The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 51

Chapter 51 The Invitation (2)

The question hung in the air between them, heavier than she intended. Asking him to leave the safety and privacy of his fortress, to venture into a crowded, public space, was a big request. He hadn’t been seen in public in over a year.

He looked startled. “Come with you?”

“Yes. As my… date.” The word felt foreign on her tongue. “It would be good for you. To be out. To see people. And…” She searched for a reason he would accept. “And honestly, I’d feel safer with you there. You’re better at reading a room full of sharks than I am.”

It was a manipulation, and they both knew it. She didn’t need his protection in a room of literati. But appealing to his strategic mind, to his role as a protector, was the key.

He leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving hers. He was silent for so long she thought he would refuse.

“What kind of gala is it?” he finally asked.

“It’s a literary foundation event. The National Literary Foundation. They’re honoring… writers.” She kept her voice light. “It will be stuffy. Long speeches. Bad champagne. But it’s for a good cause.”

“Literature,” he repeated, and something flickered in his gray eyes. Interest. Curiosity. She could almost see the connection forming in his mind. Raven Shadowmere was a writer. This was a literary event. The coincidence was not lost on him.

“It’s possible,” he said, his voice thoughtful, “that she might be there.”

Elera’s heart hammered against her ribs. “Who?”

“Raven Shadowmere.” He said the name with a quiet reverence that made her throat tight. “An event like that… they would invite her. She probably won’t come. But there’s a chance.”

As she walked to the kitchen, she could feel his eyes on her back. She wondered what he was thinking. If he suspected. If the idea that the woman beside him, the doctor who held his life in her hands, could also be the author who built cathedrals in his mind, had ever once crossed his thoughts.

She doubted it. Some secrets were too big, too perfectly kept, to be guessed.

But in two weeks, she would be standing right next to him, holding both truths in her heart–the wife, and the author–while the world watched the mysterious Drakonius Vex make his return to society.

And she had no idea if she was giving him a gift, or laying the first brick in a wall that would eventually