Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 7

Chapter 7 At the Door in Person

“Julian Weston and Constance Weston, here?”

Both Nora and Mandy sat there stunned.

Finished

In their last life, Reeve had handled the engagement alone and the wedding three days later, and no one from the family ever appeared.

This time Julian and Constance had come themselves.

Everyone crowded out to the front door to see whether Julian had really shown up.

The answer arrived quickly.

Nora watched a procession of luxury come up the drive, dozens of million-dollar cars running in formation down both sides of the road like an escort, and dead center among them rolled a Maybach worth 10 million dollars.

The Maybach pulled into the Sinclair courtyard and stopped.

Reeve got out, opened the rear door with a small bow, and a tall, cool, expensively put-together figure stepped down onto the gravel.

Julian stood well over six feet, and everything about his face ran hard and clean, all sharp lines and deep-set eyes that moved over the assembled Sinclairs without warming for any of them.

The morning sun broke behind him and threw him into silhouette, and for a second he looked less like a man arriving somewhere and more like something that had walked out of the light.

Nora had spent years across a table from Adrian and that devastating face of his, and even so, this one knocked the breath out of her.

“Julian Weston?”

Was he always this good-looking?

Julian caught the soft sound of his name, glanced over, and something bright and surprised moved through his eyes before he smoothed it away, nodded once, and reached back to help Constance out of the car.

“Grandma, we’re at the Sinclair house.”

His voice came out low and unhurried, warm around the edges, the kind of voice people leaned toward without noticing they were doing it.

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10:51 Thu, Sep 17

Chapter 7 At the Door in Person

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Finished

Constance stepped out, a round, comfortable woman with hair gone half gray, wearing a beautifully tailored dress and a face made for kindness.

Julian took her arm and walked her to the door.

Constance looked up at Nora and asked her directly, “Are you the Nora who’s meeting Julian today?”

Looking at that kind face, Nora went straight back to a night in her last life when she ran through the rain and Constance held an umbrella over her head and asked if she needed help.

Constance carried more weight now, and it suited her. There was less gray in her hair, and she looked like a woman with nothing in the world to worry about.

It was worlds away from how Constance had looked at the end, when Nora collected her body and found her thin enough to lift with one arm.

Something in Nora softened, and she answered like a girl half her age. “Grandma Weston, I’m Nora Sinclair.”

Two words did it. Constance was over the moon, and she caught Nora’s hand in both of hers. “Sweet girl. Don’t stand out here in the cold, come inside and talk to me.”

Victor rushed to steer them all into the sitting room.

Mandy trailed at the back of the group, still staring. Nothing like this had happened the first time around.

Yvette counted the cars in the drive, then looked again at Julian standing there cool and untouchable, and nothing about him suggested a man three weeks from the grave.

The regret started working on her, and she pitched her voice low enough for only Mandy to hear. “You’re sure about this vision of yours? All of it?”

Mandy came back to herself and talked her down. “Relax. Every word of it. What you’re looking at is the shine on top. Underneath, that family rotted out a long time ago.”

Nothing about that relaxed Yvette. “I’m already starting to regret this.”

The Sinclairs were handing Nora a man with that much money and that face, along with a grandmother who actually seemed kind.

If she ends up better off than Mandy, it will eat me alive. I’ll never get over it.

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