She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 55

Chapter 55 The Grieving Guest

(Natasha)

Two days.

Sonia has been at the Warren estate for two days, and if Eleanor’s mournful hovering is anything to go by, she intends to stay forever.

I come downstairs on the morning of day three to find them in the sitting room together.

Sonia is curled in the corner of the sofa with a blanket and a cup of chamomile tea, looking fragile and devastated.

Eleanor sits beside her, rubbing slow circles on her back.

“She barely slept,” Eleanor tells me quietly, as though I’m a nurse being briefed on a patient.

“I’m so sorry, Sonia,” I say.

And I mean it, because whatever my feelings are about this woman, losing a pregnancy is one of the most terrible things I can imagine.

I spent enough time terrified of losing my own to know that.

Sonia looks up at me with wet eyes and a trembling lip.

“Thank you, Natasha,” she whispers.

Eleanor looks at me with an expression that says, you see? She’s being so brave.

I go and get my own coffee, fiercely pressing down the irritation that’s trying to bubble through my sympathy.

If only I hadn’t arranged with Mason to start work on the second of January.

I could have been at the office right now, rather than receiving updates on Sonia’s condition.

I’m in the nursery with Lily after lunch when Sonia appears in the doorway.

The transformation is incredible.

The trembling lip is gone. Her eyes are dry. She leans against the doorframe and watches me change Lily’s nappy with an expression that holds no grief at all.

“You must be relieved,” she says pleasantly.

I don’t look up. “I’m sorry?”

“The miscarriage.” She examines her nails. “You’ve probably been hoping for something like this.”

I fasten Lily’s nappy and pick her up before I answer.

Lily grabs my hair immediately, yanking with more power than one would think an infant capable of.

It’s grounding in a way I appreciate right now.

“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” I tell her.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Sonia says, in a tone that makes it clear she believes the opposite.

She pushes off the doorframe and takes a step into the room.

Chapter 5 The Onaving Guest

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Then she looks at Lily, and something flickers across her face that I can’t quite read.

need you to keep her away from me,” Sonia says. “Seeing the baby is too painful. It’s triggering.”

I look at her. “This is Lily’s home.”

“And I’m her father’s fiancée who just suffered a great loss.”

Her voice stays soft, but there’s steel underneath it.

“Surely you can manage some basic sensitivity. Or is that too much to ask of you?”

She leaves before I can answer.

I stand in the nursery holding my daughter and stare at the empty doorway contemplatively.

The thing is, I was almost certain Sonia was never pregnant at all.

And the way she turns her sadness off and on like a tap, depending on who’s around, makes it feel unlikely that she lost a baby.

But Dr. Evans came. He examined her. He confirmed the miscarriage.

There’s no way he would have gone along with it if she was faking.

It keeps scratching at me though. Nothing adds up.

And I’m not usually wrong about things I observe carefully.

But the alternative, that a licensed doctor stood in this house and lied, is a more serious accusation than I’m about

to make on instinct alone.

I file it away and say nothing.

Chase comes home at six.

Sonia hears him at the door all the way from her room upstairs, which must be some kind of talent, and reactivates her grief with impressive speed.

By the time he reaches the hallway she’s appeared at the top of the stairs, one hand on the banister.

“Chase,” she says softly.

He looks up at her.

I’m standing out of sight near the kitchen doorway and I see his face.

A flash of something behind his eyes when he looks at her that isn’t sympathy or devastation.

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