She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 146

(Chase)

It’s Tuesday.

This is a thing I know because the housekeeper has put a small printed card on my breakfast tray.

Apparently she’s been doing it every morning since I’ve been staying here, and I didn’t notice until today.

The card has the date on it.

It also has the weather and a small sentence in Spanish that I assume is a Bible verse, although it could just as easily be a recipe.

I can’t believe it’s Tuesday.

I’ve been here since Saturday night.

I’m very grateful my mother isn’t home.

She’d have pointedly told me to stop sulking and get my job back.

She’d also have tried to track Chloe down to give her a piece of her mind.

I don’t want any of those things.

I’m not sure that I’m sulking exactly.

Not anymore.

I was at first, when my grandfather told me he was putting me on forced leave.

The irony of him offering my job to Mason is too perfect not to be the universe laughing at me.

Karma is a bitch.

I haven’t done much of anything the past few days.

I sent a single email on Sunday afternoon, to my assistant, telling her not to forward me anything that did not pertain to my wife or my child.

Everything else could go to my grandfather.

She replied within four minutes with a message consisting entirely of the word Understood and a full stop.

I wish everyone was as succinct.

The phone hasn’t stopped, but I stopped looking at it.

It sits on the kitchen counter, face-down on a tea towel, buzzing periodically.

The cook doesn’t move it.

I don’t move it.

We’ve arrived at an unspoken arrangement in which the phone is now part of the kitchen, the way a fruit bowl is part of a kitchen.

And we’ve agreed to leave it where it is.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

I still wake up at six.

I drink coffee while standing in my father's study for an indeterminate amount of time looking at his shelves.

I’ve been eating whatever is put in front of me.

Including, this morning, a slice of toast with a small pile of avocado on it.

I’m not sure if that was intended as a dig about Chloe. Maybe I’m reaching.

I’m at a complete loss without the office to go to.

I guess that was my grandfather’s point.

It’s as though he’s put me in a room and told me to find out who I am when there’s nothing in the room but me.

I never understood how much of every previous morning of my life had been a meeting at seven, a call at seven thirty, a planning session at eight.

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