She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 51

Chapter 51 The Skylight Room

atasha)

It’s past midnight when my parents and brother have settled in for the night.

I find Chase in the hallway, moving on reflex, the steady sway-and-step pattern etched so deep it no longer seerns deliberate.

Lily is deeply asleep against his shoulder and he’s staring at nothing in particular.

He looks up when he hears me.

Neither of us says anything for a moment.

The house is quiet around us, the Christmas Eve chaos settled into warm stillness.

I look at him and I look at our sleeping daughter and I read the situation with very little difficulty.

He doesn’t want to go back to the estate.

I can’t blame him.

From the little he said about the dinner party, it seems to have been a Morton family production of considerable intensity.

Whatever drove him to show up on my doorstep unannounced on Christmas Eve, it wasn’t an abundance of festive spirit.

I should send him home, but it’s late. And it’s Christmas.

“Come with me,” I say quietly.

I take him down the hall to the room at the end.

I’ve been working on it in stages, whenever I have a few hours and a clear enough head to think about something hopeful.

The walls are a soft, warm beige.

There’s a nursing chair in the corner I found at a market and reupholstered myself, badly but cheerfully.

Fairy lights are strung along the top of the bookshelf, currently switched off.

And above it all, taking up most of the ceiling, is the skylight.

It was the reason I chose this room.

On a clear night the view of the sky is gorgeous.

Tonight it’s very clear.

Chase stops in the doorway and looks up.

“This is her room?” he asks.

“It’s still a work in progress, but eventually it will be.”

I move to the wardrobe and pull out the folded travel cot, setting it up near the nursing chair.

1/3

hapen av SkyRoom

+15 Bonus

“Until I get a better one, this will do.”

settles Lily down with the practiced care of someone who has done this enough times to know exactly how much movement wakes her and how much she’ll sleep through.

We both hold our breath for three seconds. She sighs and stays down.

I pull a set of blankets from the wardrobe shelf and hold them out to him.

“The sofa in the corner folds out into something approximately resembling a bed,” I tell him.

“The key word being approximately. Don’t come to me with doctor’s bills if your back hurts in the morning.”

He looks so grateful when he takes the blankets from my hands.

“Thank you, Natasha.”

No edge in it. No undertone. Just the words, said plainly.

It’s such a simple thing and it lands with a disproportionate weight.

We stand on opposite sides of the travel cot looking down at Lily.

Neither of us moves for a moment longer than is strictly necessary.

The skylight throws a pale wash of moonlight across her face.

She looks perfect.

She always looks perfect.

“She has your mouth,” Chase says quietly.

“She has your frown,” I reply.

A beat of silence. Then, very quietly, he laughs. Just a breath of it.

I know I should leave.

His phone lights up on the windowsill where he set it down.

The screen fills with Sonia’s name. Then it goes dark. Then lights up again.

I watch him look at it with an incredibly tired expression.

He picks it up and I catch a glimpse of the screen before he angles it away.

Twelve missed calls. Possibly more.

Something moves across his face.

Not guilt exactly.

Something more complicated and less easy to categorize.

He turns the phone face-down on the windowsill.

He doesn’t explain and I don’t ask.

The silence between us is different to the silences we usually share.

2/3

+15 Bonus

Those are loaded with old grievances and careful positioning.

his one is just quiet.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify