Page 48 of Most Eligible Billionaire

She forms a kind of kiss as she blows on the drying glue. Does she know she’s doing that?

Of course she does. She’s a grifter. I need to always remember that.

Again the pink tongue tip!

A lot of women lick their lips at me—the long gaze, the lick of the lips, they have their place. But the most lewd lip lick has nothing on the appearance of Vicky’s pink tongue tip during intense concentration. Her and her witchy little smile and mad tree skills and pink tongue tip.

Hot damn.

She holds it up for me to see, twirling it, inspecting it. “What do you think?”

I’m not looking at the tree.

“Why did you leave Vermont?” I ask.

“What?”

“Two young girls. Their parents die. Why leave?” It seemed suspicious to me when I read it in the report. “Why not stay?”

She looks away. “Prescott’s in the middle of nowhere. Very rural.”

“If I wanted to know that, I would’ve looked on Google.”

She casts her gaze down; thick lashes sweep over high cheekbones. I sense she’s hiding something, and I’m glad. I want her to lie, and for it to be obvious. Something to counteract how nice it is to spend time with her. How much I admire her quiet focus. Her sense of humor.

“Surely you knew people there. You came to a strange city.”

“I didn’t…like it there.” She glues a tiny curl to a new tree.

“Why?”

She says nothing for a long time. Eventually she speaks. “This thing happened when I was in high school, and people hated me. Really hated me. Not normal hate but a certain incident got me a high level of hate all through that area. I didn’t do anything wrong, but…” She trails off. “It doesn’t matter. It was one of those things.”

Her story has the ring of truth, and I want to hear the whole thing, but I know instinctively that pressing for more will back her off. Is this where her tenaciousness came from? Is it why she chose to scam people out of their money? As a form of payback? There are times when she seems to have a grudge.

“It must have been…hard.”

“Alone and hated is a different country,” she says softly.

I watch, mesmerized, as she starts another round of gluing, positioning the branches at the angle of the good trees.

She’s silent for a while. Then, “Being hated, it’s like a burn. It keeps hurting long after. And little things that don’t hurt other people sting like hell. Sometimes even sunshine hurts. I don’t know why I’m telling you.”

I know why. Because being in this workshop together feels out of time. A break in the storm.

I shouldn’t be empathizing with her, shouldn’t be feeling this strange connection to her—subterranean. Like an underground stream, rushing between us.

She shoves the finished tree into a piece of foamcore and sets it next to the rest of the newly minted trees.

“Should we redo this light pole?”

“Probably,” I say.

She picks up the most torn, most damp one, strategizing.

I grab a flat of balsawood. “The long sticks are the hardest to cut. There’s a trick to it.” I grab a ruler and make two slim cuts, then work the piece off with my thumb.

Her bright eyes meet mine as I hand it over. It’s here I notice that her eyes aren’t just brown; they’re brown with bits of green in the cracks, like tiny shards of beer glass from different colors of bottles.

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