The Billionaire Janitor Is Back! novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Tania

The woman in the camel coat looked at my bare legs for a moment.

Then she looked at Mal's chest, and her mouth did something that was very nearly a smile.

"Tania," Mal said.

"Mr. Thorsby."

"I told you Sunday afternoon."

"It is Sunday," said Tania.

"It's just earlier than you'd like."

She walked past us into the kitchen and set her garment bag over a chair.

She had a sleek black bob and a gray suit and the air of a woman who billed by the minute.

She put three phones on my table in a row.

"Ms. Marsden," she said. "Tania Brisbane. I am so sorry about the hour. Is there coffee?"

I stood in the hallway in his shirt, with my hair like a haystack.

"There's a pot," I said. "I'll get it."

"I'll get it," said Mal.

"Sit," said Tania.

"You're the one who's been on the run."

He sat.

I poured three cups, because my hands needed something to do.

Tania took hers, looked at the cup, looked at my chipped sink and said, to Mal, in a very even voice, "You have been living here for nineteen months."

"In the cottage."

"With a hot plate."

"With a stove."

"You are worth six billion dollars," Tania said, "and you have been eating grilled cheese."

The kitchen went quiet.

I held very still, with the coffeepot in my hand.

I made my face do what a face does when it hears something for the first time.

It was the hardest thing I did that week.

Mal had closed his eyes.

"Tania," he said.

"She doesn't know?"

Tania's eyebrows went up, very slowly.

"You married her, and she doesn't know?"

"I was going to tell her."

"When? At the reception?"

"There's no reception."

"Mr. Thorsby," Tania said, "I paid the electric bill on that cottage for a year and a half, so that you could stand in it unobserved, and I have made peace with the fact that you'd rather mop a floor than run a company. But I did not expect to find you married."

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