All Chapters of She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife: Chapter 271 - Chapter 280

313 Chapters

Chapter 271 The Kellys

(Natasha)"Lee. Lee-am. Come on, it's two syllables and you've got two."Liam's been on the floor with Lily for twenty minutes, saying his own name at her like a man teaching a parrot to insult his enemies.Lily considers him with enormous patience and grabs his nose."She's going to say it," he announces. "First word. Mark the date. History will be made.""She'll say it when she says it," Mom calls from the stove, not turning round."Your first word came at sixteen months and it was 'dog.' We didn't even have a dog."My parents flew in yesterday, and my mom walked in with two coolers and an opinion on everything in my kitchen.Most of her silent scorn reserved for the pre-made meals in the freezer.She's been running the place since six this morning like she's lived here for years.Which she honestly has been doing on and off this past year, and I don’t mind.It’s great having them here.Even if she nods like she totally doesn’t believe me when I say I cook most nights.Chase is at t

Chapter 272 Long Straw

(Taylor)"Everybody takes one straw. Long straw gives the eulogy. No trading, no bribes... Sonia, I can see your wallet, put it away."I hold the fistful of cut-down cocktail straws over the table like I'm dealing a hand."Everybody draw, but don’t show your straw. The big reveal will come at the end when you hold them side by side to see which is the longest.""This is so morbid," Gloria says, and takes one anyway."It's planning. You lot plan billion-dollar mergers down to the comma, and not one of you has given a single thought to my funeral. I'm a little hurt."Julian leans back with his arm along my chair."It will have to be an early one. I've got a tee time at eleven that I can’t miss.""You don't golf.""I'll learn. Grief hobby. Seems a suitably grim thing to force myself to do."I kiss him, quick, because he's mine and he feeds me a line like he was born for it.Something I didn’t know about marrying a man who jokes about everything, is that you stop being able to find the ed

Chapter 273 The Sideline

(Hannah)I see him before Elijah does. Small mercy.He's standing on the wrong sideline, the away side, where the other team's parents have given him a wide berth.He was intimidating at eighteen. That hasn’t been diluted over the years, it’s been concentrated.His folding chair is still creased from its packaging.He’s holding a travel mug, presumably filled with coffee.No driver, no suit, no assistant trailing him.I doubt he’s ever done anything like this.Just Chase Warren, alone, on a Saturday, at a kids' soccer game, in a chair he clearly bought on his way here.I'd braced for a circus when he found out about Elijah.I know the legacy he comes from and how much money he has.Somehow this is worse.This is a man trying.I didn’t want Elijah growing up to be an entitled, spoiled, billionaire princeling.I didn’t want him to have a father who knew about him and barely acknowledged his existence.Now it appears I was wrong about everything and I deserve the scornful fury Elijah’s b

Chapter 274 The One

(Chloe)Mason drives the way he does everything when he’s around me now.Carefully.Both eyes on the road, one hand drifting to the back of my seat at every red light, like the car might fold itself around me.He never used to drive this way.I also miss when he wasn’t this tense around me."You can relax," I tell him. "She's very well padded in here.""I'm relaxed.""Your knuckles are white.""I like to keep a firm grip on the steering wheel."He's lying, and it's sweet, and I let it sit there.This is the longest we've been in a car together since the drive home from the desert.He didn't say a word that whole drive.Four hours.And I didn't blame him for a single mile of it.I believe things happen for a reason. I believe it with all my heart.I haven’t been able to find the reason in that one, no matter how hard I’ve tried.Especially considering how it turned out, because he knocked me up that weekend, right before the universe decided we shouldn’t be together.But that doesn’t m

Chapter 275 Two Words

(Natasha)"So," I try. "Chase says you're a striker.""Winger." Elijah doesn't look up. "Right wing.""Right. Right wing."First time I meet him and I've already got his position wrong.It’s the third dead end in ten minutes.I’ve closed deals across the table from men who'd happily watch me drown, and I can’t get four words in a row out of one teenager at my own kitchen table.He came in with his jacket on and hasn't taken it off.He's angled toward the door, one knee bouncing under the table, phone face-up beside his plate like a getaway car.Everything about him is counting down to the moment when he gets to leave.Chase sits across from me working hard to look relaxed and landing somewhere closer to a man watching his own heart monitor.Every time I try and Elijah shuts it down in two words, a small flinch goes through him.He wants this to go well so badly it's coming off him.I want it to go well too.That's half the problem.You can't make a kid this age like you.They can smel

Chapter 276 Sides

(Liam)Sonia turns up at my door near midnight with a script in her hand and panic all over her face."I have a callback tomorrow. A real one. Real actors, the kind who trained."She's already past me into the apartment."And I have no clue what I'm doing, and you're the only person I know who actually does. So."So.With everyone else now she's all armor and press-trained smile that looks warm, but gives nothing away.With me she just barges in and panics out loud.I try not to make it mean more than it does.I fail at that nightly.Sonia getting famous was a bit of a fluke.She’s had no training, but she has the natural ability to lose herself in the role once she manages to tune out her surroundings.That’s harder to do when everyone around you trained for years and consider themselves serious actors, and you an interloper who got lucky once and should crawl back into the hole you came from.They treat her with open disdain and that brings all her worst fears about herself to the s

Chapter 277 Never-Said-Never

(Sonia)"-and that's how I ended up banned from the catering truck," I finish.Nathanial laughs.That's twice now.He's got a bread roll in one hand and he's forgotten to be guarded, which is the entire reason I picked the brightest restaurant in the city and ordered for the table before anyone could reach a menu.Keep them fed, keep them laughing, keep the air moving.Natasha hasn't laughed once.Arms folded, watching me the way you watch a street performer.Entertained, and completely aware she's being worked.I refill Nathanial's water before he can run out and tell him the lamb ragu is already on its way and he'll thank me later."You're managing me," he accuses."I'm feeding you. There's a difference. Eat."He’s been a bit down lately and it’s nice to see him relax a little.I am also trying to soften them up so I can ask for a favor.Natasha watches the whole show, unmoved, and waits me out.She lets me run dry on small talk before she forces the matter."You didn't bring us her

Chapter 278 The Wrong End

(Chase)James notices I'm not eating before I do."You came to tell me something," he says. "So tell me, or eat. You're insulting the chicken.""I don't know how to be his father."There.I’ve admitted it out loud.I've successfully expanded and led a multi-billion dollar company for years, since long before anyone but my grandfather believed I was ready for it, barring one hiccup with Chloe, and I couldn't say that sentence to my own reflection.But James gets it over a Tuesday roast.We’ve kept up our Tuesday get-togethers.Always at his place, because I don’t think he wants to be exposed to any more of my cooking.He always makes far more food than two men need, and offers me his ear and sage advice whenever possible.Since that stretch earlier this year when I was coming apart and pretending I wasn't."I keep showing up," I say."And he keeps treating me like a stranger he's been told to be polite to and can't quite manage.”I sigh deeply.“I can walk into any boardroom and bend i

Chapter 279 Stay

(Natasha)Chase shows up at my door at eleven at night with no warning and no reason, which he never does.He shows up unannounced all the time, but not in the middle of the night.He has a key. He doesn't use it. He knocks.Wise decision given the hour."Lily's asleep," I say. It's the only normal thing I can think of."I didn't come for Lily."He's still in his dinner clothes, tie gone, like he left somewhere mid-sentence.He doesn't come in.He stands on the step like a man who rehearsed something in the car and lost all of it on the walk up."I've been giving you space," he says. "Because I thought that’s the right thing to do.""Chase-""It wasn't. It was me on the far side of the room, waiting for you to cross first, so if it went wrong this time it wasn't on me."He pulls a breath."I'm done with that. I came to cross it. I don’t want to play it safe anymore. I think you know by now that I see you. Not the girl on the beach. You. And I want to be with you. Properly."I should s

Chapter 280 The Good Part

(Chase)I don't sleep.I've never been able to sleep in the good part of anything.I lie there waiting for it to get taken back.Natasha's against my side in the dark, not asleep either.I can tell by her breathing.The first time was fast.Too long of not-this came down all at once and neither of us lasted the way we'd have wanted.I would have apologized except she laughed, this delighted, wrecked sound, and told me to give her ten minutes.It's been eleven.Her hand moves first.Flat on my chest, then lower, unhurried, like she's decided something and is taking her time about the execution.She does everything like that.Decides, then does."You're thinking," she says into the dark."I'm always thinking.""Stop."She rolls up over me, and her weight presses me down into the mattress.Natasha, who has spent the entire time I've known her three steps ahead of every man in the room, looks down at me like I'm the one thing she didn't see coming.This time there's no rush in it.This ti

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