The Billionaire's Pretend Wife (Isabella)
Chapter 82 Eighty Two

The next morning, the two sat down to have breakfast together. Isabelle asked him whether it would be okay to leave her luggage at his place while she took care of some matters during the day.

He told her she could stay as long as she wanted, but she insisted that she would not bother him further.

"Just don't shy away from asking me if you need anything," he told her. "You can count on me, Isabelle." She nodded and gave him a grateful smile. "Thank you, Seth. I don't know how I'll ever repay your kindness."

"I would do anything for you," he told her, staring straight into her eyes.

Isabelle remembered when Jacob warned her that Seth wanted to sleep with her. She had always thought that his interest in her had ended in college, but there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Granted, it wasn't a bad kind of look.

Jacob had made it sound as if Seth's only interest in her was getting her to bed. But that wasn't the kind of longing Isabelle saw in his eyes. This one was pure, sincere.

And from his actions and words, she knew he deeply cared for her, and not just as a friend. It made her feel guilty for accepting his kindness when her rejection must be hurting him.

That was the main reason she couldn't keep relying on him.

She was never going to use anyone to attain her own goals when doing so could hurt them.

"I've noticed that you are not wearing your wedding ring," Seth said, looking at her hand. "Did you get into a disagreement with your husband? I don't mean to pry, and you don't have to tell me."

Isabelle looked down at her hand, and her empty ring finger. Seth must have noticed when she started wearing the ring. She guessed he had connected the dots after the state he had found her in the previous night, so she answered truthfully, "Yes."

Seth's hand closed into a fist. "Is that why he let you out alone in a storm? What a jerk!"

His tone was angry, which took Isabelle by surprise. She shook her head. "No, it...it wasn't his fault."

He frowned. "He still shouldn't have let you leave like that."

"He didn't know," she said quietly. And now, she wondered how Jacob had reacted when he went home and she wasn't there.

They fell into silence for a few moments, and then she told him, "I'm going to resign from the company."

Seth's brow creased again in a frown. "Why?"

"I need to," she told him. And then, she said, "I never really thanked you for helping me with the interview."

"What interview?"

Isabelle paused. Could he have forgotten? "When I was joining the company, and my former college classmate Anne made the false accusations against me."

Seth shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't me."

"Oh," she muttered. All this time, she had thought it was him who had helped her. Who could it have been, then?

Seth drove her with him to work. Before they parted, he asked her to reconsider her decision to resign. She told him she didn't think she would change her mind, but he said he would keep hoping.

He then went to his department, and she went to file her resignation notice with HR. She also asked for a two-day leave.

***

Jason was inside Jacob's hospital room when he received a call from a HR personnel at the company.

He sighed tiredly as he stepped outside the room and received the call. He had spent the entire night at the hospital, waiting for Jacob's condition to improve. But he had remained unconscious all night long. He knew he had to get to work soon, but badly hoped there wasn't some kind of crisis that warranted such an early morning call.

"Morning, sir. You asked me to report anything regarding Isabelle Cruz to you," the woman on the other side said.

Immediately, Jason became alert. "Yes?"

He had wondered all night how Jacob's plan to reveal his identity to Isabelle had gone, and whether he should alert her that he had gotten into an accident.

But someone had handed him a diamond ring that had been found in Jacob's car at the scene of the accident. He had recognised it right away as the one Jacob had given her. Had she been so angry at him for hiding his identity that she had given it back? Was she leaving him?

"She just handed in her resignation notice letter and asked for a two-day leave."

"What?" Jason demanded, puzzled. Jacob's confession really must have gone wrong if his wife was resigning from her job. He sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his hair. "Thank you." What would Jacob want him to do?

He called Isabelle's department director and asked her to inform Isabelle that he wanted to see her before she proceeded on her leave. He instructed Grace to tell her it was concerning the Green Leaf Project. He might not know what had happened between the couple, but he knew one thing for sure. Jacob was head over heels with her, and he would have done anything to keep her from leaving. Jason wasn't sure how long Jacob would remain unconscious-it didn't help that the doctor had said it could take a day, a few days, or weeks-but he had to try and keep Isabelle around until then.