The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Chapter Fourteen

Misunderstood

The photographs appeared at eleven on a Thursday morning, which I know because Clara texted me at exactly that time.

Have you seen the Daily Post? Don't panic. Call me.

I opened the link.

The headline: Lancaster Wife and Ex-Boyfriend: The Truth Behind the Marriage?

The photographs: three of them, taken outside my studio three days earlier. Ethan and me. His hand on my arm. My face tilted up toward his, eyes bright — I'd been furious, telling him for the fourth time to leave me alone, and apparently fury and devastation photograph the same way.

I'd been crying. Not about Ethan. About the contract. About a piece of paper that said I wasn't allowed to feel the things I was feeling.

The photos didn't show any of that.

I sat with the phone in my hand and thought about calling Lucas. Then I thought about what he would see when he looked at those photos — and my chest went cold.

He came home at seven.

I knew immediately. The energy in the apartment was different. He set down his keys with the particular care of a man keeping himself very controlled.

"Lucas—"

"I saw them."

"He came to the studio. I told him to go. I've told him four times."

He looked at me. His face was composed. That careful, absolute composure that I now knew cost him something.

"The photos suggest otherwise," he said.

"Then the photos are wrong."

The silence stretched.

I watched him and waited for something — an argument, a confrontation, the version of Lucas who'd terminated a business partnership over the word hobby — and instead I got stillness.

A withdrawal.

"I'm not interested in Carter," I said. Steady. Clear. "I have never been interested in going back to Carter."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he crossed to his study. Put his hand on the door.

"Get some rest," he said. And closed it.

I stood in the living room alone.

He believed me. I thought he believed me. But something had closed in him like a shutter and I didn't know how to open it and that was the worst part — not the accusation, but the distance.

I didn't knock.

I should have.

I went to my room instead and lay on top of the covers and thought about how much could go unsaid between two people who'd contracted themselves to say nothing important.