Fated to My Flash-Married Billionaire novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Margaret's Kitchen

Mr. Aldous slammed the leather folder shut, and the crack of it carried across the room.

Preston stood with his mouth open and his hand still under Lydia's.

He was looking at her stomach, and then at her face, and I thought: he did not know.

Nobody at that table did.

"Excuse me," I said.

I picked up my bag and walked the length of the room between forty chairs.

Rowan caught me at the double doors.

"Willa."

"Don't," I said. "I'm not leaving you. I need to be somewhere that isn't here."

"I'll drive."

"If you leave, Mr. Aldous wins the room. Stay and finish the meeting."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he nodded once, because I had asked, and let me go.

I took a car to Lake Forest and watched the lake go gray and then green through the window.

My hands were cold in my lap the whole way.

Margaret opened her kitchen door in an apron with flour up to the elbows.

She took one look at my face and said, "Sit."

I sat at the long pine table with the wobbly leg.

Biscuit the beagle limped over, put his chin on my shoe, and sighed.

"The X-ray was arthritis," Margaret said, rolling dough. "He has a pill now, and he's furious about it. Thank you for telling me to look."

"You're welcome."

"Do you want to tell me, or shall I guess?"

"Preston stood up at the brunch," I said, "and told forty people the baby was his."

The rolling pin stopped.

"And Rowan said it was his. Out loud, and he meant it, I think. And then Preston said I'd used him as a weapon, and Rowan looked at me. He'd been waiting for someone to say it."

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