He Thought I Was Poor,But I Am a Billionaire

Chapter 5

With that, Mabel turned and made her way downstairs.

Jayden was in the living room, going through some work on his laptop, but the second he saw her coming down, he snapped it shut and said, "You always used to say I never treated you right, so this time, I had Riley help me pick out some gifts to make up for all those anniversaries I missed over the years. Well? What do you think? Is that enough to make up for it?"

Only a man like Jayden—with his special kind of "romantic" touch—would have his ex-girlfriend pick out gifts for his current one.

Mabel said flatly, "None of the clothes or jewelry is in my size, but I do appreciate you and Riley taking the whole night to put this together."

And with that, she walked right past him and out the front door. The second she stepped outside, a fine drizzle and a soft breeze brushed across her face, and she was left with something caught between relief and emptiness, a feeling with nowhere to land.

After she was gone, the living room went heavy and hollow, and Jayden sat there staring at the empty doorway, his face dark and unreadable.

Just then Riley came down the stairs. "Jayden, you saw that, right? That girlfriend of yours plays some pretty clever little games. You went to all that trouble picking out gifts, trying to make her feel safe, but that's exactly the problem. The safer she feels, the more she's going to want. Treat Mabel too well and she'll just keep pushing. You've got to keep her guessing every once in a while. That's what keeps a woman right where you want her."

Jayden said nothing.

*****

Meanwhile, Mabel had left the house and gone straight to the office, because that day happened to be her last day on the job.

She'd spent the whole morning and afternoon working through the final steps of her offboarding, and by the time the workday ended, she'd handed over the last batch of client files to a colleague and was officially no longer part of NovaSky Airlines.

As she walked out of the building with a few coworkers, she came face-to-face with Jayden and Riley, who had just stepped out of the car and were heading inside.

Their eyes met for a brief moment—just a flicker of recognition—and then, almost instinctively, they both looked away, slipping back into that old, familiar routine of pretending they didn't know each other, the way they'd done for years—strangers in public, keeping their secret tucked away where no one could see it.

Just then, one of her colleagues suddenly grabbed Mabel's left hand and gasped, "Mabel, isn't that a Harry Winston engagement ring? Are you actually getting married? When on earth did you even get a boyfriend? I've worked with you for years and never once had a clue."

At those words, Jayden, who had already made it to the office entrance, stopped dead in his tracks and turned around, his gaze landing squarely on the ring Mabel was wearing, the very same one he'd seen at the jewelry store that day, and his eyes turned icy cold in an instant.

He heard Mabel laugh lightly and say, "You'll find out in a week."

She said her goodbyes to her colleagues with a cheerful wave and climbed into a taxi back to the Sandalwood Estate, and when she pulled out her phone, she saw a message from Jayden that had just come in.

Jayden: In a week, I'm still not marrying you.

She stared at the screen and couldn't help but burst out laughing. Where on earth did Jayden get the idea that she was so desperate to marry him?

She didn't bother replying, just turned her phone off and put it away.

*****

Late that night, back at The Sandalwood Estate, the bedroom door was suddenly thrown open, jolting Mabel awake.

Still half-asleep and disoriented, she saw Jayden stride in with a dark, unpleasant expression on his face, and he said, "I already told you, that ring doesn't suit you, and I don't want to get married right now."

"You've got it all wrong," Mabel murmured, her voice still thick with sleep. "I just liked it, so I bought it."

Jayden pulled out a card and held it out to her. "What could a tour guide possibly afford? Here, take this for the ring. And I mean it. This is the last time. No more of these little stunts that give people the wrong idea, and no more of those comments that make everyone think something's going on. If you keep this up, I swear, I will never marry you, not in this lifetime, not ever."

Not ever. Mabel was suddenly wide awake, staring at the card in his hand, the irony of it all hitting her full force.

It wasn't that Jayden couldn't afford to buy her a ring. It was that he believed buying one would be the same as promising marriage, and marriage was something he simply had no intention of offering her.

To him, marriage was a calculation, a matter of weighing who was worth committing to and who wasn't, and she had simply never been his first choice. What he never once realized was that he'd never been hers either.