Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 16

Chapter 16 Take Your Clothes Off

སྙ

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Julian looked at her and decided that someone about to become his wife had earned the truth, so he told her.

“My grandmother says I was hard to keep alive from the day I was born. I was sick constantly and nearly died more than once. She eventually took me to Dr. Blithe, and Dr. Blithe was the one who identified it as a poison I was born carrying, exactly the way you described it.

“Without her treatment I wouldn’t have reached 18. Getting me this far took everything she knew.”

Nora heard the respect running under every word of it.

So she asked him directly. “And she never found a way to cure you outright?”

Julian shook his head. “No.”

“So she can’t hold the symptoms back either? The food you can’t swallow, the nights you don’t sleep, the temper?”

Julian gave her the same answer. “No. Dr. Blithe has done everything she can. What you’re looking at is my condition after her treatment. Without it…”

He paused, and the smile that came out was a bitter one. “I’d have lost my mind years ago.”

Nora could not keep it in. “Is she a fraud? She can’t even manage the symptoms and people still call her the only miracle worker in the country?”

“Nora Sinclair!” Julian said her name cold and flat.

The anger in it was unmistakable.

Nora made a face at him. “I can manage them. She’s the one carrying the title. Am I not allowed to ask questions?”

She could do considerably more than manage them. She could pull the poison out of him entirely.

But I want a husband who drops dead. Widowed young, hundreds of billions of dollars in my name. That’s too good to walk away from.

Julian’s face stayed hard and his voice went cold and serious. “You’re not. Whether or not she bought me time, what she has built in medicine, what she knows, and every person she has saved all earn her respect.”

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Chapter 16 Take Your Clothes Off

Nora raised an eyebrow, surprised. “Your head’s screwed on straight.”

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Being heir to the richest family in the country had not left him surveying the world like a king who owned it, and that counted for something.

It was a great deal more than Adrian had ever managed.

Julian turned and found her pressing her lips together, staring out the window with a small crease between her brows, and none of it looked happy.

He spoke before he could stop himself. “I don’t take things on faith. I go by evidence. Give me reason and proof and I’ll believe you as readily as anyone.”

That turned her head. Is he backing down? Is he explaining himself to me?

Something about how bright and clear her eyes were sent Julian’s own gaze back out the window.

Nora said it seriously. “I’m sorry. I was out of line back there. I shouldn’t have questioned her. Every doctor has areas they’re strong in and areas they aren’t, and calming the nerves and restoring appetite happens to be mine.”

The poison in him was a genuinely difficult case, invisible to every piece of equipment modern medicine had, and Dr. Blithe missing it was entirely reasonable.

Nora could draw poison because it was the last thing her grandmother taught her in that other life, a strange and particular skill, and one her grandmother had seemed reluctant to pass on at

all.

Calming and appetite were what she had studied to the bone, because Adrian had driven her close to breaking, and for a long stretch she could not sleep or eat, and starvation would have finished her before he did.

She still intended to look properly into this Dr. Blithe.

Something about the name kept tying itself back to her grandmother.

Julian glanced at her again. He had not expected someone this brash and this bold to admit a mistake, and she did it plainly, without any of the flinching or performance he was used to.

Nora spotted a hotel up ahead and spoke to the driver. “Pull in at that one.”

The driver worked for Julian, so his eyes went to the rearview mirror for a decision.

Julian gave him one. “Do what she says.”

Nora and Julian checked into the presidential suite.

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Chapter 16 Take Your Clothes Off

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They stepped inside and the door clicked shut behind them.

Nora looked up at him, smiling. “Take your clothes off.”

“You…” Julian stopped, and his face closed over. “We’re engaged, but this is the second time we’ve met. There’s no need to rush.”

He had actually taken a step back, as though she had him cornered with bad intentions, and Nora’s mouth twitched at the sheer absurdity of it.

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