Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 137

<Chapter 101 Hostility

Chapter 101: Hostility

(Author’s POV)

*25 Porte

Charlotte arrived at the Everett house at half past five. She was exactly as Victoria had expected – poised without being stiff, friendly without being eager.

They sat in the living room and talked easily while Victoria waited for Jasper to come home and for

Rosalind to return from school.

The front door opened at quarter to six.

Rosalind walked in, dropped her backpack by the stairs, and looked into the living room.

Her eyes landed on Charlotte.

Her expression changed in an instant-a fleeting, calculating look that Charlotte had never seen on any child’s face before. Then it was gone, replaced by the flat expression of a child who had already decided she didn’t like what she was seeing.

“I must have misread it,” Charlotte said to herself in her mind. And she smiled and stood up. “Hi there. You must be Rosalind. I’m Charlotte – it’s so nice to meet you.”

Rosalind said nothing.

“Your grandmother has told me a lot about you.” Charlotte crouched slightly to be at eye level. “She said you love art. I actually teach art history – maybe we have something in common.”

Rosalind’s lip curled. She turned to Victoria. “Where’s Sienna?”

Victoria kept her voice light. “Sienna has her own life to manage, sweetheart. She won’t always be available.”

Rosalind’s eyes narrowed. She looked back at Charlotte with renewed hostility.

“Charlotte is going to be coming by more often,” Victoria added. “Won’t that be nice?”

“No,” Rosalind said flatly.

Victoria’s smile tightened. She hadn’t expected this level of resistance, not immediately. She’d planned for some awkwardness, some shyness – not a six-year-old staring down a grown woman like she was an intruder.

“Rosalind,” she said carefully. “Let’s be polite.”

“Sienna said Grandma doesn’t like her anymore.” Rosalind crossed her arms. “That’s why you’re doing this.

Victoria felt the ground shift slightly under the conversation. She hadn’t said anything of the sort to Rosalind. Which meant Sienna had.

She filed that away and kept her expression neutral. “Why don’t you go wash up before dinner? Charlotte

<Chapter 101: Hostility

and I were just talking.”

“I don’t want to wash up.”

+25 Points

Victoria stood. “I need to check on dinner. Charlotte, make yourself comfortable. Jasper should be home within the hour.” She gave Rosalind a brief, meaningful look that the child ignored entirely, and walked

toward the kitchen.

Charlotte watched her go and then turned back to Rosalind, who was still standing in the doorway with

her arms crossed.

She’d taught undergraduates for seven years. She’d handled office hours with students in genuine crisis. She was not, she told herself, going to be intimidated by a kindergartener.

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a small wrapped box. “I brought you something. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I went with this – it’s the newest one in the collection, apparently.”

She held it out and smiled.

She had half a second to register the look on Rosalind’s face before the child’s hand shot out and knocked the box clean off her palm. It hit the floor and slid under the coffee table.

Rosalind lifted her chin.

“I don’t want it,” she announced. “I don’t like you. Go away.”

Charlotte was still staring at the wrapped box under the coffee table when she heard footsteps from the kitchen.

Victoria walked in carrying a bowl of soup, her expression pleasant and unhurried. She hadn’t seen a thing. Charlotte looked up. Then she looked at Rosalind.

The child’s face had completely transformed. The cold, flat hostility was gone. In its place was a picture of sweetness – rosy cheeks, bright eyes, a smile that could have sold greeting cards.

“Oh, Charlotte, you should try the soup,” Rosalind said brightly, gesturing toward the bowl in Victoria’s hands. “Grandma’s cook makes the best chicken broth. It’s so good.”

Charlotte’s mouth opened slightly.

Victoria set the bowl down on the side table and noticed the gift box on the floor. She bent and picked it up, turning it over in her hands with a mild frown.

“How did this end up down here?”

“I didn’t have a firm grip on it when I just took it out, and it flew away.” Charlotte said, before she could think of anything better.

Victoria accepted that without question. She held the box out toward Rosalind. “Charlotte brought this especially for you, sweetheart. What do you say?”

< Chapter 101 Hostility

Rosalind turned to Charlotte with a smile that reached her eyes on cue. “Thank you, Charlotte

“You’re welcome,” Charlotte said.

Her voice came out steady. She was proud of that.

Victoria patted Rosalind’s head with visible satisfaction and settled back into her armchair, steering the conversation toward Charlotte’s university department. Charlotte answered on autopilot, nodding and responding at the right moments, but her attention kept drifting back to the child sitting across from her.

Rosalind was watching her. Not with the open hostility from before, but with something quieter and more unsettling – a measuring look, patient and alert, that had no business being on the face of a kindergartener Charlotte had spent seven years in front of lecture halls. She’d navigated office hours with anxious students, difficult colleagues, departmental politics. She knew how to read a room.

This child did not like her. Not even slightly. And that switch – that instantaneous, cold-blooded flip from hostility to sweetness the moment Victoria walked in – that was not normal six-year-old behavior.

Charlotte reached for the soup bowl and took a small sip. It was good. She barely tasted it.

She was already thinking about how to leave.

The front door opened before she had a plan.

Jasper stepped into the entryway, loosening his tie, and stopped when he saw the woman on the sofa.

Victoria was on her feet immediately. “Jasper, perfect timing. This is Charlotte Shaw – her family has been in academia for generations, her father actually published in the same journals as your old professor at Columbia. I thought you two should meet properly.”

Jasper looked at Charlotte, then at his mother, and the calculation behind the evening clicked into place. He’d been told to come home early. He hadn’t been told why.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, and his tone was perfectly civil.

He sat down. He accepted the coffee Victoria pressed into his hands. He answered Charlotte’s polite questions about his work with the appropriate amount of detail. But underneath all of it, something in him had gone flat and irritable.

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