Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 92

Chapter 86: He Is In Love

Sedona’s POV

“He has practice every morning and evening commitments with the exhibition organization.” She picked up the empty container from the dessert he’d brought, examined it with theatrical interest that showed that she was implying something but also not implying anything that might complicate her.

“He is specifically using his free afternoon hours to cook food and bring it to your hospital room.”

“He’s being kind.” I pointed out, willing for her to drop the topic, but Rachel was like a predator, once she had gotten hold of her prey, she was never going to let go.

“He’s being-” She set the container down and looked at me directly, deciding to cut through the bullshit and say what has been on her mind since Dante became a permanent visitor.

“Sedona. He looked at you today when you were talking about the markers improving and you weren’t watching him. I was watching him.”

“And?”

“And there was a lot in that look for someone who is simply being kind, and I know that because that was the same way I was looking at Enzo before I even married him or admitted that I may have fallen for him, that look has been present since the first day, which means that he had liked you before now and seeing you in this state was not also a deterrent.”

I felt something in my face doing something I didn’t fully authorize, something warm that I was fairly certain qualified as a flush. “We were rivals on a circuit fifteen years ago. He barely knew me.”

“He knew you enough to come to a hospital when he heard you were sick.” She tilted her head. “He knew you enough to remember what you ate on the circuit. He told you yesterday that he still thought about that match. He-”

“That’s nostalgia. Tennis players are sentimental about-”

“Enzo,” Rachel said.

Enzo, who had been sitting in the corner with Molly and had been very pointedly not participating in this conversation by focusing way hard on playing with his daughter who could not give a flying fuck about his participation as she was fixated on what she was doing, looked up with the expression of a man who had been waiting to be called upon and had been wishing he can be anywhere else but here.

“Tell her,” Rachel said.

“Tell her what, specifically?” He was being careful, I noticed. Choosing words.

“About what you said. When I told you Dante was coming back. What you said.”

“Rachel-”

“I’m serious. Enzo, tell her about the qualifier in Vancouver.”

Enzo made a face that suggested he was somewhat less enthusiastic about this particular story but had accepted that it was going to be told. “There was a junior qualifier in Vancouver. You were both there. You’d just beaten-who was it-”

“Priya Mehta,” Rachel supplied.

“You’d just beaten Priya Mehta in the semifinals. Impressive match, everyone was talking about it. Dante happened to be nearby when someone was describing it to me and I noticed that he stopped walking to listen. Stood there for about two minutes listening to someone describe your match in some detail to someone else who had missed watching the match themselves, and when they finished he said something like ‘she’s always done that, the inside-out forehand when they push her wide, she’s been doing it since she was fifteen and nobody ever figures out how to counter it.”

I blinked. “He said that?”

“He said that,” Enzo confirmed. “Which was the observation of someone who had been watching your matches with a level of attention that went slightly beyond what professional interest would account for.”

“He was studying my game,” I said. “That’s what-”