My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 125

I See The Way You Eye–fuck Each Other

Katia~

Gail had described it as a small birthday party.

Thirty children, seventeen adults, a bouncy castle in the garden, and a woman whose name I never caught who kept offering ine mini quiches. Small was a relative concept when Gail was organising something.

Aiden had been ready an hour early. He had put on his good shirt without being asked–the navy one he reserved for occasions he had decided mattered–and had spent the car ride explaining to me the structural differences between two types of go–kart chassis with the focused energy of someone who had been saving this information for the right audience.

“Will there be anyone there who knows about racing?” he asked.

“It’s a six–year–old’s birthday party,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

I had no answer for that, so I said nothing and drove.

We had been there forty minutes when Julian arrived.

He was dropping Gail off; that was obvious from the way he pulled up. The car barely stopped, Gail already opening her door. He was not dressed for a children’s birthday party. He was dressed for whatever he had been doing before this, which was clearly something that required a suit, and the suit was good and he looked exactly like a man who had not planned to stay.

Then Aiden saw him.

“It’s the racing simulator, man!”

He said it loudly. With the complete, uncomplicated joy of a child who has spotted someone they were genuinely pleased to see and has no interest in moderating that information. He was across the garden in six seconds.

Julian looked up. He looked at Aiden running toward him. Something moved in his expression, not surprise exactly, something warmer than that. He crouched down to Aiden’s level before Aiden reached him, which meant he was ready, which meant he had understood immediately what the correct response to a five–year–old running at you full speed was.

Aiden skidded to a stop in front of him.

“You came,” Aiden said.

“I was dropping Gail off,” Julian said.

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Aiden looked at him with the clear–eyed assessment he gave everything. “You should stay,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Julian looked up. Found me across the garden. Our eyes met for a second. I gave him nothing. He looked back at Aiden.

“What do you want to show me?” he said.

I stopped tracking the conversation after that. I moved to the food table because I needed to be doing something with my hands, and the food table was available and provided the specific cover of appearing to be interested in the mini quiches.

Sam appeared beside me seven minutes later.

“Don’t,” I said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You have a face.”

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“I always have a face,” Sam said. She looked across the garden. Juliar and Aiden were in the corner by the garden wall, deep in something on Julian’s phone. Aiden’s head was tilted left. Julian’s head was tilted the same way. “Kat.”

“Sam.”

“I don’t understand it,” she said. Her voice was quiet. Not dramatic, just honest. “I don’t understand why Julian looks so much like Aiden. The jaw. The way they both tilt their heads. The hands.” She paused. “The fact that it wasn’t him in Vegas doesn’t make sense to me. Because that boy looks so much like him it’s starting to be impossible to look at them in the same space and not see it.”

I looked at my plate.

“I don’t think he’s the father,” I said.

“But?”

“But I can’t shake the feeling.” I set the plate down. “And I’ve been telling myself for months that I never met Julian before the WEG partnership, so it’s impossible. It has to be impossible.”

“Does it?” Sam said.

I didn’t answer.

2

“Because if it’s not impossible,” Sam said carefully, “then you have a situation. A serious one. Because he is now married to your younger sister, Kat. Even if it’s a contract and not a real marriage, he is still legally attached to Delia. And if Aiden is his-”

“It would be a disaster,” I said. “It would be an absolute disaster for everyone.”

“Yes,” Sam said. “It would.”

We stood in silence for a moment. Across the garden Aiden laughed at something on Julian’s phone, that full, unguarded laugh, the one that came from somewhere completely unmanaged.

Julian smiled.

The real smile.

I picked up a mini quiche and put it down without eating it.

“Katia,” Sam said.

“I know.”

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