My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 119

+25 BONUS

The Grandmother’s Invitation

~Julian-

My grandmother told me about the lunch at eight thirty in the morning.

Not as a question. As information. “Katia is coming at noon. Gail will be here. I expect you at the table.”

I looked at my phone for a moment after she hung up. Then I called Zane.

“Did you know about this?”

“About what?”

“Grandmother. Katia. Lunch. Today.”

He had a way of making me wait while he processed God fucking knows what. “No. But I’m not surprised.”

I wasn’t surprised either. Grandma Celeste had been moving pieces around a board since before I understood there was a board. She had arranged the Windsor family dinner that introduced Katia to the family. She had specifically requested Katia’s presence at every significant family event since. She had told me, in a corridor after a dinner, that Katia was the woman I was supposed to marry.

This lunch was not a coincidence.

I told Delia at nine. She received the information with the composed stillness she had developed since Dubai, quieter than before, more contained, the specific stillness of someone who was watching and processing and not yet showing what she was doing with what she found.

“I’ll be ready at eleven thirty,” she said.

I had not invited her. I had not uninvited her. The Windsor family lunch was technically her right, as my wife and Grandma had not specified she should not be there. So I said nothing, and we arrived at the estate together at noon, and I walked in to find Katia already at the table.

She was talking to my grandmother over tea. Gail was beside her, laughing at something. The three of them had the easy warmth of people who had been comfortable with each other for a long time, which they had – Gail had raised Aiden with Katia, and my grandmother had decided she loved Katia approximately forty minutes into their first real conversation.

Katia looked up when I walked in.

“Julian,” she said.

“Katia.” I sat down across from her. It was where I always ended up when she was in a room. I had stopped pretending this was

accidental.

not excluded, Grandma had arranged the seating. She always arranged the seating. Delia ended up at the far end of the table- just far. Far enough that the main conversation happened without requiring her participation. Grandma had done this deliberately and with the innocence of someone who would deny it completely if challenged.

The food arrived. The conversation moved the way it moved when Grandma was running the table–sharp, warm, pulling in whoever she wanted, redirecting whenever it suited her. She asked Katia about Aiden’s go–kart league, and Katia talked about it with the light that came into her voice whenever she talked about him. She asked about the I* London office, and Katia gave her the real answer, not the press version, which Grandma appreciated visibly.

I watched Katia talk.

watching her. The That was the honest version of what I was doing. Not listening to the conversation, not participating in it way she held her wine glass. The way she leaned slightly forward when she was making a point. The way she looked at my grandmother with the full, genuine attention she gave to people she respected, which was not a long list and which Grandma had apparently made without trying.

The Cros

fer’s invitation

+25 BONUS

I had been in rooms with Katia for months. Boardrooms, event spaces, a desert at sunset, and the highest restaurant in the world. I could not stop watching her in any of them.

Gail caught me at it and raised an eyebrow. I looked back at my food.

Grandma asked about Katia’s family, the Kensingtons; the dynamics of it; and what it had been like growing up in that house. Katia answered smoothly and honestly, without self–pity. She talked about David with the measured warmth of someone who had recently received an apology and was still deciding what to do with it. She did not mention Martha. Grandma did not press. She asked about Aiden’s father. The table shifted slightly. Not dramatically – just the fractional adjustment of people who knew this was delicate territory.

“He’s away on business,” Katia said. Smoothly. No hesitation, no visible discomfort. The answer of someone who had said it before and had decided it was sufficient. “He’s not very present, unfortunately.”

Grandma looked at her for a moment. “And Aiden manages?”

“Aiden is extraordinary,” Katia said. “He manages everything.”

Grandma nodded slowly. She did not push further. She was too intelligent to push further.

Then Grandma set down her fork and looked at Katia directly.

“You were supposed to be part of this family, you know,” she said.

The table went quiet.

Not awkwardly — it was the specific quiet of something true landing in a room and requiring a moment before anyone responded.

Katia looked at Grandma. Then she looked at me.

I did not look away.

Something passed between us across the table – not words, not anything that could be named cleanly. Just the specific acknowledgement of two people who were sitting with the same complicated thing and had not yet decided what to do about it.

“I know,” Katia said quietly.

Grandma nodded once. She picked up her fork. The conversation moved on.

I put food on Katia’s plate without thinking about it – the lamb, because she had been looking at it. She glanced at the plate and then at me, and I met her eyes, and she said nothing and looked back at Gail.

Γ

I did not put food on Delia’s plate.

I noticed this approximately three seconds after it happened. I did not correct it.

I told myself it was an oversight. I knew it wasn’t.

The lunch continued. Gail was telling a story about Aiden and a science experiment that had apparently involved a controlled explosion and three singed eyebrows – Aiden’s, Gail’s, and a teddy bear’s – and the table was laughing. Katia was laughing, really laughing, the sudden unguarded version that arrived before she decided whether to let it.

I started a conversation with her. I did not plan to. I just asked what the experiment had been trying to prove, and she turned to me and explained it with the specific delight of someone who had found it genuinely impressive even while standing in a singed kitchen, and the conversation went from there the experiment, Aiden’s methodology, and the fact that he had apparently sourced the chemicals from Gail’s bathroom cabinet with a precision that suggested prior research.

“He planned it,” I said.

Tor’s invitation

+25 BONUS

“Obviously,” Katia said. “He always plans things.”

“Like his mother,” I said.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify