Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 204

Chapter 199: Acceptance

CAMERON

He was quiet for a moment, not saying anything as he thought about it before shaking his head.

“I’ve met Lucian,” he said. “At the Preston Investments events. He’s at your side at the functions. He’s-” He considered for a moment before continuing.

“He’s steady. He’s thorough. He looks at you in a way I’ve noticed before but didn’t have a name for.”

I looked at the table.

“I have no concerns about Lucian,” my father said.

My mother made a sound that was both confirmation and relief, maybe, that a door had been opened that had apparently been closed for a while.

“We just want you to be happy,” she said. “We’ve always just wanted that. Both of you. We have noticed since your college days you were not like other guys, who brought in girlfriends and then we thought it was because you were work oriented, and then the thing with Sedona and we chose not to try and matchmake like wedid for sedona because we did not want to lose you.” She glanced toward the ceiling, which was the kitchen’s version of gesturing toward Sedona’s room. “We didn’t know what was in the way of it. For you. We wondered but we didn’t want to-”

“Push,” my father said.

“Ask,” my mother said, at the same time. Then: “Either.”

“I know,” I said.

“We should have asked you before now, rather than make you carry this for so long, afraid of being rejected.”

“Mum. It’s-I wasn’t ready. That’s not your fault.”

She looked at me across the room and nodded my head and dabbed at my eyes with the edge of her clothes.

Then she said: “He has a son.”

“Lake. Yes.”

“Four years old.”

“Yes.”

“Cameron.” She said my name with a specific weight. Not heavy-warm. “That means we’d have two grandsons.”

I blinked. “We’re not-it’s early. We haven’t-”

“I know it’s early. I’m not-” She made the hand gesture that meant *let me finish*. “I’m saying: if this is serious, which you’ve said it is, then we’d have Lake. And Nick, when things work out with Sedona.” She paused. “That’s two grandsons.”

My father picked up his tea. Set it down. “Nick first,” he said. “Let’s not get ahead of the custody hearing.”

“I’m not getting ahead of anything,” my mother said, without conceding the point. “I’m doing arithmetic.”

I looked at her. Then at my father. My father had a specific expression-the one that appeared when he was trying not to show that he was pleased about something. He was not entirely succeeding.

“You’re not upset,” I said.

“Did you expect us to be?” my father asked.

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I genuinely didn’t know. That’s why it took eighteen months.”

My father looked at me, fully as he held my eyes and said.

I thought about what Lucian had told me. What I’d observed in the car, in the brief overlap at the garden party, in the things Lucian mentioned in passing. “Nature programs. Birds. Apparently tennis, recently.” I paused. “He likes Drew-Dante’s son. They’re in the same school year.”

My father absorbed this. Filed it somewhere.

“Dante,” my mother said. Then, following a thread: “If Dante and Sedona-

“They’re figuring it out.”

“But if they do. Dante has Drew. Drew is Lake’s age.” She looked at my father. “We’d have three.”

“Jennifer,” my father said.

“Nick, Lake, and Drew,” she said, counting them with a quiet delight she wasn’t fully suppressing. “Three grandchildren.”

“Nick is Sedona’s child, not-we don’t know what the custody situation-”

“Nick is our grandchild,” my mother said, with a finality that I recognized as non-negotiable.

“He has been since before we even knew about him. As far as I’m concerned he is already ours and we are simply waiting for the paperwork to confirm it.” She picked up her tea. “And if Lake comes with you, and Drew comes with Dante, then we have three.”

I looked at my father.

My father looked at me with an expression that said: *you know how she is, and you also know she’s right, so there’s no use arguing.*

“We’re getting very far ahead,” I said.

“I’m not getting ahead,” my mother said. “I’m being appropriately hopeful. There’s a difference.”