I Married The Wrong Brother のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 51 - チャプター 60

After Hours Natalie's POV By the time I finished dinner with Marcus, it was almost ten, and headquarters was the last place either of us should have gone. We went anyway. He had a folder of vendor comparisons he needed before Thursday's supply meeting. "We'll be twenty minutes," he said, holding the elevator. "Twenty minutes," I agreed. The thirty-second floor at ten at night was a different building. The overhead lights had dimmed to their after-hours setting, pools of gold along the corridor and darkness everywhere else. No phones ringing. No printers arguing with themselves. Only our footsteps echoing in the building. His office door was unlocked. He held it for me, and I stepped past him close enough to feel the warmth off his sleeve. "The folder's on the s

Date NightNatalie's POVEleanor picked Noah up herself at five, which she almost never did."I told you," she said, when I raised an eyebrow at her on the porch. "I'm making up for lost time with my grandson. Not for you two." But her eyes had a warmth in them I hadn't seen since her birthday, and she squeezed my hand before she left, quick and firm, like a woman passing along something she didn't have words for.Noah, halfway into her car, called back over his shoulder, "Can Marcus come get me tomorrow? He does the good voices for the dinosaur book.""We'll see," I called back, and he grinned at me through the window the whole way down the street.By seven the apartment was quiet in a way it hadn't been in years. No small feet on the floor. No cartoon theme song drifting from the living room. Just the two of us, a meal I hadn't rushed, and enough time that neither of us had to watch the clock.I won't say more about that night than this: it was slow where the others had been urgent,

The Whisper Natalie's POV Daniel was already waiting at the curb when I pulled up for the Friday handoff, which should have told me something before he said a word. He never arrived early. Arriving early meant waiting, and waiting meant looking like he wanted something, and Daniel had never once in his life wanted to look like he wanted something. But there he was, leaning against his car in a soft gray sweater, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, looking for all the world like a man who had simply had nothing better to do that afternoon. Noah barreled out of the car the second I unbuckled him, backpack thumping against his side. "Daddy!" "Hey, bud." Daniel crouched and caught him, lifting him easily, and for one unguarded second his face did something almost real, something that looked, from a distance, like love uncomplicated by anything else. Then he set Noah down and sent him

SeenNatalie's POVI spent Monday night deciding what kind of person I wanted to be about the photograph.I could hide. I had years of practice hiding, smoothing my face into something neutral and waiting for a storm to pass over me instead of through me. It would have been easy, familiar, almost comforting in its familiarity. Duck the fitting. Send Zoey in my place. Let the whispers exhaust themselves on an empty room.Or I could walk in.By morning I had my answer, and it surprised me a little, how simple it felt once I'd let myself land on it.---The Second Skin fitting was scheduled for ten, on the design floor, with the merchandising team, two board liaisons, and half the flagship staff expected to drift through at some point to see the final samples before the launch review. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of room a person hides from when they don't want to be looked at.I called Marcus at eight."I want you to come to the fitting."A pause. "Are you sure? After yesterd

The Calendar Locks Natalie's POV Marcus told me everything that night. "Daniel has interim oversight," he said. "Until the governance review closes." I felt the words land somewhere behind my ribs. "For how long?" "Twenty weeks. Same as the review. Same as the launch lock." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I fought it as much as I could without proving Ellison's point for her." "I know." And I did know, in the part of me that understood how these rooms worked, how a man protecting the woman he loved could be turned, instantly, into evidence against them both. It didn't make the twenty weeks feel any shorter. "I'm sorry," Marcus said. "I hate that I'm sorry for something I didn't have a choice about. But I am." "Don't be sorry." I reached for his hand on the floor between us. "Be careful. That's different."&nbs