My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 301

No Gifts

-Katia-

Jude drove us to the Kensington house himself, which felt like a small thing until I realized it was deliberate, a quiet signal he was sending without saying a word about it. A husband drove his wife to her parents’ house. He did not have a driver do it for

him.

I had spent most of the ride looking out the window rather than at him

When we pulled up the long gravel drive, two black cars from his own fleet were arready parked near the entrance, and a small group of his people were unloading something from the back of the second vehicle. Boxes, wrapped in heavy cream paper with a ribbon that matched too precisely to be anything but professionally arranged. I counted four of therr before we even reached the door, each one large enough that it took two people to carry.

“What is all this?” I said.

“A gesture,” Jude said. “Your parents have never properly received me as family. I intend to correct that tonight.”

Julian and Delia arrived almost directly behind us, their car pulling in as Jude’s staff were still carrying the last of the boxes up the front steps. I watched Julian step out first, calm and slow, his expression carrying the same flat composure he wore into board meetings, a man who had decided in advance exactly how much of himself he intended to give this evening and was not planning to exceed that amount under any circumstances.

He looked at the boxes being carried past him.

He did not react to them at all.

Delia, walking beside him, looked at the boxes the way a person looked at something that had personally wounded them, her jaw tightening, her eyes flicking from the gifts to Julian and back again.

My mother opened the door herself.

Martha Kensington rarely opened her own door. She had staff for that, the same way she had staff for nearly everything, but tonight she stood in the entrance in a deep emerald dress with the Mikimoto pearls Jude had given her sitting at her throat, and she looked at the boxes coming up her own front steps with an expression of delight so immediate and so unguarded that ! almost did not recognize her.

“Oh,” she said, pressing one hand to her chest. “Oh my goodness.”

She had seen gifts before. She had attended galas where men far wealthier than Jude Wolte had sent extravagant arrangements to women far less significant to them than I apparently was to him. She knew exactly what an expensive pic looked like and exactly how to receive one with the practiced grace of a woman who had spent decades in rooms where such things were

currency.

None of that stopped her from acting as though she had never witnessed anything like it in her life

“Jude, you did not need to,” she said, which was the kind of sentence people sand specifically because they wanted to be told

otherwise.

“Nonsense,” Jude said smoothly, stepping forward to kiss her cheek “A family deserves to be treated properly. I have been remiss in introducing myself the right way, and I intend to fix that tonight

Martha beanied

She actually beamed, the kind of open, girlish pleasure I had not seen on her face since I was young enough to still believe she was capable of it without an audience to perform for

Then she turned to Julian

“And what did you bring?” she asked, her tone light, almost teasing, the question of a woman who fully expected at answer chat

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would make the evening complete.

Julian looked at her.

“Nothing,” he said.

The word landed in the doorway and sat there.

Martha’s smile faltered slightly, recalibrating, clearly searching for the version of this answer that made sense, the joke she had not caught yet, or the gift he was simply being modest about.

“Nothing at all?” she said.

“No,” Julian said. He did not elaborate. He did not offer an excuse about being too busy, or forgetting, or planning to send something later. He simply stood there, entirely unbothered, as though the question itself barely warranted the breath it took to answer it.

I watched Delia’s face beside him.

She had gone very still, her eyes fixed somewhere just past Martha’s shoulder, her jaw set in a way that told me exactly how much this was costing her to stand through silently. She knew, better than anyone else standing on that porch, that Julian Windsor could have purchased everything Jude had carried up those steps a hundred times over without noticing the expense. She had lived in his house for two years. She knew the scale of what he had and the precision with which he chose never to spend it on anything resembling sentiment.

He had never once brought her parents anything either, in two years of attending Kensington events as her husband. I understood that now, watching her face. This was not new information to her. It was simply the first time it had been put directly beside Jude’s performance, side by side, in a doorway, for everyone to measure at once.

Martha recovered her smile, though it took her a visible second longer than it had taken for Jude.

“Well,” she said. “Come in, all of you. David has been waiting.”

We filed past her into the house, Jude’s boxes already being carried toward the formal sitting room by staff who clearly knew exactly where such things were meant to go in a house like this, and as I passed Julian in the doorway, he caught in eve tor the briefest moment, something unreadable passing behind his expression before he smoothed it back into the same tlat composure he had worn since stepping out of the car.

He did not look like a man who regretted his answer.

He looked like a man who had decided long ago that he was never going to compete on Jude Wolte’s terms, gifts, gestures, and performances for an audience, and was entirely comfortable letting the room draw whatever conclusions it wanted from thai decision.

I followed Martha inside, very aware of Delia’s silence behind me, and wondered exactly how long it was going to last below something in her finally cracked.

The sitting room was already arranged for the boxes by the time we reached it, a low table cleared near the window spev dially to receive them, which told me Masha had likely known what was coming before any of us arrived Itale’s people set the four boxes down in a careful row and withdrew without a word, leaving the room feeling sucktenly larger than it had a momeni before, the way rooms always seemed to expand around the promise of something about to be unwrapped

David appeared from his study, drawn by the noise, and stood near the doorway taking in the scene with the same passive, faintly bewildered expression he wore through most family events, content to let his wife manage the evening; s emotional currents while he occupied himself with whatever question was easiest to answer

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