Enraptured

Chapter 41

I stared at the empty office in confusion and glanced at my watch to double-check the time. It was just a few minutes past 6 PM, the time that I always made sure to reach her office by, especially after I completely missed it last week.

Usually, every time I came to pick her up, Belle would always wait for me at her office in Sebastian's building before our agreed-upon time; something about how I would make too much of a scene if I picked her up from the lobby. But she had never been late before, not even once.

Her bags and coat were still here, so I knew that she was probably still somewhere in the building.

Maybe one of her meetings was running overtime, or she simply forgot to tell me that she had something scheduled at this time.

Nevertheless, I decided to wait inside her office, reasoning that it would be too early to panic about her absence yet and make a scene against her wishes. I plopped down the white bag of pastries and dessert that I picked up for my two sweet tooth darlings on the way here and sat down on one of her free chairs in her office.

Loosening my tie, I leaned back into the chair with a heavy sigh as I waited for my angel to arrive and melt all my stress away with her presence.

I had just finished the board meeting with the set of prospective new successors for the outer families before coming here.

Though they weren't bad by any means— all standing at the top of their classes, diligent with their current jobs, and good at listening— they seemed to lack the backbone necessary for leading a company properly. Maybe it was because most of them had such arrogant and headstrong older siblings who chipped away at their confidence.

But I needed them to be more assertive if I wanted to make sure they wouldn't crumble under any pressure down the line such as when their older siblings might try to come back and forcefully take their seat back.

To add on, Lukas had just reminded me about my upcoming week-long business trip across Europe to check on the statuses of my international branches, which only added more to my compounding stress. Even though I wouldn't have to leave for the trip until a week from now, I still didn't like the idea of leaving Belle and Theo by themselves for so long.

Since I recently started living practically full time at Belle's house, always staying the night with her since the first time we shared her bed after the gala, I could barely even stay a day away from them to even go back to my apartment to get a new set of clean clothes.

Call me needy, but I just didn't like the idea of wasting time that could be otherwise spent with my two angels.

And on top of all my work-related issues, there were still so many other things in my personal life that I wanted to finish up before the end of the year.

I wanted to live together with Belle and Theo under one roof officially, so I was working on finishing the renovations on the castle as quickly as I could on the side. I hadn't spoken to Belle about it yet, but I assumed that she wouldn't be too against it based on how excitedly she described the place to Theo when we first got back.

I also wanted to help Theo find a university where he could officially enroll as a student rather than taking random lecture classes at different colleges in town. But I also knew that Belle didn't want her five-year-old genius son to move out the house yet, but none of the universities in NYC were up to par for Theo's IQ, so I was working on speaking to one of the professors in Princeton about letting Theo enroll as a remote student.

And finally, the thing that I wanted to do most was to get married to Belle. I knew that we were already engaged and were already both wearing rings, but I wanted to finish tying the knot properly so I could officially introduce her as my wife rather than just calling her my wife in my mind. I couldn't even count the number of times when the urge the call her my wife almost passed through my lips before I caught myself at the last minute.