Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 167

Chapter 162: Stalking Her Home

Logan’s POV

I drove past the Preston house again on Thursday morning.

Clam

I’d been doing this for weeks. Not every day, but enough that I knew the rhythms of the house-when the lights came on, when cars moved in and out of the driveway, which hours were quieter than others.

The answer was almost never.

There was always someone. Her mother in the garden. Her brother’s car in the driveway. The tall man- Dante-arriving in the morning with bags that I assumed contained food, which told me he’d made himself a fixture in a way that went beyond casual visiting. The other man I kept seeing, the one I didn’t have a name for yet, who arrived less often but was clearly comfortable there, who the kids seemed to know.

The kids.

Two small boys, four years old or thereabouts, who appeared with regularity and who Sedona was clearly attached to. I’d seen her with them in the garden twice. Once she’d been sitting under the big red tree with one of them, just the two of them, talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But her face had been open and relaxed in a way that I hadn’t seen in a long time.

That was what was making me angry.

Not the kids specifically. But the picture of it. The completeness of what she’d built here, or what had been built around her-the house, the family, the men, the children, all of it fitting together like she’d always been here, like Chicago had been the interruption rather than the life.

I had been the interruption.

I drove home to the motel.

Nick called at seven.

I was sitting at the small desk by the window, going through a set of reports my assistant had emailed over. It had been more than a month and there were things that needed my actual attention, not just my sign-off. I’d been managing the company from a motel room in Seattle and it was showing in the quality of the decisions being made without me.

I picked up when I saw his name.

“Hey, buddy,” I said.

“Hey, Dad.” His voice was the normal Nick voice, which meant he was okay. Not upset, not sick. Just calling. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”

“Good” A pause. “Are you still in Seattle?”

“Yes. Still here.”

“Oh.” Another pause. “Did you find Mom yet?”

I stopped. “Not exactly,” I said.

“Is she okay?” he asked. “Do you know if she’s okay?”

“I think she’s okay,” I said, which was true. From what I’d seen through car windows and garden gates, Sedona looked better than she had when she’d left Chicago. She was moving around, going on walks, spending time outside. Whatever treatment she’d been getting was working.

This should have made me feel better.

It mostly just made me feel like I was running out of time.

“I’m sorry I haven’t made it work yet,” I said. “That I haven’t found a way for you two to talk.”

“That’s okay,” Nick said.

He said it quickly. Too quickly, maybe, but I didn’t read into it. He was six and he was being kind to me the way he sometimes was when he sensed I was stressed.

“I miss her,” he said after a moment.

“I know you do,” I said.

“When are you coming home?” he asked.

“Soon,” I said. And then I thought about what I’d been sitting in this motel room doing, and the reports on the desk, and the fact that driving past Sedona’s parents’ house every few days wasn’t a plan. “This week, actually. I’ll be home before the weekend.”

“Really?” His voice changed. The flatness lifted out of it and something lighter came in. “You promise?”

“I promise,” I said.

“Okay” He sounded genuinely happy. “Mrs. Peterson made the soup today. The one with the vegetables.”

“Is it good?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Not as good as Mom’s but okay.”

“Nothing’s as good as Mom’s,” I said, without thinking.

A pause on his end. “Yeah,” he said softly.

We talked for a few more minutes about small things. A kid at school. Soccer practice. Something that had happened with a crayon and a sweater that made him laugh telling it, which made me feel better for a few minutes.

When he hung up I sat with the phone in my hand.

273

Chem

He’d asked if I’d found a way for them to talk, which told me he still thought I was the path to Sedona. He still thought she was unreachable, that she’d cut off contact completely.

He didn’t know I’d been driving past her house for a month. He didn’t know she was twenty minutes away. He didn’t know about Bante or the second man or the two small boys who showed up and sat in her garden.

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