She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 48

Chapter 48 Hot Buttered Rum

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The dining table looks like a very happy disaster.

Dad outdid himself this year.

He always does when he has a real kitchen to work in and an audience willing to eat.

The remnants of our dinner are spread across the table in various states of destruction.

A picked-clean roast, the ghost of a potato gratin, half a loaf of his famous pull-apart bread that nobody could stop taking more of.

Mom is already making hot buttered rum in a pot on the stove, filling the townhouse with the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar and something so deeply Christmas that my chest physically aches with happiness.

This is it.

This is the thing I missed while I was living inside that cold, beautiful estate.

Not a specific dish or a tradition or a gift.

Just this.

Family and love and laughter.

Warmth that comes from the people in the room rather than an ornate fireplace and underfloor heating.

Lily is in her bouncer near the kitchen doorway, wide awake and tracking the chaos with enormous, serious eyes.

Just when I think the night is winding down, Liam takes over.

My younger foster brother is twenty years old and a theater major at UCLA.

He has the energy of a warren full of rabbits and he treats every room like a stage, and every gathering as an opportunity.

If he doesn’t make it as an actor it won’t be for a lack of talent or trying.

He’s been quietly preparing something in the living room for the past hour, which I chose not to investigate on the grounds that ignorance felt safer.

“Places!” Liam announces, appearing in the kitchen doorway wearing a makeshift conductor’s baton fashioned from a wooden spoon.

It appears he’s written a puppet show.

Full characters, assigned roles, handmade props sourced entirely from items found around the townhouse.

Dad is given a chef’s puppet with a tiny paper toque

Mom plays a wise queen

Lam apparently a brave knight, which makes me laugh so hard I nearly spill my hot buttered rum.

I have been brave this last year, but I intend to do better in the one ahead

+15 lignus

Liam assigns every person in the room a role with the cheerful authority of someone who has never once doubted his own vision.

Then he looks at Mason, who arrived forty minutes ago with a bottle of wine and wrapped gifts for Lily and me.

He had the relaxed manner of a man walking into the one place he genuinely wanted to be tonight.

I’m so glad I invited him. I owe litt so much.

Liam considers him for a moment.

He hadn’t been expecting him and so he clearly didn’t write him into the play.

“You’re the audience,” Liam decides.

Mason accepts this with great dignity, settles into the single armchair positioned in front of the makeshift stage and holds out his arms for Lily.

I pass her over without thinking.

She goes to him immediately, grabbing a fistful of his collar and inspecting it with great seriousness.

The sight of them together, Mason comfortable and easy with her, Lily perfectly content, does something complicated to my heart.

But I don’t have time to examine that right now because Liam is pointing the wooden spoon at me.

The show is glorious nonsense.

Dad forgets his lines twice and improvises both times with something funnier than what Liam wrote.

Mom plays her queen with tremendous regal energy, up until the point where she loses her puppet behind the makeshift curtain and has to conduct an undignified search.

Liam provides dramatic narration to cover the gap, but I can practically hear his eyes rolling.

I’m laughing so hard my sides ache and I don’t care even slightly.

This is what normal feels like.

This is what I want to give Lily as she grows up.

Silliness and laughter and nobody caring very much about keeping up appearances.

The doorbell ringing comes as a surprise.

Maybe it’s Gloria stopping by for a nightcap.

She said she wouldn’t be able to make it when I invited her, but maybe her family celebration ended early and she changed her mind.

Mason pushes himself up from the armchair with the easy one-armed confidence of someone who’s been holding a baby long enough to stop thinking about it.

Lily is comfortably settled against his shoulder as he goes to answer it while the show continues.

The Laughter in the living room covers the sound of the front door opening

What it doesh cover is the sudden silence that replaces it

+15 Banus

I hear Lily’s startled cry first, sharp and confused.

en Mason’s voice, low and immediately guarded.

Then another voice, one I would recognise anywhere, in any room, at any volume.

I’m already moving.

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