My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 121

Another Family Matchmaking

-Katia~

Mother called on a Thursday with the warmth she deployed when she was about to do something I wasn’t going to like.

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“A spa weekend,” she said. “Just you and me. Girls‘ trip. You’ve been working too hard, Katia; everyone can see it. Two nights at Rosewood. My treat.”

I looked at Sam across the office. Sam looked back.

“Just us?” I said.

“Just us,” Mama said. “Mother and daughter. Long overdue.”

4

I should have said no. I knew I should have said no. I said yes because Dad had called me the week before and said quietly that Mother had been having a difficult few months, and he thought it would mean something if I made the effort, and because, despite everything, I was still capable of making efforts for people who had hurt me when I believed the effort was genuine.

The effort was not genuine.

I arrived at the Rosewood on Friday afternoon to find that the spa weekend had three additional guests.

I discovered this when a man knocked on my door at seven PM holding roses. He was tall and presentable, with the slightly over -prepared look of someone who had been told he was meeting someone important and had dressed accordingly. He introduced himself as Christopher. He said my mother had mentioned I might enjoy dinner.

I looked at Christopher and his roses for a moment.

“Wait here,” I said.

I closed the door. I picked up my phone and called Mama.

She answered on the second ring with a brightness that told me she had been waiting for this call. “Katia! How is the room? Isn’t it lovely?”

“Mother,” I said.

“The spa menu is extraordinary; I’ve already booked us for-”

“Mother.”

She stopped.

“There is a man named Christopher outside my door with roses,” I said. “Would you like to explain that?”

She paused. The pause of someone recalibrating their approach. “He’s a lovely man, Katia. Family money, very established, I thought you might-”

“How many?” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“How many men did you invite to this spa weekend?”

She took a long pause.

“Three,” she said. “But they’re all very-”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

“Katia, if you’d just-

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Thung up.

I opened the door. Christopher was still there, roses in hand, looking mildly uncertain.

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“Christopher,” I said pleasantly. “I’m going to be completely honest with you. My mother invited you here without telling me. I’m sure you’re a perfectly decent person and none of this is your fault. But I’m going to ask you to take the roses to the front desk as a gift for the staff and enjoy your weekend independently.” I smiled. “I have a lot of work to do.”

He blinked. Then, to his credit, he laughed. “Fair enough,” he said.

I closed the door.

I called Mama back.

She answered on the first ring this time.

“Mother,” I said. “I am going to say this once, so I need you to listen carefully.‘

“Katia-”

す

“Onoe. I am married. I have a son. I run a billion–dollar company, and I have approximately zero hours in my week for whatever this is.” I kept my voice level. “The next man you send my way at a spa weekend, a charity gala, a family lunch, or anywhere will receive a very polite letter from my legal team and a fruit basket. The letter will be professional. The fruit basket will be excellent. But I want to be clear that the letter comes first.”

There was silence on Mama’s end.

Then, somewhere in the background, I heard Dad laugh.

Not the polite laugh. The genuine one sudden and uncontrolled, the laugh of a man who had been sitting in the same room as this phone call and had not been able to hold it in for a single second longer.

“David,” Mama said sharply.

He laughed harder.

I felt something ease in my chest. Just slightly.

“Goodnight, Mother,” I said.

“This is not-”

“Goodnight.”

I hung up.

I stood in the middle of the Rosewood hotel room for a moment. Then I opened my laptop, ordered room service, and turned the spa weekend into a working weekend.

Sam texted at nine PM: How’s the spa?

I sent back a photo of my laptop open on the Dubai expansion review with a glass of wine beside it.

Her reply: Iconic.

I worked until midnight. The expansion review, the false data package for Daniel Osei, the London infrastructure brief that Davies had submitted on Tuesday and that I had been meaning to annotate for three days. The room was quiet. The hotel was the kind of place that absorbed noise and produced peace, and I appreciated both.

At some point I stopped working and sat on the balcony with the last of the wine.

I thought about the Windsor lunch. About Grandma Celeste saying “you were supposed to be part of this family” with the calm

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certainty of someone stating a fact rather than offering a sentiment. About Julian putting lamb on my plate without thinking. About the way Gail had looked at Delia in the corridor not unkindly, just completely clearly.

I thought about Monday. About the conversation Julian and i had agreed to have when we got back from Dubai.

We had not had it yet. The week had happened

the lunch, Mother’s spa ambush, and the Victor Hale file sitting in my head

like something I hadn’t finished reading. Monday had become Wednesday, which had become Friday, and the conversation was still sitting between us unscheduled.

I would call him tomorrow.

Or he would call me.

One of us would call the other, and we would have the conversation that had been waiting since we stood on a terrace in Dubai with the city forty floors below us and said things we could not unsay.

I finished the wine.

I went to bed.

In the next room one of Mama’s three eligible men was presumably having a significantly less complicated evening.

Good for him.

I had work to do.