My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 204

We were posing love, there is a difference

+26 BONUS

We were making love, there is a difference

~Julian~

I dressed quickly. Grey sweatpants. White t–shirt. The kind of clothes I wore when I had stopped performing for the evening and was simply existing. I looked at Katia.

“You are not going anywhere tønight,” I said. “Stay here. I am going back to the dining room.”

I did not wait for a response. I walked out and pulled the door behind me.

The dining room was mid–conversation when I came back in. Martha was talking about something I did not care about. David was listening. Grandma was watching the door–she clocked me the moment I walked in, the way she always clocked everything, and her expression did not change.

I sat down next to Delia.

“Where is Katia?” Delia asked.

“Still busy,” I said. “Conference call. There is a significant amount of work on the London expansion, we may end up going back to the office or continuing in my study. The workload is considerable.”

Delia looked at me.

I looked at the table.

Grandma was still watching me. I did not look at her. I did not need to–I could feel the weight of her attention the way I had always felt it, since I was six years old and she had been the person in the room who saw everything and said only what she

chose to say.

Gail stood up first. She collected Aiden–who had been eating dessert with the focused satisfaction of someone who had decided the evening was successful–and said her goodnights. Aiden wayed at me across the table before he left. A small wave. Completely his own.

I raised a hand back.

The Kensingtons left twenty minutes later. Martha kissed my cheek, which I did not expect, and Delia showed them to the door, and when she came back, the dining room was clearing, and Grandma was still at the table.

“Can I have a word with you?” she said.

I got up and followed her to the corridor.

She turned to face me.

“Julian,” she said. “I have kept quiet about Katia. About all of it. I have kept quiet because you asked me to and because I trust your judgment even when I disagree with your methods.” She paused. “But you came back to that table tonight wearing different clothes. You were with Delia’s sister upstairs, and you came back in a different set of clothes, and Delia’s family was still at the table.” She looked at me directly. “What will they think?”

“They will think what they like,” I said.

“Julian-

“Not once,” I said. “In the entire time Delia has been in this house, I have not touched her. I am not her husband. I have never been her husband. And she has been sleeping with Victor Hale, so whatever moral position she thinks she holds in this house, she surrendered a long time ago.” I looked at Grandma. “The only woman I will touch, the only woman who will be in my bed, is Katia. That is not going to change.”

Grandma looked at me for a long moment.

were reading love, there is a difference

+ZD BONUS

Then she turned and walked away without another word

I went back into the dining rooni.

Delia was still there. Standing near the window with her arms crossed and her expression doing the complicated thing it did when she was managing several things at once.

“Everyone has left,” she said. “Why is Katia still here?”

I looked at her.

“This is my house,” I said. “Not yours. I decide who comes and who goes.” I paused. “Victor Hale is probably horny and available tonight. You look good. You might as well go to him and let him handle whatever it is you need handled. Because I am never touching you, Delia. Not in this life. Not in the next one.”

I turned and went back upstairs.

I heard the shower before I opened the door.

The room was dark except for the light from the bathroom- a thin line of it under the door, warm and steady. I stood in the doorway for a moment.

Then I walked to the bathroom and opened the door.

Steam. The sound of water. Katia was in the shower with her back to me, her hair down, completely unaware I had come back upstairs.

I stripped.

I opened the shower door and stepped in.

She turned.

–

She looked at me- at the fact that I had just stepped into her shower without asking–and the expression on her face was the one she wore when she was deciding between saying something and letting it go..

She let it go.

I reached past her for the shampoo, and she moved slightly to give me room, and we stood in the shower together in the quiet of it–the water running, the steam, the sound of the house below us where both our families had just eaten dinner and gone home, knowing and not knowing all the different things they knew and did not know.

“Julian,” she said after a moment.

“Yes,” I said.

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