asked, quiet and genuine, "What was it like, watching them pass?""There was a moment," I started, thinking back to it properly, "in the middle of one of the test scenarios, something they'd deliberately built in to be difficult, a detail easy to overlook if you weren't paying close attention. The coordinator caught it right before it would have slipped past everyone, and the whole room just went still for a second because that was the exact thing we needed to know they could do."He kissed me before I finished, slow and proud, and I let the sentence dissolve into it easily enough, certain there'd be time to finish the thought later.Monday brought a voice note from Damien midafternoon, his tone suppressing laughter. "A man in my board meeting just described a coffee machine malfunction as a systemic failure requ

Damien's meeting had run until nearly eleven, and he still reached for me when I passed him at the bathroom mirror the next morning, one hand catching my wrist, pulling me close enough to kiss my shoulder while I searched for an earring. "You look tired," I said."I am. I also refuse to let that stop me from doing this." He turned me properly toward him and fixed the collar I'd left askew, his fingers working the fabric straight with the easy, unhurried attention he always brought to small adjustments, and I found a button of his that had slipped and fixed it in return.We'd gotten efficient at this, I noticed faintly, somewhere underneath the kiss that followed, neither of us needing to ask where keys or bags or phones had gone, both of us simply knowing, hands finding the familiar things without looking. He walked me to the door, pressed one more kiss against my mouth that neither of us quite wanted to end, and I was halfway down the steps before I registered how smoothly the whole

"I'm sorry about last night," I said over coffee, before he'd even fully sat down. "I wanted to hear the rest.""You don't need to apologize again. You were exhausted." He kissed the top of my head on his way past, unbothered, no residue of last night's quiet disappointment visible this morning at all."Will you tell me about the colleague? Tonight, maybe.""When we're both actually awake enough to do it properly." He said it easily, no withdrawal in it, just the plain practical truth that last night's openness wasn't something either of us could simply summon again on command. "It's not going anywhere.""Promise?""I promise," he said, and kissed me properly before leaving, the morning's affection as real and easy as it always was.Neither of us had anything pulling us away that evening, no late meeting, no phone call threatening to interrupt, and he actually cooked, something simple he'd apparently researched specifically to avoid repeating his earlier smoke-alarm reputation, narrat