Chapter 501 The Look

Katia’s POV

I waited until Aiden was asleep and Clara had finally stayed in her crib for more than ten minutes. Julian was in our bedroom, his cuffs loose and his jacket hanging over the chair. I walked in and shut the door behind me.

“Babe,” I said, “call me paranoid, but I think my sister is fucking her father-in-law.”

Julian burst out laughing, clearly amused by what I had just said.

“Well,” he said, “I thought we were not going to talk about what happened at the dinner. But yes, she is. And I think it has been going on for some time now. I am surprised they are not even trying to hide it anymore.”

I hit his arm. “You idiot,” I snapped. “You have known this whole time and never told me? So much for being a good husband.”

“I am an excellent husband,” Julian argued. “I also do not bring your sister-in-law’s sex life into our bed unless you ask.”

“Well, I am asking now. Tell me everything from the beginning.”

He sat on the edge of the mattress. “I started suspecting something was off when I caught her spying on me. She came here with the excuse of looking for a book that was never on the shelf. She told the housekeeper some story, then stood in the hallway and listened to my meeting with Crane. We were discussing shipping routes and a port. Nothing she could actually sell or use. She went back and told Elliot she had found nothing useful. I knew she was listening in the hallway before she even came into the room, so I let her hear exactly what I wanted her to hear.”

“You told me she was listening,” I said. “You did not tell me you thought she was sleeping with her husband’s father.”

“At that point, the spying could have been because she was afraid of him. It could have been about money. Or maybe Elliot was manipulating a lonely woman into doing what he wanted,” Julian explained. “But what happened tonight was not fear. Tonight, she wanted him while sitting at Martha’s table beside her own husband, and she did not even try hard enough to hide it.”

“Martha saw it too,” I said.

“Martha dragged her into the kitchen. Delia came back carrying cake with a much tighter smile on her face. I would say your mother warned her, and Delia did not care.”

“Do not call Martha my mother like we are close,” I told him. “She is Martha. She has always favored Delia. Tonight, she warned her favorite daughter, and Delia still walked out of that house with Elliot right behind her.”

Julian’s mouth twitched. “Fair enough. Martha warned her. Delia ignored her. Meanwhile, Noah spent twenty minutes talking about a car and then thanked his wife for giving him cake.”

“Noah is a decent man, but apparently he is blind.”

“If we tell him what we suspect tonight, Delia will deny everything,” Julian said. “Elliot will accuse you of being a jealous sister. We will look like gossips, and Noah will defend his wife because that is the kind of man he is.”

“So we watch them,” I said.

“We watch,” Julian agreed. “We pay attention to her schedule. Her so-called errands. The next time she leaves the house and comes back with nothing in her hands. Once we have more than a few suspicious looks across a dinner table, we give Noah proof.”

I leaned against him. “You sat there eating potatoes while already knowing all of this.”

“I ate the potatoes because standing up in the middle of dinner and calling your sister a liar in David’s house would only have helped Elliot,” Julian said. “David likes him. Martha would never take our side over Delia’s. You barely speak to Martha yourself. I was not going to start a scene we could not finish.”

“You are cold,” I told him.

“You hit me and called me an idiot,” he replied. “We match.”

I kissed him. Julian kissed me back harder, one hand sliding into my hair while the other settled around my waist.

“I hated sitting at that table,” he admitted. “Watching them and having to sit there without doing anything.”

“Then do not sit still with me,” I whispered.

He pulled my dress over my head. His mouth moved to my throat, then down to my breast before he lowered me onto the bed and went down on me. He stayed between my thighs until my fingers tightened in his hair and I came saying his name. Then he moved back over me and pushed inside me with one long stroke, burying himself completely before going still.

“You take me so well,” Julian murmured. “You used to tell me I was too big.”

“Back then, I was not used to you.”

“You are used to me now.”

He pulled almost all the way out before driving back inside me. Then he did it again, using long, deep strokes. I wrapped my legs around him and moved with him. We did not talk about Delia while he was inside me. Julian told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him too. I came again with my nails digging into his back. He followed soon after, buried deep inside me and breathing heavily against my neck.

Afterward, with Julian’s hand resting on my stomach, I said, “If she goes to him again, we will know.”

“We will,” Julian replied. “And then Noah will know too. Not because of a few looks we saw at dinner, but because we will have something he cannot argue with.”

“And what if she is only flirting?” I asked.

“She is not only flirting,” Julian said. “I have watched men and women try to hide affairs in boardrooms. They were much better at it than those two. Either Elliot wanted us to notice what was happening between them, or he has reached the point where he no longer cares who notices. Both possibilities are dangerous.”

“Sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow, we start paying attention.”

Julian kissed my hair. Somewhere down the hall, Clara made a small sound before settling back to sleep. My sister had walked away from that dinner believing no one had noticed what was happening between her and Elliot.

She was wrong. We had seen it.