Chapter 101 Caging His Cat

• Cathleen's fingers hovered over the collection of leather-bound tomes that lined her study, the silence broken by a buzzing phone against the rich mahogany desk. She snatched it up, her eyes narrowing at the caller ID—her father-in-law's name lit up on the screen. A rush of thoughts flooded her mind: had Xavier told his father that she wasn’t at their matrimonial house? But as she answered the call, his gruff and demanding voice surprised her with a request for a family lunch the following day. Cathleen ended the call with a sharp nod and a heavy sigh, dreading the inevitable awkwardness of the gathering.
• "Damn you, Xavier," she muttered, the very thought of him igniting a wildfire within her. The scent of his skin, the strength of his hands—they haunted her, a ghostly caress that left her reeling. Yet the image of him entwined with another, especially Olivia seeped poison into the fantasy. It was the fear of becoming just another conquest in his gallery of women that kept Cathleen at bay.
• With resolve steeling her spine, she bypassed her closet entirely, leaving behind the trappings of her usual meticulous preparations. Her car ate up the miles back to the house she shared with Xavier, a place where shadows of their tempestuous past loomed large. As the gates loomed before her, a tremor shook her frame, not from the chill of the evening but from the uncertainty of what lay beyond.