Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 44

Chapter 42: Two Surprises

Sedona’s POV

+25 Points

For the first time in longer than I could clearly remember, knowing Rachel was someone who I could count on, no matter what, I smiled and meant it completely.

“Yes,” I said. “Okay. Yes.”

Rachel visited regularly after that, sometimes every day when she had time because I knew she was someone who also had her own life to live. She’d bring terrible gossip from the Seattle social circuit about who did what and who slept with who.

She would bring my favourite pastries from the French bakery on Second Avenue, sit with me through the worst of the side effects without flinching or performing sympathy, which was somehow better than her showing it.

About a week into her visits, she appeared in the doorway with something different, something that I had never expected before, it was a car seat carrier, the kind that clips into strollers, which she set on the floor carefully with the experience that showed she had been doing this for a while. I sat upright the best I could, trying to see what I already suspected it was.

In the carrier was a baby. Eight or nine months old, with Rachel’s dark hair and round cheeks and the expression of a person who was very interested in everything happening in this room and was planning to investigate it thoroughly.

“You have a baby,” I said, eloquently.

“Told you I had a surprise.” Rachel unclipped the carrier and lifted the baby out, settling her on her hip, so I could see her better. “Sedona, this is Molly. Molly, this is your Aunt Sedona, who has very questionable taste in men but excellent taste in most other things.”

Molly looked at me with the attentiveness of babies that sees things for the first time, and trying to see if it was something worth their time,, then reached both arms toward me with absolute certainty that this was an obvious thing to do.

“She likes you,” Rachel said, surprised. “She doesn’t usually do that with new people.”

Can I-”

“Here.” Rachel transferred Molly into my arms carefully, with the deliberate action of someone handing over something precious. Molly settled against my chest as if she’d done it before, one small fist closing around the edge of my hospital gown.

The weight of her. The warmth of her and the particular smell that clung to babies made me nostalgic as I got flashbacks to when Nick was small and he was simply mine and I was simply his.

I looked at Molly’s small perfect face and felt the grief and the love occupying the same place they always did when I thought about my son.

13

<Two Surposes.

“Her father,” I managed, my voice not quite steady. “Who-”

“That, Rachel said, in a tone that seemed to contain both nervousness and something fond and exasperated, “is a story” She tilted her head toward the door. “Actually, you can ask him yourself.”

I looked up.

+25 Points

Enzo Marchetti was standing in the doorway holding two coffee cups, wearing an expression caught between amusement and the particular sheepishness of someone who understands that their presence requires explanation.

Enzo. My almost-husband. The man I’d left at the altar five years ago or rather, had failed to arrive to in the first place.

“Surprise,” he said, with a grin’ that managed to be both apologetic and entirely unrepentant.

I stared at him. Then at Rachel. Then at Molly, who was still investigating my hospital gown with her small fingers.

“You married Enzo,” I said to Rachel, connecting the obvious dots that was laid out in front of me.

“She did,” Enzo confirmed helpfully, coming into the room and handing Rachel her coffee before settling into the other chair.

“After you failed to appear at our wedding-which, for what it’s worth, I completely understand in retrospect and do not blame you for choosing your happiness over a marriage that would have made us miserable-I spent about three months being quite sorry for myself. Rachel, who was also your maid of honor and who therefore found herself at a wedding with no bride and a groom who needed someone to talk to, was extremely patient with my self-pity.” He paused.

“And then she stopped being patient and told me that I’d been in love with her for three years and it was embarrassing how long it had taken me to notice.”,

“He cried,” Rachel said serenely. “When I told him. Just sobbed.”

“I did cry,” Enzo acknowledged, without shame. “I’m Italian, it’s permitted.” He looked at me steadily. “t want to thank you, Sedona. I mean that sincerely. If you’d shown up to that wedding, I’d have married the wrong person-respectfully, no offense intended-and I’d have missed this.” He gestured at Rachel, at Molly, at the life visible in the gesture. “Whatever drove you away from it, I’m grateful it did.”

I looked at the three of them-Rachel with her coffee and her yellow coat, Enzo in the chair beside her with his easy grin, Molly dozing now against my chest and I felt something shift inside me.

The guilt I’d been carrying for years, that had been heavy and constant, the guilt about the wedding and Enzo and Rachel and all the damage I’d decided I’d caused by running-

It didn’t disappear. But it rearranged itself into something less guilty, something I could carry without it weighing me down, or trying to make up for it.

“I’m sorry anyway,” I said. “For disappearing. For not being brave enough to just say I couldn’t do it instead of just-not showing up.”

“Accepted,” Enzo said simply. “Now. Tell me about this husband of yours that Cameron has been describing in terms that suggest he’s fortunate to still be alive.”

2/3

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify