Too Late for Sorry, Mr. Billionaire (Chasing my Wife Back) novel Chapter 140

IT was a Saturday morning and Amelia was in the kitchen making the boys' breakfast when the doorbell rang. Hazel had stepped out.

"I will get it!" Gaddiel shouted from the living room, already running.

"Do not open that door without asking who it is first!" Amelia called after him.

"Who is it?" Gaddiel shouted at the door with absolutely no reduction in volume.

There was no response for a second before Gaddiel heard the call and collected voice of his father.

"It's your dad."

"IT'S DADDY!" Gaddiel screamed, as though this was news that needed to be broadcast to neighboring properties. He yanked the door open and flew into the waiting arms of his father with glee in his eyes.

Amelia set down the spatula and wiped her hands. She had not called Adrian. He had not texted this morning. She walked to the living room doorway and found him already crouched down in the entrance, both boys attached to him like small determined barnacles, talking over each other at a volume that suggested they had been waiting for this visit for considerably longer than one morning.

Adrian looked up from the middle of the chaos and found her eyes.

"I should have called," he said, his eyes unconsciously raking over her body. "...but I doubted that you would take the calls."

"You should have called or texted," she agreed, but did not make an addition to reply to his last statement.

He straightened, extracting himself gently from the boys.

"I was in the area," he said, which they both knew was not entirely the reason why he was here. "I just wanted to—" He stopped and his eyes went to the boys before looking up at her. "Can we talk? Properly?"

"Boys," Amelia said, "go finish your cartoons and prepare for breakfast in ten minutes."

They disappeared obediently, which was suspicious, but she didn't have the strength to investigate how fast they moved. She stepped back from the doorway and Adrian came inside. She led him to the kitchen, because the kitchen felt more calm and ensured more secrecy than the living room, and she poured him a coffee without asking.

"Thank you," he said as he collected the mug from her hands, welcoming the hot sensation it came with. He took a sip from it, and memories of how she used to make him this came flooding in. Something moved in his chest when remembered it, but he had to suppress his emotions now and focus on Amelia. He set the mug down when he saw she was about to talk.

She leaned against the counter, hands folded across her chest as if she was protecting herself from something.

"You are worried," she said. "You don't have to pretend you were just in the area."

He wrapped his hands around the mug.

"You weren't picking up my calls."

"I know."

"I just needed to know you were okay."

"I'm okay," she said. And then, because he was looking at her with that specific, careful attention that had always been difficult to deflect: "I have had a difficult few days. It had nothing to do with you."

"Okay," he said. He didn't push. He just held the mug and looked at her, and the quality of his being there, undemanding, just present... was something she didn't know how to categorize.

Then footsteps came down the hallway. Not the boys'— these were longer, more deliberate. Amelia turned as Ifeanyi appeared in the kitchen doorway in a t-shirt and shorts, clearly just out of bed, heading for the fridge with the ease of someone who had already known his way around the house and was just following his daily routine.

He pulled the fridge open, reached for the orange juice, and then noticed Adrian standing at the counter.

He straightened his back with surprise filling his eyes.

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't realize you had a guest."

"Ifeanyi, this is Adrian," Amelia said. "He's the children's father. Adrian, this is Ifeanyi. He is staying here for a few weeks while he sorts accommodation. He is doing his master's in urban planning."

"Good morning," Ifeanyi said pleasantly, extending his hand.

Adrian shook it. "Morning." His voice was completely even. His face was completely even. Everything about him was completely even in the way of a man using considerable effort to appear unaffected.

"I will leave you to it," Ifeanyi said easily, taking his juice and heading back down the hallway. "Nice to meet you."

"You too," Adrian said.

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Adrian looked at his coffee. Then he looked at Amelia. She met his gaze with the calm, steady expression she wore when she was waiting for someone to say the thing they were clearly thinking, but Adrian said nothing, and neither did she want to supply answers to nonexistent questions.

"More coffee?" she asked eventually.

"No," he said. "Thank you." He set the mug down. "I should let you get on with breakfast."

"Adrian." She called him, and the gentle way she called him made him look at her.

"He is a friend," she said. "That's the whole story." She didn't know why she felt the need to explain who Ifeanyi was to her, but somehow, she felt she owed him some kind of explanation. She had seen that he was itching to ask, but something held him back, and she was sure it was because he didn't want to make her uncomfortable and seem like he was pushing it.

Adrian held her gaze for a moment. Something moved behind his eyes... something he pressed down deliberately before it could surface. "Okay," he said.

He said goodbye to the boys on his way out, the warmth in his voice with them completely unguarded, and then the door closed, and Amelia stood in the kitchen and heard his car start in the driveway. She turned back to the stove to continue making breakfast for the kids.

From down the hallway, Gaddiel's voice floated into the kitchen.

"Daddy looked sad when he left." He sounded down too.

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