My Sister Married My Ex, So I Became a Billionaire's Mistress novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Only the Driver Came
Willa lands after three years and only the driver is waiting, her sister welcomes her warmly, and at the dinner table she learns the baby in her sister's arms carries the name she and Nolan once chose.
The only person waiting at the arrivals gate was the family driver.
He took her suitcase and said, "Welcome home, Miss Tarleton."
Willa looked around the hall once more. Nobody else had come.
She smiled at the floor and followed him out to the car.
Three years ago she had told her sister she was never coming back.
She had meant it.
Then last week she had called her father and asked for five hundred thousand dollars, and he had said, "Ask your grandfather. And come home, your mother misses you."
So here she was.
She had a plan, and the plan did not need anyone to be glad she had come.
The car stopped at the Corwin house, not Tarleton Hall.
"Mrs. Corwin asked me to bring you here first," the driver said.
Willa's hand tightened on the strap of her bag.
Her sister's house. Her sister's husband.
Daphne was already coming down the front steps in a pale green dress with butterflies stitched along the neckline.
She had cut her long hair to her chin, and it suited her.
"Willa." Daphne took both her hands and looked her over. "You're so thin. What did they feed you over there?"
"Nothing much. It was fine."
"Fine is what you always say." Daphne kept hold of her hands. "I walked your goodbye over to Nolan myself, the night you gave it to me. I never told him a word about how you cried. I'd never hold anything back from you, you know that."
Willa did not want to hear his name.
She nodded anyway.
"Dad and Mom are in Orevine bringing Grandpa home," Daphne said. "Stay here with us a few days. I'll feed you properly."
"I don't think I should."
"Please. We haven't had three years to talk."
Willa looked at her sister's face. It was kind and open and tired around the eyes.
She had never once seen Daphne be unkind to her.
That was what made it so hard to forgive her.
"One night," Willa said.
"One night." Daphne squeezed her hands. "I'll have the blue room made up."
The blue room was the guest room at the top of the stairs. Willa knew it well.
She showered, towelled her wet hair, and fell into the bed with her clothes on the chair.
The same dreams came, in pieces, and she woke to a dark window.
Her phone said 9:30 p.m.
Her stomach hurt with hunger. She had barely eaten on the plane.
She put on her white dress and went out into the hall.
From the top of the stairs she could see the living room. Daphne sat on the sofa with the television on. A maid was setting a bowl of cut fruit on the table.
Willa took two steps down.
The front door opened.
A man came in, and a servant hurried over with his slippers.
Willa stopped with one hand on the gold banister.
Nolan was thirty-one now. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt with the collar open, and his face had lost its softness.
He bent to change his shoes and did not look up.
She could go back to her room. She could climb out the window if she had to.
"Willa," Daphne called. "Come eat."
Willa dug her nails into her palm until it hurt, and then she turned around.
Her face was calm. She had practiced that face for three years in the mirror of a hotel kitchen.
Daphne smiled up at her from the sofa. Nolan looked at her from the doorway.
Willa looked at them both for exactly as long as was polite.
"I'm hungry," she said, and walked down the rest of the stairs.
Daphne rang for the cook. The cook came out of the kitchen with her whole face lit up. "Miss Tarleton! You came back to us."
"Hello, Auntie." Willa had called her that since she was fourteen, and nobody had ever told her to stop.
Daphne took Nolan's coat and hung it up in the hall closet.
Nolan said something low to her, and she patted his arm.
They passed each other without looking, because they had done it a thousand times.
Willa sat at the dining table and stared at her plate.
The cook had made everything she used to love. The soup, the roast potatoes, the pears in wine.
She ate three bites and put her fork down.
"Is it not to your liking?" the cook asked.
"It's perfect. I just can't."
"You shouldn't eat much this late anyway," Nolan said from the sofa.
It was the first thing he had said to her in three years.
Willa looked up and met his eyes, and held them for one second.
Then she looked away.
A thin cry came from upstairs.
Daphne was on her feet at once. "That's her. She's awake."
"Her?" Willa said.
Daphne smiled and went up. A minute later she came down again slowly, a baby against her shoulder in a pink sleeper, one small fist wound into her collar.
The baby had round cheeks and dark eyes. She stared at Willa without blinking.
"Willa, this is Birdie," Daphne said. "She's fourteen months."
Birdie.
The name hit her hard enough that she forgot to breathe.
Years ago, on the lawn behind his mother's garden, Nolan had said, Our daughter, and we'll call her Birdie.
She had told him it was a ridiculous name, and he had gone red to his ears and said it anyway.
Willa put her hands flat on the table so no one would see them shake.
Nolan was not looking at her. He was looking at the baby.
"She's beautiful," Willa said, and her voice came out steady.
She would stay one night, and then she would take the money and go.
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