All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Wife Does Not Exist: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

He stared at me long enough that I finally told him to stop. "My wife just asked me to buy a home with her," he said. "I'm having a moment." I reminded him we already owned Hartwell House, and he corrected me gently, pointing out he'd owned it before I ever arrived, that I'd moved into it, and that this would be the first home neither of us had before the other. That was exactly why it felt so significant.He reached for his phone immediately, already trying to arrange another viewing, and I had to remind him it was nearly midnight. "I'm Chairman," he said, as if that settled it. "Of Ashbourne. Not real estate," I told him, and he finally agreed to wait until morning, though he spent most of the night in bed listing kitchen ideas and closet configurations until I told him to sleep. He pulled me closer instead. "I like planning things with you," he said, simple as that, and it landed harder than he probably meant it to, because he used to plan for me. Now he planned with me.We went ba

"Everything doesn't mean you get to purchase an entire furniture catalogue before breakfast," I told him."I have excellent taste.""You own a house with a room nobody sits in because the chairs are too expensive to look comfortable.""That is an architectural decision.""That is a cry for help."He laughed, and I felt the whole day settle into something warm and easy before we'd even sat down for the paperwork.At the solicitor's office, our names appeared side by side on the documents, Tessa Marlowe, Roman Ashbourne, ordinary black print, and I paused longer than I expected to."You okay?" he asked, noticing immediately."I wasn't expecting two names on a piece of paper to feel like anything.""We've had our names on marriage documents before.""That wasn't the same." Our marriage certificate had come at the beginning of something we hadn't yet learned how to build. This came after we'd already learned exactly what it cost to get it wrong. This time, I knew precisely whose name I wa

Roman carried the heavier boxes inside while I still held onto the portrait, refusing to let anyone else touch it. "Where do you want it?" he asked once we were standing in the empty entryway, and I walked around with it for a while, past the bedroom, past something too ceremonial, past a spot too hidden upstairs. I finally settled on the living room wall, somewhere we'd pass it every single day."There?" he asked."There.""You're sure?""I wouldn't be holding a hammer if I wasn't."He offered to hang it himself, and I refused, not to prove anything, just because this one was mine to do. I struggled to get it straight while he gave increasingly unhelpful directions, insisting I move it left when I already had, and when I demanded to know whose left he meant, he told me with total confidence that there was only one left in the entire universe. I threatened him with the hammer and he backed away, hand pressed dramatically to his chest like a man mortally wounded.When it finally hung l

The silence stretched on longer than I expected, Roman close enough to hear breathing but never crossing the space I'd drawn between us. In our old marriage he would have disappeared into work by now, and I would have made myself smaller until the problem seemed to vanish on its own. Neither of those things was happening tonight."This is strange," I finally said."Sleeping?""Being angry with you while you're still here.""Would you rather I wasn't?""No," I said, and that single word quietly shifted the air in the room.I'd pulled most of the blanket to my side without meaning to, and I felt him notice, felt him push more of it toward me without reaching for anything else. "Are you giving me the blanket while you're angry with me?" I asked. "I'm irritated, Tess. I'm not a monster." I reminded him he stole it every other night, and he claimed conflict had apparently made him generous, which nearly made me laugh despite everything.We lay there a while longer before I let my foot drif

I took his hand, and it felt smaller than it should have, considering everything it meant. He led me away from the executive floor, the surroundings growing less polished with every hallway, until we reached an older wing where an operations team was working through a difficult restructuring tied to the decision he'd made that morning.Employees called him by name here. He asked one man how his daughter's graduation had gone. He remembered another woman's recent surgery without being reminded. He was still unmistakably Chairman, but nothing about him was performing that fact. One older employee teased him lightly about something from years ago, and I watched him take it easily, nothing defensive in his laugh."I wasn't born wearing a suit, Tess.""Evidence remains limited."He gathered a small group whose jobs hung uncertain because of the delayed expansion, and he explained the decision himself instead of sending someone else to do it. He didn't promise what he couldn't guarantee. Wh