Page 3 of Just The Way You Aren't

Finn looks thoughtful. It’s always very dangerous when Finn looks thoughtful. The last time he looked like this, he persuaded us all to go BASE jumping. “I have a better idea for a bet. Gabe was actually the one to originally suggest it. Remember what you said that night Mason and Lucy were here?”

“Remind me,” Gabe says, smoothing his finger along the rim of his glass.

“Last Billionaire Standing,” Finn says, framing the words in the air like a billboard. “I mean, that’s not exactly what you said, but you did ask if anyone was willing to put their money where their mouth was, after we all mocked Mason for falling into the oldest trap known to mankind: love.”

I frown. “Come again?”

Finn grins mischievously at all of us. “We make a bet that the last of us to fall in love wins a big pot of money. And not some chump change like hundreds of thousands of dollars, either. Millions.”

I chuckle. “Finn, not a one of us is ever going to have time to fall in love. We’re far too busy.”

“I’m a confirmed bachelor for life,” Brad says. “Never making that mistake again.”

“Hear, hear,” Alec agrees.

“None of us will ever win the pot,” Wyatt says, laughing. “There are too many lovely fish in the sea to settle on just one.”

“It is an interesting idea,” Gabe says.

“That’s the spirit!” Finn crows.

Gabe shrugs. “But if none of us have met our Miss Right within the next ten years, the bet should be null and void. As Damien says, none of us are probably ever going to win this bet anyway.”

“Hmm.” Finn nods. “The man has a point. Okay, if there’s more than one man left standing at the end of ten years, they get to split the kitty. Deal?”

“What’s the wager?” Alec asks cautiously.

“A million each,” Finn says. “So the last man standing will get six million dollars.”

“Or, rather, five million dollars and his own investment back,” Alec corrects him.

“Fine, fine. It’s not about the numbers, though,” Finn goes on. “This is for pride, gentlemen. I, for one, am never going to let some woman grab me by the balls.”

Wyatt smirks. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried?—”

“Agreed,” I say, holding out my hand.

Finn places his on top of mine, then Wyatt, then Alec, then Brad, and finally, with some hesitation, Gabe.

“All right, we’re all in.” Finn grins. “May the best man win.”

My cell phone buzzes with an incoming text and the other five groan.

“I thought we agreed to turn those off?” Alec sniffs.

I grunt. “My board is all the way up my ass. If I don’t show them I’ve read my texts, they send out a search party. The last thing I want is Rhonda showing up here to drag me back by my hair.”

“He’s got to put in his million right now.” Finn laughs. “He already has a work wife.”

“Ha-ha.” Rhonda was my father’s assistant and is now mine. She’s deep in her seventies with failing eyesight and only the most basic of computer skills, but that doesn’t stop her from being a force to be reckoned with. Especially when it comes to tracking me down. “The woman is a bloodhound,” I grumble under by breath.

The others laugh heartily.

I check my messages and let out a curse.

Alfred the Asshole:Where r u?!

I’m not sure a man educated at Princeton should be able to use the phrase ‘r u’ in a text, but I’m not going to question it.

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