Page 115 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

I grab his shirt and go to the window, as if I really, really need to see the view.

Thirty-Two

Theo

She wrapsherself up in my shirt and wanders over to the window. The sunrise lights the mussed edges of her pale brown hair, a goddess tipped in flame.

She stands there a long time, gazing out over the park, and I have this sense that she belongs here, that she’s always been here in some impossible way. As if her being here stretches beyond time.

I want to tell her that, but I don’t. One strong shift in the breeze and she’ll disappear like a wisp of fog.

I want to thank her for going to the bridge with me, too. For being who she was there. For listening and saying what she did. Not that she changed anything. I don’t feel absolved, much as she wants me to, but there was this sense—just for a moment—of her sharing the load. Carrying it with me, if only for a little while.

This nameless, faceless woman who was so easy to talk to on the phone is ten times the miracle in person.

What we have is something special, and I feel like she’s killing it with her plans to leave. She’s killing it before it has a chance to grow. I wish she’d see that.

I wish she’d come back to bed, too. I want to kiss her cheekbone freckle. She smiles in a lopsided way every time I do that—a happy, what-the-heck smile. The eye-rolling version of a smile. The smile of a woman who doesn’t get how hot she is.

Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie, I think.

I reach out. “Get over here,” I growl, giving her the edge she likes, just stern enough so that she can tell herself we’re back to playing wake-up-call girl.

That’s what that jackass Mason did to her—he made her skittish for an honest relationship. Ruined her financially to the point she has to move.

To freakingFargo.

I’d like to find him and wring his worthless neck.

I can’t let her leave. I just can’t. But for now, I need her back in bed.

I lower my voice to a deep register. “Now.”

She comes. I wrap her up in my arms. I kiss her on the freckle and hold her against me, the clench of a lover, even as my words are cold. “You’re going to stay right here as long as I require your services.”

She snorts.

I require her services on top of me, as it turns out, and then on her knees in the shower.

Eventually we find our way out to the kitchen. I start some coffee and pull her huge bag of sugar out of the cupboard.

“You kept it!”

I crowd her against the kitchen island, growl in her ear. “It has your phone number.” I kiss the shell of her ear. “How the hell else would I call you?” I kiss her neck.

Of course I kept it. It’s so her. So wonderfully, perfectly her.

“Do you have eggs?” she asks. “Veggies?”

“Yeah.” I pull back. “I have eggs and veggies. But I don’t have the stuff for breakfast.”

“You just listed the stuff I’d need to make breakfast.”

“Not so sure about that.”

She slides a finger over my chest, tracing the edge of my left pec through my T-shirt. It’s hard not to grab her and carry her back to bed. She turns me primal in a way no other woman has. Sometimes I barely know myself.

But I fight the caveman urge. I like how she’s touching me. I’ve shunned affection for so many years. Now this woman has me like a beggar.

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