My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 133

I Can’t Control Myself Around Her

-Julian-

Thirty days.

I had thought working alongside Katia every day would get easier. It did not get easier. It got harder in the way that things got harder when you knew exactly what you wanted and had promised yourself you would handle things correctly before taking it, and the handling was taking longer than expected.

I noticed everything.

She drank her coffee black until three PM and then added one sugar without thinking about it, the way people did things they had done so long they stopped registering them. She always read documents from the back last page first, then the middle, and then the front.

I had watched her do it with four separate briefs before I understood it was a system, not a habit. She held her pen in her left hand when she was thinking and switched to her right when she was writing.

I noticed all of it. I hated myself for noticing. I noticed it anyway.

On day eleven she fell asleep in the conference room.

Just her head dropping slightly, then catching herself, then the quiet battle of someone who had been running on too little sleep for too long and had finally run out of road. We had been in back–to–back sessions since seven AM. It was past nine PM.

“Go home,” I said.

She looked up. “I’m fine.”

“You just fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.”

“I was thinking.”

“With your eyes closed.”

She looked at me for a moment. Then she started laughing that real laugh, the one that arrived before she decided whether to let it, and I felt it land somewhere in my chest the way it always did, and I thought about thirty days and the promise I had made and how much longer this was going to have to take.

I walked her to her car.

not negotiating.

In the car park she stopped. It was cold — properly cold, the kind of November that reminded you winter was She pulled her coat tighter and looked at me, and I looked at her, and we were standing six inches apart in an empty car park at nine PM, and the distance between six inches and nothing felt, in that moment, like a physical thing.

I put my hand at the side of her face.

She didn’t move away.

I kissed her. Not the hard, urgent kiss from the office; this was slower, more deliberate, the kind of kiss that said, ‘I have been thinking about this all day, and I am not in a hurry now that I am here.‘ My hand slid into her hair, and she made a sound against my mouth, and her hands came up to my chest and held on, and I kissed her until neither of us was cold anymore.

When I pulled back, her eyes were still closed for a moment.

“Julian,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“The timing

+25 BONUS

I know.” I kept my hand in her hair. “I’m working on it.”

She opened her eyes. Looked at me. “Work faster.”

I almost smiled. “Get some sleepy

She got in the car.

Day nineteen.

We were in my office at six PM, the Victor Hale file spread across the desk between us. The bounty was still live. Daniel Osei had delivered the first false data package, and Victor’s team had received it without apparent suspicion. But the bounty bothered me in a way I hadn’t fully articulated yet.

“The bounty,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

Katia looked up from the file. “What about it?”

“Victor is running two campaigns. The corporate attack on I* and now the hunt for Catwoman’s identity.” I looked at the file. Those two things are connected in his head. They have to be. Nobody spends two hundred thousand dollars on an underground racing identity out of curiosity.”

“He thinks Catwoman is connected to I* somehow,” Katia said. Her voice was completely level.

“Yes. Which means he either has information linking them or he has a theory he’s willing to pay to confirm.” I leaned back.” The Meridian engineers were racing enthusiasts. The early funding had circuit connections. If Victor dug deep enough into Meridian’s origin, he might have found a trail that pointed toward someone in the racing world.” I paused. “Do you know who Catwoman is?”

Katia looked at me.

“No,” she said,

“You follow the underground circuit. You know the community-”

“I follow it as a spectator,” she said. “I don’t know who the drivers are personally. Nobody does – that’s the point.”

“But Catwoman in particular-

11

“Julian.” She held my gaze. “I don’t know who she is. I know her record. I know her reputation. I know she’s been racing for years, and she’s won everything she’s entered.” She paused. “That’s it.”

I looked at her.

She looked back.

Completely steady. Not a flicker.

“Why would Victor target both I* and Catwoman unless he believed they were the same person?” I said. “Or the same source?”

“I don’t know,” Katia said. “But I think you should find out before he does.”

I held her gaze for another moment.

Then I looked back at the file.

She was good. She was extraordinarily, impressively good. And I had been noticing everything about her for nineteen days, and I could not tell with certainty, not with the proof I needed whether the complete steadiness in her eyes was honesty or the best performance I had ever witnessed.

Both options were remarkable.

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moved on to the next page of the file.

She moved on too.

We worked until eight. When she left, she touched my arm briefly – just her hand, just for a second- and said goodnight and walked out, and I sat at my desk after she was gone and thought about the bounty and the thirty days and the promise I had made and the steadiness in her eyes when she said, ‘I don’t know who she is.‘

I thought about it for a long time.

Then I picked up the phone and called Zane.

“Add the Catwoman bounty to the surveillance brief,” I said. “I want to know every person Victor has hired to work that event.”

“You think he’s close?” Zane said.

I thought about Katia’s eyes.

“I think he’s closer than he knows,” I said.

I hung up.

Day nineteen of thirty.

Eleven days left. I was not going to waste them.