The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Chapter Eighteen

Choose You

Paris is easy to get lost in. That's partly why I'd wanted to come.

I moved through the first two days on professional autopilot — meetings, fittings, the particular focused energy of an industry week that demanded presence. I was present. I was professional.

I was also carrying an airport around inside my chest.

The third day, my studio manager Ji-woo called with a question about our three new interns — the ones who'd started a month ago through a design scholarship program.

"The Bennett Initiative placement?" I said.

"Yes. Do you want to sign off on their project assignments, or should I—"

I stopped walking. "What's the Bennett Initiative?"

A pause. "The scholarship program. The one funding the interns. It's been running for — I thought you knew? Six months now."

Six months.

I was in the middle of a Paris side street when I called Lily.

"The Bennett Initiative," I said when she answered. "Who set it up?"

A long pause. "Sophia—"

"Lily."

"It's anonymously funded through a trust. I didn't ask questions because the money was legitimate and the candidates were excellent."

"Find out."

She called back in twenty minutes.

I already knew before she said it. Some part of me had known the moment Ji-woo said six months.

Six months ago, I was still sleeping under the same roof as a man who'd told me on our first meeting that he didn't do feelings.

I called Daniel, Lucas's driver.

"The night I had a fever," I said. "The meeting he canceled. What was it?"

A pause. "Miss Sophia, I'm not sure I should—"

"Please."

A longer pause. "The Singapore acquisition. Thirty million dollar window. It closed without Lancaster Group."

Thirty million dollars.

He'd sat in a chair and watched me sleep through a fever and called it unimportant.

I thought about every cold evening he'd been waiting when I came home late. Every time he'd deflected a journalist's pointed question with phrasing that placed me not beside him but with him, differently. The acquisition offer — the one that was so fair it was almost a gift. His hand in mine in the lobby, three seconds too long.

He'd been telling me.

For months, in every language except the one that terrified him, he'd been telling me.

I stood in Paris and looked at the sky and thought about a man standing in a terminal watching a jetway long after the plane had pushed back.

I opened my laptop and booked the first available flight home.

Then I went back to my hotel and packed faster than I'd packed in my life.

This time I was the one running toward something.