They Mocked My Curves, So I Married the Billionaire Bartender novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Ask Me Properly

Jasper's POV

I have cooked for exactly three women in my life.

My mother, who is dead.

My grandmother, who thought garlic was a vegetable.

And my wife, who walked into my kitchen at ten past seven in one of my shirts with her hair in a knot and said, "Is that burning?"

It was burning.

I had never attempted an omelet before.

"Sit," I said.

"You're smoking."

"I'm making you breakfast."

"You're making me a fire."

She laughed, and the sound went through me like a hand through a curtain.

She turned off the burner herself.

We ate toast and eggs with the edges scorched, at the kitchen island, with the cat circling our ankles.

She had fetched the cat that morning.

She ate everything on her plate.

I watched her do it, and I made myself stop being afraid.

"You said there was one more thing," she said.

"Yes."

"Say it."

I put down my fork.

I got up and went to the study and came back with a thick gray folder.

I laid it on the island between our plates.

"Open it. Or don't. It's yours either way."

She opened it.

Photographs.

Dozens.

Roz on the steps of her studio with a coffee.

Roz at a farmers' market choosing a pear.

Roz crossing Third Avenue in the rain with her cat's carrier held over her head.

"What is this?"

"For two years my head of security has had someone keep an eye on you."

Her face went blank.

"Keep an eye."

"Your schedule. Where you went. Who you saw. To make sure your father's people weren't setting something up." I made myself keep going. "He reported to me every Friday. I read all of it."

She turned a page.

A date and time and an address.

The dentist.

The bakery.

A woman she had gone to lunch with in March.

"You read about my dentist."

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