The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Chapter Eleven

Jealous

Ethan began his campaign the following week.

Flowers on Monday — two dozen white peonies, my favorite, which he'd remembered. I told reception not to accept them. They were there when I arrived Tuesday.

A car waiting outside the studio on Wednesday. I took the subway.

Thursday, a table at Lutèce — our restaurant, the first place we'd had a real date — reserved under my name. I cancelled it by phone and didn't go.

Friday, he appeared in the audience at a fashion preview I was presenting. When the lights came up, he stood.

"Sophia Bennett is the most talented designer I've ever known," he said, in a room of two hundred people. "And I let her go because I was an idiot." He looked directly at me. "I'll wait as long as it takes."

The room went very quiet.

Someone filmed it. By that evening it had been cut together with the Lucas clip — obsessed husband versus repentant ex — and the internet had chosen sides with great enthusiasm.

I came home to a dark apartment.

Lucas was in the kitchen. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled. A glass in his hand. He didn't turn when I walked in.

"You should call him back," he said.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Excuse me?"

"Carter." He still didn't turn. "If that's what you want."

I crossed the kitchen slowly and stood where I could see his face. He was looking at the glass. His jaw was set.

"Is that what you want?" I asked.

A long silence.

He didn't answer.

"Lucas."

"Go to bed, Sophia."

"You brought it up."

"I shouldn't have."

The silence between us filled with everything neither of us was saying. The kitchen felt very small. He was close enough that I could see the slight tension in his hands around the glass.

"He's not what I want," I said. Quiet. Certain.

He finally looked at me.

For one unguarded second, something moved across his face that I had never seen there before. Something that looked almost like relief — and was quickly, deliberately, replaced by composure.

"Good night," he said.

I went to bed.

I lay awake for an hour and listened to him not sleeping in the kitchen.

I counted nothing. There was nothing to count.

I just listened to the sound of Lucas Lancaster being awake at midnight for the first time in his very controlled life.