Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 166

Chapter 161: Kiss Finally

Cameron’s POV

“I thought you’d handle the disclosure professionally,” I said. “Which you were. Which you are. I didn’t assume-I didn’t want to assume anything that wasn’t-”

“Cameron.” His voice was the level version, the one that meant he’d decided something. “Lake’s mother and I were together for approximately three months. We were twenty-two. She was kind and we were not suited and it ended before he was born. The fact that he exists is not evidence of a standing preference.” He looked at me with the directness that went all the way down. “I like you. That doesn’t mean I like all men. It means I like you. Specifically. For specific reasons that I’ve been accumulating for eighteen months. The reasons are detailed and I’d planned to tell you some of them but you keep leaving before I

can.”

The corridor was very quiet.

“You planned to tell me,” I said.

“I’ve been planning it for three weeks,” he said. “Since the phone call. I wrote notes.”

“You wrote notes.”

“I was nervous,” he said, with the specific plainness he used for things he’d decided to say plainly. “I find I’m better in situations where I’ve prepared. Writing helps.”

I looked at him. At this person who’d been sitting across a desk from me for eighteen months, who’d put notes in margins and checked weather forecasts for trips I hadn’t planned yet, who’d made sure the transition was covered on the day he’d been fired, who’d been texting someone with a small private smile and writing notes about what he planned to say to me.

“Who have you been texting?” I said.

He took out his phone.

Unlocked it.

Turned it toward me.

A group chat. Three names: Lucian, Sedona, and Dante.

The most recent messages visible on the screen were about a park afternoon-logistics, timing, which entrance had better parking, a question from Sedona about whether Drew’s allergies extended to certam grasses, a reply from Dante that was precise and brief, a reply from Lucian that was longer and included a map link.

My sister. My sister and Dante Wells, who apparently had a group chat with my PA, who had been organizing park afternoons and-I scrolled up slightly. Food discussions. A question about opening times. Several messages about Drew’s bird catalogue and whether Lake had contributed any inaccurate species identifications that needed correcting.

<Kiss Finally

They’d built something while I’d been leaving rooms.

+ looked up from the phone.

Claim

Lucian was watching me with the expression of someone who’d shown me exactly what he intended to show me and was waiting to see what I did with it.

“My sister has a group chat with you,” I said.

“She does,” he said. “She needed someone to talk to who wasn’t managing her. I happened to be available.”

“She needed-” I stopped. “She’s been talking to you about things.”

“Some things,” he said. “Not everything. Some things she’s not ready to share with you yet.” He said it directly, without apology, the fact of it. “She’ll tell you when she’s ready. I’m not telling you now.”

“You’re keeping things from me about my sister.”

“I’m respecting her confidence,” he said. “Which is different.” He took the phone back, pocketed it. “She’s all right, Cameron. She’s working on things. She’ll tell you.”

I looked at him.

“Notes,” I said.

He looked at me. “What?”

“You said you wrote notes. About what you were going to say.”

“I did,” he said.

“Do you have them with you?”

A pause. “They’re on my phone.”

“Then tell me,” I said. “Or read them to me. Whatever you prepared.”

He looked at me for a long moment. The smirk was gone-what replaced it was more direct, the underneath thing, the one I’d been trying not to look at directly for eighteen months because looking at it directly made the management significantly harder.

“I was going to say,” he said, “that I noticed you at the interview. Not in the way of finding you professionally impressive, which I also did. In the other way.” He paused. “I was going to say that I’ve spent eighteen months being thorough about things that were easy to be thorough about as a way of having somewhere to put the attention I wasn’t directing at you because directing it at you would have required me to do something about it.” Another pause. “I was going to say that when you told me on the phone, I had to sit very still in my kitchen for about four minutes because I needed to process the fact that something I’d been managing carefully had just been-” He stopped. “Offered.”

“Offered,” I said.

“Given,” he said. “Disclosed. You told me a true thing and it was the thing I’d been-” He stopped again. “I’d been carrying it in the same direction as you, Cameron. That’s what I’d been planning to say.”

23

<Kiss Finally

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