Page 64 of His Untouchable Heart

“And all I’m saying,” I replied, tone even but not unkind, “is that the foundation has procedures I can’t skip just because your donor wears fancy neckwear.”

Juliette sighed dramatically. “I’m a patient person. Unlike my sister.”

Gabrielle shot her a look. “You are not.”

Juliette ignored her. “But I’d be an even more patient person if Anthony here introduced me to Damian. Like hesaidhe would.”

And there it was.

I suppressed the urge to groan out loud. “Juliette…”

She raised both brows, completely unrepentant.

I exhaled through my nose and forced my voice into something diplomatic. “Damian’s seeing someone.”

Juliette blinked. “So?”

“Possibly two someones.”

Gabrielle snorted.

Juliette shrugged one shoulder and stabbed her spoon back into the yogurt. “I’m not trying todatehim. I just want to thank him for letting us stay on his yacht. Very generous. Very classy. Very worth a face-to-face.”

Gabrielle leaned her chin onto her palm, clearly amused. “Uh-huh. If I were you, I’d want more than thank you. He’s gorgeous. And a billionaire.”

Juliette rolled her eyes, but her grin said she wasn’t denying anything. “Says the woman,” she retorted, “who’s pregnant with a billionaire’s baby and still living in a two-bedroom apartment with me.”

That got me.

I chuckled, but yeah—it hit. She wasn’t wrong. And she wasn’t being petty, either. Just… honest. Gabrielle and I had been juggling a strange version of normal since we got back from Dallas. We hadn’t had the space to breathe, let alone imagine what our new life would look like—until now.

I cleared my throat, pushed back from the table, and started stacking dishes.

“Well,” I said, trying to sound casual, “your sister’s not wrong.”

I glanced at Gabrielle and met her curious gaze.

“Want to go for a ride?”

I carefully stacked the dishes in the sink before we left the apartment. Gabrielle didn’t ask where we were going—she just slid into the passenger seat, in flip-flops, hair loosely pulled up, wearing one of my hoodies that looked infinitely better on her than it ever had on me.

I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the gearshift, just close enough to graze her knee when the traffic light turned red.

She didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she did, and didn’t mind.

The city thinned as we left the tighter streets behind, heading south toward the waterfront. Palm trees swayed in the breeze, the sunlight bouncing off the glass and chrome of the passing cars. The farther we got from the apartment, the quieter she became, the more my thoughts took over.

It had taken weeks to find the right place. Longer still to convince myself I was allowed to want something this permanent.

We’d made it through so much. More than most couples twice our age. The vault. The passion. The foundation. Frank Curtain. Her pregnancy. My past. Ours wasn’t the kind of love that grew slowly and sweetly. Ours had been fire and trust, built out of smoke and rebuilt again in truth.

I wondered what Charlotte would have thought of all of this—the mansion, the ring in my pocket, the fact that I was about to pour part of her family’s fortune into a home for a future she never had with me.

I hoped she would’ve approved.

But the truth was, Gabrielle and I had already endured more together than Charlotte and I ever did. That had to count for something. At some point, I had to let it all go.

I was still lost in it when Gabrielle finally turned toward me.

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