Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 287

“I didn’t say it was.” He stepped back. “Go wash up. Then come to the dining room – Mrs. Potts left bisque on the stove and she’ll be upset if you don’t have any.”

Ten minutes later I was sitting at the dining table with a bowl of lobster bisque in front of me, warm and

rich and clearly made with far more care than the occasion required. Phineas sat across from me, relaxed in his chair, watching me eat with an expression I couldn’t quite categorize.

“Gavin called me useless tonight,” he said, after a moment.

I looked up. “What?”

“He said I let my wife go out for the evening without even trying to come along.” His tone was perfectly even. “He seemed to find it very funny.”

I nearly inhaled my soup. “Gavin said that?”

“He did.”

“He doesn’t usually seem like the type to – “I stopped. “Actually, I have no idea what type he is.”

“Apparently the type who mocks people.” Phineas reached for his water glass. “So you can stop defending him.”

“I wasn’t defending him.”

“You were about to.”

I looked down at my bowl and took another spoonful. He wasn’t wrong, which was irritating.

“Since Gavin’s so entertained by all of this,” Phineas said, “he can figure out the rest on his own. No help from either of us.”

I didn’t argue. Honestly, it seemed fair.

Later, after I’d gone upstairs, Phineas picked up his phone and typed a message to Gavin.

Three words: *You’re welcome.*

Gavin stared at it for a full minute. He read it again. He set his phone down, picked it back up, and read it a third time.

He had absolutely no idea what it meant.

The next afternoon, Gavin met Olivia at a quiet café and laid everything on the table his terms, his commitments, his promise to keep clear boundaries with other women, to respect her choices, to not make demands she wasn’t comfortable with.

Olivia listened. Then she asked the question she’d been working up to the entire conversation.

“What about – physical expectations? After what I went through before, I need to know where you stand.”

Olivia stared at him.

“Not every day,” he added, generously.

She was speechless.

They registered at City Hall the next morning. I got a photo from Olivia – the two of them standing at the clerk’s counter, Gavin in a dark jacket, Olivia in a cream dress she’d pulled from her own boutique, both of them holding the marriage certificate.

Then Gavin posted it on i********...

He’d clearly taken some time with the photo composition, which was exactly the kind of detail that made me suspect he’d been planning this moment for longer than he let on. The caption was short. The comments filled up within the hour.

Phineas saw it while we were eating breakfast. He looked at his phone, looked at the photo, and made a sound low in his throat that was somewhere between a scoff and a sigh.

“He’s insufferable,” he said.

“He’s happy.”

“He’s showing off.”

“Phineas. He just got married. He’s allowed to show off a little.”

Phineas set his phone face–down on the table with the deliberate calm of a man who had just muted someone’s account and felt completely justified about it.

My phone buzzed with a message from Olivia: *Gavin is currently refreshing his i********: every four minutes. I’ve counted.*

I smiled into my coffee and didn’t tell Phineas.

Three days later, my phone rang from an unknown number.

I almost didn’t pick up. But something made me press accept, and the voice on the other end was immediately familiar – thin, careful, with that particular quality of someone choosing every word for maximum effect.

Martha.