The Billionaire's Fake Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dinner at Harrow House

Odile and Dorian question the couple, and Mamie survives the trap about how they met.

Odile Halloway's dining room had a table for twenty and she had set it for five.

She sat at the head with her cane hooked on her chair.

Dorian sat on her right, with a thin pale woman beside him who had not yet looked at me.

"My wife, Sybil," Dorian said. "She doesn't talk much."

"Hello," I said.

Sybil gave me a small, careful nod.

Rhys pulled my chair out, and his hand brushed my back as I sat.

I felt it all the way to my shoes.

A cook brought soup, and nobody touched it.

"So," Odile said. "Tell me how you met my grandson."

I had rehearsed exactly nothing.

Rhys was watching me with that flat, patient look, and I understood he was going to let me decide.

"At my sister's lab, three months ago," I said. "He came to see a battery test."

"Rhys came to a lab," Dorian said. "On his own."

"He came through the loading dock," I said. "He was standing in the wrong place."

"The wrong place how?" Odile asked.

"He was about to lean on a table with a sample on it," I said.

"I told him if he touched it I would put him through the wall."

Sybil's eyes flicked up.

"And what did he do?" Odile asked.

"He asked what the sample was," I said. "And then he asked a second question that was actually smart, which was worse."

Rhys made a sound that might have been a laugh.

"What day was it?" Dorian said.

"A Thursday," Rhys said. "It was raining."

"How convenient that you remember."

"I remember because she made me wear goggles," Rhys said. "Yellow ones. They didn't fit."

Odile put her spoon down.

"Rhys has not worn goggles since he was twelve," she said. "He cried at the chemistry set."

"Grandmother," Rhys said.

"You did."

"I was eleven."

Odile's mouth did something that was nearly a smile, and I felt the room warm by a degree.

Dorian did not warm.

"The university keeps a visitors' log," he said. "I'd be interested to see it."

"I came through the loading dock," Rhys said. "I don't sign guest books."

"Of course you don't."

"Dorian," Odile said, without looking at him.

He picked up his wine.

"I'm only curious," he said.

"A man who hasn't brought a woman home in six years announces an engagement the day his cousin cuts a grant."

"You must admit the timing is interesting."

"I'm interested in the timing too," I said.

Everyone looked at me.

"I walked in because you froze my sister's life's work," I said to Dorian. "I'm not sure what you thought would happen."

"I thought you'd write a letter."

"I did write a letter," I said. "It had a lot of capital letters and I delivered it in person."

Odile laughed.

It was a short dry bark, and it startled everyone at the table, including her.

Dorian's ears went red.

"Ms. Marwick," Odile said, wiping her eye with a napkin. "What do you do, when you are not shouting at my board?"

"I make materials that store more energy than they should," I said. "Pippa makes the chemistry, and I make it survive a winter."

"And you want my money."

"I want a signed agreement honored," I said. "I'd take it from anyone."

"Even from a man you are marrying?"

Her eyes dropped to my left hand.

I did not look at it.

"Especially not from him," I said. "He's paying the quarter out of his own account, and I'll pay him back."

Rhys turned his head.

"You will not," he said.

"I will."

"We'll discuss it," he said.

"We won't," I said.

Sybil made a small noise into her napkin.

It might have been a cough.

Odile studied the two of us, and then my ring, for a long moment.

"That was my daughter-in-law's ring," she said.

The room went quiet.

"Rhys's mother," she said. "I gave it to her myself the day she married my son."

I glanced at Rhys.

His face had gone very still.

"He told me," I said. "He said you'd recognize it."

"Did he," Odile said.

"He said he wanted me to wear something you couldn't call fake."

Nobody breathed.

Odile Halloway looked at her grandson for a long time.

"I see," she said.

She folded her napkin and set it beside her plate.

"Dorian, Sybil, you will stay in the west wing as usual," she said.

"Rhys, Ms. Marwick, I trust you have not brought a change of clothes."

"No," I said.

"The housekeeper will find you something," Odile said.

"Your room is made up."

"We have separate," Rhys started.

"Our house has one guest room that is aired," Odile said. "The east room. It has one bed."

She stood, took her cane, and looked down the table at us.

"You will not mind sharing it," she said.

It was not a question.

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