The Billionaire's Pretend Wife novel Chapter 11

Isabelle looked up and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She eyed the pamphlet in his hands and shrugged. “Yeah.”

Then she looked away again and focused on her laptop. But Jacob didn’t miss her tone, and how her face fell at his question.

“And?” he urged.

“I didn’t get the job.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, frowning. “Can I take a look at your resume?”

“Sure.”

He took the document and sat back on the sofa. The more he scrutinised the document, the deeper his frown grew. From what he was seeing, it didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t pass an interview at the Larson Group.

According to her resume, she was a top student at her college and even won a scholarship after winning a design contest. That aside, she had recently won a design championship. Both were enough proof that she was a brilliant upcoming designer.

“Why were you rejected?” he asked after looking through her resume.

“Probably because I didn’t pass the exam,” Isabelle replied. But even as she said that, she doubted it. She had gone over the paper and her answers in her mind about a hundred times, and she was sure she had gotten everything right.

“Is that what they told you?” Jacob asked.

“No, they called and just said I didn’t make it.”

“That makes no sense,” he said, frowning down at her resume.

Isabelle looked up at him. He sounded almost enraged about it.

“There must be a good reason to reject such a talented designer,” he added.

Isabelle wondered how much he knew about the fashion and design industry. Or maybe he was making that assumption from what he saw in her resume. Either way, it felt nice that he thought she was good enough for the Larson Group.

Maybe that’s why she found herself telling him the truth of the matter. “Actually, one of the interviewers, Ann, is a former college classmate of mine. We weren’t the best of friends.”

“What do you mean?”

She wondered whether she should wake him to help her clean the house. It looked like a lot of work, but then again, he had looked kind of tired when he came in earlier…

His eyes shot open unexpectedly and caught hers. Her heart thundered at being caught watching him, and she was about to turn away when he asked, “Need help?”

She turned away either way, acting as if she hadn’t just been standing there, taking in his looks. “Sure,” she muttered, walking away to get cleaning supplies.

While Isabelle worked in the living room, Jacob got busy in the kitchen. She couldn’t help but keep gazing his way, noting how serious he was about the cleaning. He was also quite good, and the kitchen was beginning to take on a spotless look. He cleaned the dirty dishes and put them away, wiped down the counters...she even saw him cleaning the microwave.

There was no way a man who was a useless idler, as the rumours had claimed, could be so organised. Earlier on, while asking her about her interview at the Larson Group, he had also proved to care about morals. If he was as unprincipled as people claimed, he wouldn’t have been so bothered by Ann’s behaviour.

No matter how she looked at it, Jacob was different from the picture she had in her mind about the Garcias' eldest son. She had worried how she would live with the kind of man she had heard about, but he was proving her fears pointless…

But then again, hadn’t he been proving to be different from what she had heard right from their wedding day? Other than that time he tried to accuse her of being a loose woman, she couldn’t think of another time he had done anything to irk her. Now that she thought about it, it made sense why he had made such accusations. If he had in any way heard anything about the eldest daughter of the Cruz family, it was safe to assume he must have heard about her sister’s rampant flings. But it was okay as long as he didn’t realise she was someone else…

And if that was the case for him, what if what she had heard about him was all untrue, too? There was a chance–

Her thoughts cut off as a sudden crash came from the kitchen area. Dropping what she was doing, she rushed to the kitchen to see what was going on.