Loving The Billionaire’s Cold Heart

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ethan's POV

I told myself it was nothing.

Standing close to her in the library, not touching, not saying anything that crossed a line — that was nothing. That was two people in a complicated situation being honest with each other. It didn't mean anything had shifted.

I believed that for approximately twelve hours.

Then I walked into the kitchen Saturday morning and she was teaching herself something from a cookbook propped open on the counter, flour on her forearm, completely absorbed, and the nothing feeling collapsed entirely.

She didn't notice me for a full minute. I watched her read the recipe, frown at it, adjust something, frown again. She had a small crease between her brows when she concentrated. I had no business knowing that.

"It won't work," I said.

She looked up. "Good morning to you too."

"The butter needs to be colder. It'll spread if you use it at room temperature."

She looked at the butter. Back at me. "You bake?"

"My mother's chef taught me when I was nine. I was going through a phase."

"What kind of phase involves learning to bake?"

"The kind where your father works eighteen hours a day and your mother is at events every evening and the kitchen is the only room in the house where someone talks to you like you're a person," I said it without thinking and then heard it land and wished briefly that I hadn't.

Nora looked at me without pity. Just understanding. Clean and quiet, no performance.

"Put the butter back in the fridge," I said. "Fifteen minutes."

"Are you going to help me or just supervise?"

"I haven't decided."

She slid the butter dish toward me. "Decide fast. I've already wasted one batch."

I rolled up my sleeves and she moved over without comment and we stood at the counter together and I talked her through it — temperature, pressure, why overworking the dough mattered — and she listened and asked precise questions and followed the instructions exactly, which was not something most people did when I explained something.

"You're good at following direction," I said.

"Only when the direction makes sense." She glanced up. "You explained the reason behind each step. That's different from just telling me what to do."

"Most people don't need the reason."

"I do." She pressed the dough lightly the way I had shown her. "If I understand why something works I can fix it myself next time. If I just follow steps I'm dependent on someone else's knowledge forever."

I looked at the side of her face. She was focused on the dough and completely unaware that she had just described her entire approach to life in two sentences.

"That's how you read contracts," I said.

"That's how I read everything."

We worked in silence for a while. Comfortable silence — the kind that didn't ask anything of either of us. She had flour on her cheek now too and I considered telling her and decided against it because something about it made her look so entirely human in a house that was almost never human.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Yes."

"Camille. When did it start?"

I had expected this question eventually. She asked it without accusation, the same way she asked everything — because she wanted to understand, not because she wanted ammunition.

"Seven years ago," I said. "She was at a conference my father brought me to. She was the only person in the room who didn't know who I was when she started talking to me." I paused. "Later I found out she did know. But by then I had already decided the feeling was real."

"Did you love her or did you love how she made you feel?"

The question arrived like a blade, clean and precise.

I thought about it honestly. "I loved the idea of someone choosing me outside of all this. The empire, the name, the expectation." I set the rolling pin down. "She didn't choose me outside of it. She chose me because of it. I just needed longer to see that."

Nora was quiet. Then — "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"I'm not sorry it fell apart. I'm sorry you were deceived by someone you trusted." She looked at me. "Those are different things."

They were. I looked at her and something in my chest pulled with a force I was getting tired of pretending wasn't there.

"Your turn," I said. "Has anyone ever —"

"No." She said it simply. "I never had time. And I think I was always waiting for something that felt real rather than settling for something that just felt available."

"And now you're in a marriage."

"A contract." She almost smiled. "There's a difference. You told me that."

"I did say that."

"Do you still believe it?"

I held her gaze. She was asking me a direct question with her eyes open and she deserved a direct answer. The problem was the direct answer was something I was still working out the full shape of.

"Less than I did," I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Something moved through her expression — that flash of unguarded feeling she almost never let stay. This time it stayed one second longer than usual.

Then she looked back at the dough. "They need to go in the oven."

"Nora."

"I heard you," she said quietly. "I just need a minute to put it somewhere."

I understood that. I was doing the same thing. So I stepped back and let her slide the tray into the oven and we stood in the kitchen and waited and the domesticity of it — the flour and the warmth and the quiet — settled around us like something that had always been here, just waiting for us to stop moving long enough to feel it.

Her shoulder was touching mine.

Neither of us moved away.