All Chapters of The Billionaire Fell For The Widower: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

Lucas Okon had learned to smile with his mouth and nothing else.It was a skill, actually. Nobody taught it to him. Grief taught it to him, the way grief teaches you things you never asked to know. He had practiced it in the bathroom mirror the first week after Ann died, back when he still had a corporate job and colleagues who wanted him to be okay. Stretch the lips. Crinkle the eyes a little, not too much. Nod like you're listening. It worked on people who weren't looking closely.Rich people never looked closely. That was the first thing he learned about this new life of his.He knelt under the kitchen sink of a house that cost more than he would earn in ten years, wrench in hand, sweat gathering at his collar even though the air conditioning was cold enough to see your breath. The pipe joint was corroded, nothing complicated. He could fix it in his sleep. He'd been fixing pipes for four months now, ever since he walked out of Harrington & Partners with a box of his things and a th

Vivienne Kingston had learned, in the six months since her father died, that grief and boardrooms did not mix well. Grief wanted you to sit still. Boardrooms wanted you sharp, dressed, unshaken, by nine.She gave them unshaken. It was the only thing she had left to give.Her father's office was still her father's office, technically, though her name was on the door now, freshly etched, the paint around it not yet faded to match the rest. She hadn't been able to bring herself to move the chair, the pen set, the small framed photo of the two of them at her graduation, him beaming like she'd hung the moon instead of just finished a business degree he'd already taught her twice over at the dinner table.Richard Kingston had built Kingston Holdings from a single shipping contract into something that touched half a dozen industries. He'd also, apparently, believed he had another twenty years to teach his daughter how to hold it. The heart attack took that assumption away from both of them i

Vivienne was eleven years old the first time she heard her mother called a witch to her face.Not directly to her face — her aunt Patience hadn't known she was standing in the corridor outside the dining room, small and quiet in her school uniform, waiting to be called in for dinner. Patience's voice had carried the way voices do when people believe children are elsewhere."That woman bewitched him," Patience was saying, to someone Vivienne couldn't see — probably Marcus, judging by the low murmur that answered. "A man like Richard Kingston, with everything, and he goes and marries a girl from Eket with nothing to her name. No family behind her. No name that means anything in this city. You tell me that's not spiritual.""Ma, leave it," Marcus had said, though not with much conviction."I won't leave it. Our brother had his pick of any daughter from any good family in this state, and he chose a nobody who trapped him with... whatever she used. I have my suspicions."Vivienne hadn't un