The CEO's Unwanted Bride

Something Like Normal

Chapter 16 —

October arrived, and with it something Mia hadn't expected: routine.

Not the performing kind — not the careful choreography of public appearances and practiced smiles. Something quieter. Domestic. Real.

Tuesday mornings, Ethan made coffee. He'd learned how she took it without asking — one sugar, a little too much milk — and it appeared on the counter before she came downstairs, still hot.

She started leaving books in his office. Not intentionally at first, but he never moved them, and eventually she started choosing them deliberately — things she thought he'd like, left spine-up on the corner of his desk.

He read them. She could tell by the way the spines bent.

On a Thursday evening in the third week of October, he came home early.

Mia was on the kitchen floor with her laptop, surrounded by the remnants of what had started as an organized recipe search and evolved into something that looked like a small disaster.

He stood in the doorway and looked at her.

"Floor again?" he said.

"The counter was too formal."

He loosened his tie, set his bag down, and lowered himself to the floor beside her. She moved the laptop to make room. He stretched his legs out and looked at her screen.

"What are you making?"

"Trying to figure out if I can make my mother's lamb tagine without half the ingredients she used."

"Can you?"

"Probably not. But I'm going to try."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "My mother made soup every Sunday. I don't remember the recipe. I remember the smell."

Mia looked at him.

"Cardamom," he said. "And something else I never identified."

"Rose water," she said softly. "Moroccan families use it sometimes. My mother did."

He turned to look at her. Something warm moved through his expression.

"Make the tagine," he said. "I'll help."

"You cook?"

"No. But I can follow instructions."

She laughed — full and unguarded — and handed him a recipe printout.

They cooked for two hours. It was imperfect and slightly over-seasoned and the best meal either of them had eaten in months.

Later, washing dishes side by side, their shoulders touching, Mia thought: this is it.

Not the contract. Not the rules. Not the performance.

This — flour on his sleeve and her laughing at something he'd said and the city dark outside the window — this was the thing worth having.

She didn't say it out loud.

But from the way he looked at her when she handed him the last dish, she

thought maybe he already knew.