Page 47 of Most Eligible Billionaire

He looks up finally. “You think you can?”

I consider telling him I’ll only help him if he confesses why it’s so damn important, but it’s getting painful to watch him struggle. “I know I can.”

He cuts another trunk and slides it to me. I shove a toothpick up the trunk, basically reaming out the trunk, and then I make a small pool of glue and dip in the branches with the tweezer, then touch it to the area.

“Oh. That’s more efficient.”

“Was that a compliment?” I brush it off, because the air is humming between us. “Gluing stuff is my jam, baby.” I blow air on it.

He cuts out another trunk. We get up an assembly line. We repair a few buildings. We collaborate on a tiny stop sign.

It’s…nice.

There’s something about making things side-by-side that only crafty girls know about, a kind of sweet, silent bonding that other people don’t experience.

Henry and I are achieving this bond. I like it in spite of myself. Or in spite of himself.

I glue a tiny curlicue to a tiny tree, feeling his eyes on me.

Fourteen

Henry

Here’sthe thing about business—you always make your moves from a place of control.

I never ask a question without knowing the answer first. I never show people what I want unless I’m assured of getting it.

And I never,everoperate from need.

Needing something is the surest waynotto get something. I learned that lesson young.

Which is why it was a good thing those elevator doors opened.

I was enjoying her embarrassment too much. She reallywassmelling me. Her neck was so pink when I called her on it, her frown so pouty, it was all I could do not to press her to the wall and take that pretty little mouth like a rabid animal.

I cut out another trunk, focusing on getting my shit back together.

Part of Vicky’s genius is that she doesn’t add up as a scam artist. She’s fun, interesting, easy to be with, pretty. Gorgeous, really, much as she tries to hide it. She’s creative. Tenacious.

A weaker man might fall for her, might not care she puts all that goodness to use as a grifter.

She stares down at her tiny tree, inspecting her handiwork. She sets it down and uses the tweezers to make a quick adjustment while the glue is still drying. The tip of her tongue edges out the side of her mouth as she concentrates, peeking just up over the very corner of her upper lip.

If I was a different man—a more gullible man—I might be turned on by that. I might be imagining the taste of that tongue, maybe even the soft rasp of it against my cock.

I get up and go to the window, to the familiar old view, force my mind far away, back to the long afternoons after school in this room with Brett and Renaldo. Dad would be on his jet somewhere and we’d have escaped from this or that bored French au pair and found Renaldo, gotten him to bring us up here. He was running a lot of the operations by then, but he was never too busy to teach us model making. Or he’d take us out to the sites and we’d watch the subs work, tag along while he lorded over the superintendents on building sites across the five boroughs.

Renaldo’s eighty-five now. He can’t move around or remember much, but coming to work means everything to him—more than all the golden parachutes Locke Worldwide can give him, so we have him on models. The trees we’re making took him days. It would crush him to see them down. He’s frail like that.

I miss those days of getting lost in making the structural bridges and the tiny models. It calms me. I might be a happier person if I could just design, but the company needs me.

I slide the new trunk over for Vicky and her tiny gluing technique. “That’s a good one,” she says brightly.

I give her a look, like I don’t need her compliments on my model-making technique.

She looks back down, chastened.

I watch the rise of her chest, the shift of light on the dark fabric covering her breasts that I’ve spent a lot of time trying not to wonder about.

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