Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 161

Chapter 126: A Wife Who Doesn’t Love Me

(Author’s POV)

Phineas let a beat pass before he said, “I want to come back to what I proposed three days ago.”

Aurora looked at him.

“Today didn’t change anything about the situation,” he said. “If anything, it clarifies it. You’ve seen what I’m working with. There’s no threat here – not in the way you might be thinking. But I do need a marriage, and the reasons for that haven’t changed.”

He said it the same way he said most things – flat, direct, no particular effort to soften it.

Aurora was quiet for a moment. The boat drifted slightly. She straightened the hem of her jacket. (Aurora’s POV)

I listened to him and felt something shift, somewhere I didn’t want it to.

He was right that the conditions were good. He was right that the arrangement made sense. I could see the logic of it from every angle, and every angle was clean.

That was almost the problem.

I took a breath.

“There’s something I haven’t told anyone,” I said. “Something I need you to know before you decide you want to make this offer.”

He waited.

“I don’t think the man on my birth certificate is my biological father. I think my mother had an affair – with a man named Neil Dawson. A gambler. A criminal.” I kept my voice steady. “He’s the kind of person who shows up when there’s money involved. He already has, once. If I marry you, he’ll show up again. Your name, your resources – that’s exactly the kind of target he looks for.”

I watched Phineas’s face. Nothing moved in it.

“And my mother,” I continued. “She’s already found ways to make my life difficult. If I marry someone with money, she’ll find a new angle. She always does.” I looked out at the water. “I’m not willing to bring that into someone else’s life. Not again.”

The lake was still around us.

I thought he might nod and let the subject go. I thought he might say something reasonable about reconsidering.

He said, “I don’t mind.”

I looked at him. “What?”

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“I said I don’t mind.”

“You don’t – Phineas, I just told you my biological father is a criminal who will absolutely come looking for money the moment he finds out who I married.”

“I heard you.”

“That doesn’t concern you.”

“Not particularly.”

I stared at him. “Why?”

He set the oars down for a moment and looked at me directly. “Because I’ve reached the point where I want to be married, and you are the most suitable person I’ve encountered. That’s the whole of it.” He picked the oars back up. “I can handle your mother. I can handle Dawson. You wouldn’t need to sacrifice anything or make any compromises you’re not comfortable with. I’m not asking you to manage my problems – I’m telling you I’ll manage yours.”

He said it without drama, without any particular effort at persuasion. Just a statement of fact.

“I’ve met a great many people who want my money and my attention simultaneously,” he continued. “That combination is exhausting. What I need is a wife who doesn’t love me. It’s a simpler arrangement.”

The words landed in the quiet between us.

*A wife who doesn’t love me.*

My chest did something I didn’t ask it to do. A single, irregular beat–there and gone.

I knew I was tempted. I could feel it, clearly and without any comfortable ambiguity. On paper, Phineas was everything a stable marriage could ask for – practical, capable, honest about his terms, uninterested in performing emotions he didn’t have.

But that was exactly what I’d thought about Jasper, once.

I had looked at Jasper and seen something solid. I had built everything I had on that foundation, and when it turned out to be hollow, the fall had broken things in me that hadn’t finished healing. I still didn’t trust my own judgment. I still didn’t trust the part of me that said *this one is different*.

I was afraid of being wrong again.

The boat reached the shore. We stepped out, and I pulled off the life vest and hung it on the post without speaking. We walked back toward the grass where the others were sitting.

I turned it over in my mind as we walked. The logic. The fear. The single beat my heart had done when he said *a wife who doesn’t love me*, and the way it had felt less like relief than I wanted it to.

After a few steps, I said, “I still have reservations. Even if your terms are – even if they’re genuinely hard to argue with.”

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“That’s fine,” Phineas said.

“I’m not saying no. I’m saying I need more time.”

“Take it.” He said it simply, without any edge of impatience. “This isn’t something that needs to be decided in a hurry.”

I nodded.

We reached the edge of the grass where Eleanor and Professor Walsh were mid–game, and Mrs. Walsh was watching with the focused attention of someone who had opinions about every move.

Phineas stopped walking.

He turned his head and looked at me, and his voice dropped just slightly. “About your biological father – do you want me to look into it?”