Buying My Forever Wife novel Chapter 67

As Ivy approached Stella's bedroom door, she could still hear the little girl's muffled sobs echoing from inside.

Mr. Foster was actually attempting to comfort her patiently.

It didn't seem to be working.

She knocked gently and walked in, her heart pounding with a guilty conscience that kept her eyes firmly averted from the man sitting by the bed. She walked straight to the little girl.

"Stella, please stop crying, okay?"

Stella looked up at her through tear-soaked lashes.

"I'm not going to stop! You and Daddy aren't a real married couple. You're going to break up eventually! You're just pretending to make me happy. I don't want either of you! Go away!"

Alaric sat in the chair, completely out of his depth with his daughter's emotional breakdown.

He had run out of patience for coaxing.

He leaned back, waiting to see exactly how Ivy planned to defuse the situation.

Ivy nervously glanced over at Alaric, carefully suggesting:

"Mr. Foster, maybe... maybe you could show Stella our marriage certificate?"

Surely a legal document would prove they were truly married!

Back when they first signed the papers, she had taken a quick photo to send to her parents, but after that, she had handed the certificate right back to him.

He had kept it ever since.

Alaric leveled a flat stare at her. "She's five. What makes you think she understands what a marriage certificate is?"

His unspoken message was clear: showing it to her was completely pointless.

Stella was too young to read most of the words on it.

And she certainly wouldn't grasp the legal significance of a piece of paper.

Ivy was stumped.

Seeing Stella still hiccuping through her tears, and sensing Mr. Foster's patience wearing dangerously thin, she knelt by the bed again.

"Then tell me, what do you want me to do so you'll stop crying and being mad?"

Stella pointed a trembling finger directly at her father.

"You have to kiss Daddy! A real kiss proves you're together, and that you'll give me a baby brother later."

"Otherwise, it's all fake! You're just a big sister Daddy hired to watch me, and I don't want a big sister!"

"Mr... Mr. Foster, I... I apologize in advance."

The moment the words left her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed a quick, desperate kiss to his cheek.

Back when she was dating Patrick Sterling, they had shared innocent kisses on the cheek.

But this felt entirely different.

Those early moments with Patrick were filled with naive longing and the sweet thrill of a teenage crush.

This moment was driven purely by pure terror, panic, and a paralyzing fear of whatever the hell was going to happen next.

Truthfully, Alaric wasn't faring much better.

In his thirty-two years of life, it was the first time a woman had ambushed him with a kiss to the cheek.

In that split second, his heart gave a violent lurch, sending shockwaves radiating from his chest through his entire body.

The sudden intimacy left him completely paralyzed, a slow burn of heat creeping up the back of his neck and tinting his ears red. For a moment, he had absolutely no idea how to react.

Ivy pulled back as if she'd been burned, her face practically glowing red, her pulse racing wildly.

Terrified to even look at Alaric's reaction, she immediately spun back to the child on the bed.