My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 207

I Will Hunt You, Kitten

-Katia

Julian had gone downstairs.

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I lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about everything I had done in the last twelve hours and felt the quiet weight of a woman who had made decisions she could not unmake

I should have said no.

At every point when he led me upstairs from the dinner table, when he came back in different clothes and told me to stay, when he stepped into the shower — I could have said no. I had the words. I had always had the words. What I had not had, apparently, was the will to use them when it was Julian Windsor on the other side of the decision.

And the worst part was that I had enjoyed it.

Every single moment of it. I had enjoyed it completely and without reservation, and my body was still carrying the evidence of that, and I was not going to pretend otherwise even to myself.

But what about my husband?

I sat up. Slowly, because everything protested the movement, I held the duvet around myself and sat in Julian’s bed and thought about a man named Jules whose face I had never seen. A man I was legally married to. A man Grandma Celeste had promised to help me find.

Grandma Celeste had sat across from me at her kitchen table and held my hand and told me not to worry, that she would help me find my husband.

And I had come to this house for a family dinner and ended up in her grandson’s bed.

What was I going to say to my husband when he appeared? That I had been sleeping with my sister’s husband while waiting to find him? That I had told myself it was complicated and then made it considerably more complicated?

What was I going to say to Aiden?

I pressed my lips together.

I needed to get up. I needed to get dressed and go home and sit in my own space and think through what had happened with the clarity that was impossible to access in Julian Windsor’s bedroom.

I thought about Sam. Sam would be trying to reach me. Sam always knew when something was wrong before I had admitted it to myself. Sam would have seen that I had not come home and would be–not panicking, Sam did not panic, but she would be running scenarios, and none of them would be the correct one.

I thought about Aiden. Aiden was at the Windsor estate with Grandma Celeste and Gail. He was safe and fed and probably already asking Gail questions about aerospace engineering. But he was also a boy who would want his mother and who would not understand why she was not home.

I thought about my husband.

Jules. The man I had married in Las Vegas seven years ago, whose face I had never seen. Who had given me a ring worth more than anything I owned and had disappeared and whom Grandma Celeste had promised to help me find.

I had come to a family dinner and ended up in her grandson’s bed.

I pressed my lips together and pushed the duvet back and stood.

Every part of me protested; I was fucking sore. Julian had a huge dick.

Every single part. My legs, my hips, my everything. I took two steps toward where I thought my clothes were and stopped

Will Hunt You Kitten

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because the walk was not something I was managing with any dignity this morning

I wrapped the duvet around myself and went to the window instead.

Manhattan was doing its Sunday morning thing below me. Quiet by city standards. A few joggers. The particular light that existed only on Sunday mornings, the kind that made everything look slightly forgiving.

Nothing about this morning felt forgiving.

I heard the door open.

Julian walked in. He looked at me at the window, in the duvet. He looked at my face:

“Are you regretting it?” he said.

I could not answer. Because the honest answer was yes and no simultaneously, and I did not know how to say both things at once without it sounding like something it was not.

My silence was its own answer.

“This can never happen again,” I said. I turned from the window and started looking for my clothes. The dress from last night. The sandals. Something to put on so I could walk out of this room with some semblance of control over my own life. “I need to get dressed and go home.”

Julian opened the door to his walk–in wardrobe.

I stopped. It was full. Rail after rail–dresses, trousers, blouses, coats. Shoes on the lower shelves. All of it new, all of it unworn, all of it clearly selected with someone in mind.

I stared at it.

“Pick anything,” Julian said. “All new. All yours.”

I looked at him.

–

He had planned this. At some point – before last night, before the dinner, before any of this he had planned this. He knew my size. He had stocked a wardrobe in his house with clothes for me and had said nothing about it and had simply opened the door this morning like it was the most ordinary thing.

I did not know what to do with that.

I picked a dress. Simple and well–cut, the kind of thing I would have chosen myself. I picked sandals. I dressed with my back to him because I needed at least that much privacy this morning.

“Katia,” Julian said.

I turned.

“You don’t get to decide when this stops,” he said. His voice was completely even. Not threatening–stating. The voice he used for things he had already decided on. “This is never going to stop. You and I, we sleep in the same bed. Every day. My house, your little penthouse in Brooklyn, or a hotel–I do not care which. But I am never sleeping alone again.”

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