All Chapters of I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Emily's POVWe sat on the dock that evening with our feet in water cold enough to make me gasp the first time I dipped them in, and Nathaniel laughed, actually laughed, an easy unguarded sound I had heard from him maybe twice since the courthouse, and I decided right then that I wanted to hear it a thousand more times before I let myself worry about anything Marcus or the board or the next ninety days had planned for us.The lake had gone the particular deep blue it turns right before full dark, the far shore already lost to shadow, and somewhere behind us an owl was working through a call it didn't quite seem satisfied with, trying it again every few minutes like it hoped a different pitch might finally land right. I found myself thinking about how strange it was that a place could hold two versions of a person at once, the boy who'd learned to fish here and the man who'd built an empire out of never sitting still long enough to remember him, and that I had somehow been allowed to me

Emily's POVWe drove back into the city Sunday evening, and Monday morning, before I had even finished tying my apron, Nathaniel showed up at Hart & Daughter in a coat that cost more than our monthly rent used to, announcing, with the particular seriousness he usually reserved for board meetings, that he intended to work a full shift behind the counter."You don't have to do this," I said, already fighting a smile."I want to. I told your father I'd be here at seven. He seemed suspicious that I'd actually show up." He rolled up his sleeves like a man preparing for battle instead of a morning rush of coffee orders. "I intend to prove him wrong."He did not prove Walter wrong so much as he proved, spectacularly, within the first twenty minutes, exactly how little a man who ran a billion dollar company actually knew about steaming milk. He burned his hand on the espresso machine twice. He gave a woman decaf when she'd ordered a triple shot, and only realized his mistake when she came bac

Emily's POV"They're calling it a fairy tale now," my assistant editor friend texted me at seven in the morning, "which is a very different headline than the one they ran about you three weeks ago, and I think you should sit down before you read the comments."I did not sit down. I stood in the kitchen in my robe, coffee going cold in my hand, scrolling through a version of my own life that a stranger had written about me overnight. The photograph was from the lake house, taken from a distance we hadn't noticed, Nathaniel and me on the dock at sunset, his jacket around my shoulders, both of us laughing at something the camera would never know the context of. The headline read Whitfield's Wife, Real After All. Three weeks earlier the same paper had run a headline calling me a bakery girl who married for a fortune. I did not know which version of myself to trust less, the villain or the fairy tale, since neither of them had asked me a single question before deciding who I was.Nathaniel

Emily's POV"I'm not here to be forgiven," Eleanor said, setting two cups of coffee on my father's small back table the next morning, "I'm here because a man deserves better than an apology delivered once and never followed up on."She had come back the next day, alone this time, no driver waiting outside, no Nathaniel trailing behind her for support. I watched from the counter, pretending to organize the register, as my father waved her toward the back office where they used to meet for their weekly croissant order twenty years ago, before either of us knew how tangled our two families actually were.I don't know everything that was said in that room, because I gave them the privacy neither of them had asked for but clearly needed, but I caught pieces through the half open door while I restocked the shelf closest to it, not proud of eavesdropping, not sorry either."I loved her," I heard my father say, his voice thick in a way I rarely heard from him. "Twenty two years and I still li

Emily's POV"I wondered when you'd finally learn to hold a wine glass properly," Vanessa said, appearing at my elbow like she'd been waiting all evening for the chance, "though I suppose someone had to teach you which fork to use first too."The Whitfield Foundation gala was the kind of event I'd once have found unimaginable, a ballroom lit gold, a string quartet playing something I didn't recognize, a guest list that read like a business section headline made flesh. Six months ago I would have spent the whole night counting exits. Tonight, standing in a dress Nathaniel had insisted was mine to keep regardless of what happened between us, I found I didn't feel like counting anything at all."I actually learned to hold a piping bag before I learned to hold a wine glass," I told Vanessa, turning to face her fully instead of pretending not to notice her the way I might have months ago. "Funny thing about that skill, it teaches you a steadier hand than most finishing schools ever manage t