The_Billionaires_Reluctant_Bride

Chapter 14 The Home Office

The library was a lie.

Evelyn discovered this on her third day of searching for a workspace. She'd claimed the east wing library as her own—per the residential protocols, rule number two—but after three days of sitting at a mahogany desk that was older than her grandmother, she realized the problem.

The library was beautiful. It was also useless.

The desk was too high for drawing. The lighting was too dim for detail work. The chairs were designed for reading, not for the hunched posture of someone sketching for six hours straight. And the only electrical outlet was hidden behind a bookshelf that weighed approximately as much as a small car.

Evelyn stood in the center of the room, surrounded by leather-bound volumes she would never read, and felt a surge of frustration that bordered on despair.

She needed to work. Not for Adrian. Not for the contract. For herself. Design was the only thing that had ever been hers—the only thing no one could take away, the only thing that made her feel like more than a patient daughter or a contractual wife.

And she couldn't do it here.

"Problem?"

Evelyn jumped. Adrian stood in the doorway, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, looking like he'd already survived half a day of corporate warfare.

"This room is decorative," she said. "Not functional."

"It's a library."

"It's a museum piece. The desk is for writing letters with quill pens. The chairs are for people with perfect posture and no ambition. The lighting is designed to make books look impressive, not to help anyone actually work." She gestured at the room. "I need a space where I can design. Sketch. Build models. Use a computer. This isn't it."

Adrian walked in. He moved slowly, his eyes cataloging everything—the desk, the chairs, the dim sconces on the walls, the single inadequate outlet.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"A drafting table. Good lighting—natural north light, preferably. Storage for materials. A digital workstation. And an ergonomic chair that doesn't feel like it was designed to punish my spine."

"Specific."

"I'm a designer. I have standards."

Adrian's mouth curved. "North light. Drafting table. Materials storage. Digital setup. Ergonomic chair." He pulled out his phone and typed something. "Anything else?"

"You're not going to fight me on this?"

"Why would I fight you?" He looked up from his phone. "You need a workspace. I'm providing one. That's what the contract covers."

"The contract covers 'use of residential property.' It doesn't say you'll renovate an entire room for me."

"I'm not renovating. I'm optimizing." He pocketed his phone. "Give me three days."

"Three days for what?"

But he was already leaving, his footsteps echoing down the hallway, leaving Evelyn staring after him with a mixture of suspicion and something dangerously close to gratitude.

---

Three days later, Evelyn woke to the sound of construction.

Not the gentle tap of a hammer. The full-scale roar of power tools, the shouted instructions of workmen, the scrape of furniture being moved against marble floors.

She threw on a robe and ran downstairs.

The library was gone.

In its place was a space she barely recognized. The heavy mahogany desk had been removed. The leather chairs were gone. The dim sconces had been replaced with track lighting that could be adjusted by color temperature and intensity.

And in the center of the room, bathed in natural light from a window that had somehow been enlarged—how had they done that in three days?—stood a drafting table. A real one. Adjustable height, tilt surface, built-in storage for pencils and rulers and all the tools she used every day.

Beside it, a digital workstation. Dual monitors. A stylus tablet. Software she couldn't afford but desperately needed.

On the wall, shelves for materials. Fabric swatches. Wood samples. Paint chips organized by hue and saturation. Everything a designer could want.

And in the corner, an ergonomic chair that looked like it had been designed by NASA.

Evelyn walked in slowly, her bare feet silent on the new cork flooring—cork, because it was soft and warm and perfect for standing on for hours.

"The north light was a challenge," Adrian said from the doorway. "This room faces east. So I had the window replaced with a smart glass system that filters and redirects sunlight. It approximates north light between the hours of nine and four."

Evelyn touched the drafting table. It was real. Solid. Perfect.

"The digital setup has your Parsons software suite preloaded. The chair is adjustable in fourteen dimensions. The storage is modular—you can reconfigure it however you need." He paused. "And the cork floor is because you mentioned once that you prefer standing when you design."

Evelyn turned to face him. "When did I mention that?"

"The night of the wedding. On the terrace. You were talking about your father, about how he used to stand at his drafting table for hours, how you learned to design the same way." His expression was carefully neutral. "I remember things, Evelyn. It's one of my more annoying traits."

She looked around the room—her room, her space, built specifically for her, with details she'd mentioned in passing during a vulnerable moment she barely remembered.

"This must have cost a fortune," she said.

"It did."

"Why?"

Adrian leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed, his gray eyes unreadable.