The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Chapter Twelve

Waiting

Fashion Week preparation is a particular kind of beautiful madness.

For three weeks in October, my studio became a war room. Fourteen-hour days. Cold coffee. The particular intimacy of working alongside people who are pouring themselves into something they care about.

I left the penthouse early. I came back late.

Sometimes past midnight. Sometimes past two.

The first night I came home at one AM, the apartment was dark. I moved quietly, not wanting to wake anyone.

The second night, there was a light in the living room.

Lucas was on the couch. Laptop open. A document on the screen I recognized as a Lancaster Fashion division report — the relaunch materials. He didn't look up when I walked in.

"You don't have to wait up," I said.

"I'm working."

I set down my bag, took off my shoes, and sat at the other end of the couch. Pulled out my own laptop. My sketchbook.

We worked in silence for an hour.

At some point, without discussion, he picked up his phone and ordered food. I heard him on the call — brief, efficient. He didn't ask me. He ordered noodles. Medium spice. No cilantro.

My order. Exactly.

I looked at him. He was already back to his screen.

"How do you know how I take my noodles?" I asked.

A pause so brief I almost missed it. "Mrs. Chen mentioned your preferences."

Mrs. Chen had not mentioned my preferences. Mrs. Chen took direction; she didn't volunteer information.

I let it go.

The food arrived. We ate on the couch with our laptops between us and the city spread below, forty-seven floors of quiet and glass.

The third night, he was there again. Different document. Same couch.

The fourth. The fifth.

He never said he was waiting. He always said he was working. And he was working — Lucas Lancaster didn't pretend; he was constitutionally opposed to pretense.

But he was also there. Every night I came home late, he was there.

On the fifth night I looked at him over the edge of my noodle box — he was reading something on his tablet, brow fractionally furrowed in the way that meant he disagreed with whatever he was reading — and I thought:

He's been noticing things. He noticed the cilantro. He noticed my swatch in the window light. He noticed when I was cold before I said I was cold.

He's been noticing things for a long time.

I looked back at my sketch before he could see my face.

My hand was not entirely steady on the pencil.