Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 125

Chapter 114: Observations

Cameron’s POV

The silence lasted long enough that I became aware of my own heartbeat, which was operating at a pace that seemed excessive for a Tuesday morning in an office and I tried to control it, but it wasn’t possible,

“A glass,” he said.

“Yes.”

“At the quarterly review dinner.”

“Yes.”

Another silence. It was shorter this time.

“The legal team associate,” he said. “Who kissed my cheek.”

“Yes.”

“I wondered about that,” he said. The words came out with a quality I couldn’t parse over the phone, couldn’t see his face to read what kind of expression he had on, whether it was a thoughtful one or one out of disbelief.

“You left early. I thought I’d done something wrong-missed something in the evening’s logistics.”

“You hadn’t.”

“I know that now.” A pause. “I thought at the time that/something was off. With you, specifically. But I didn’t -I couldn’t have said what.”

“You shouldn’t have had to notice. That’s the-that’s what I mean when I say I managed it. You should never have had to notice.”

“Cameron.” His voice had the specific quality of someone who had thought things through and was determined to say what was on his mind. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“The salary,” he said.

I went still.

“The salary you pay me is not standard for my position. I looked it up three months after you hired me, because something didn’t add up in my calculations, and I found out what the market rate was.” A pause. “It’s roughly three times the standard package, you paid me thrice my monthly salary and my monthly salary was already in six figures.”

“It’s within my discretionary-”

“Why?” The question was clean and direct, the way he asked everything.

Hooked at the desk.

“Because the work warranted it,” I said, which was true.

“You hadn’t seen three months of my work when you set it.”

“I’d seen enough.” I said, hoping to convince him but he wasn’t buying that.

“Cameron.. Why?”

I exhaled. “Because I looked at the work you’d done in the first month and I calculated how much worth you have brought into the company by then and I paid that. Because the standard package was insufficient for what you were producing and I don’t like underpaying for things that are worth more than the stated price.” I paused. “And because-I wanted you to be comfortable. That’s less professional a reason. I’m aware.”

The silence this time was different from the others.

Another silence. Longer than the others, or the same length with different content in it.

“The Meridian call is tomorrow,” he said finally.

“It is.”

“I’d need to brief Caroline on the account history if I’m coming back before then. There are three nuances she won’t have from the file-the currency conversation from last month, the relationship dynamic between the two senior partners, and the fact that one of them doesn’t respond well to being presented with more than three options at once.”

“That’s-yes. That’s exactly the kind of thing she wouldn’t have from the file.”

“I can be there by eleven,” he said. “If that works.”

“That works.”

“And Cameron.” His voice did the thing it had done at the door of his apartment, the thing I’d been carrying since yesterday-the specific quality of someone who has decided to be honest and has enough courage for it. “When the Meridian call is done. And the Singapore trip is scheduled. And the current immediate professional urgencies are handled.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We should have a different conversation. A non-professional one.” A pause. “I think you know what I mean.”

“I do,” I said.

“Not today. And maybe not this week. But-” He paused. “You said the true thing. I’d like to-I’d like the opportunity to say mine.”

I looked at the desk. At the empty chair outside the glass wall. At Seattle through the window, gray and present.

“I’d like that too,” I said.