Page 61 of Most Eligible Billionaire

Maybe sometimes, when he’s expertly changing that nozzle with his amazingly capable hands…or when he’s smiling at something you said, and you’re looking into his gorgeous blue eyes and getting that floaty feeling in your chest, those times you start to believe, that even though he came to sell you that thing, maybe he has started to like you.

Then you hate yourself for being gullible, because hello! He’s New York’s most eligible bastard and you’re not even in the top million bachelorettes.

In fact, you’re barely aneligiblebachelorette for any bachelor, unless the bachelor in question is a poetry-scribbling parking lot attendant with self-esteem issues or a junior pastry chef with eight roommates and a video game obsession, or a cook/musician/student, not that that sums up my last three years of dating.

One of thehardest things about hanging out with Henry is how he has this knack for reaching into me and hauling the pure Vonda out of me. Sometimes provoking it out of me. Sometimes enchanting it out of me with his questions and his jokes and his endless interest in my opinions.

“I know what you’re doing,” I finally tell him at lunch after another afternoon of finding out about the awesomeness of Locke Worldwide, another afternoon of witnessing him play the part of the fierce protector, admired by all. We’ve left Smuckers behind today.

“Beyond the supposedly fake seduction?” He cracks a popadam in half and hands me the big piece, because it turns out we’re both heavy into popadams.

I take it, remembering what he said about his hands.So good between your legs.You’ll come to me. I’ll get you off. I’ll print every inch of your skin.

Needless to say, my vibrator has been getting quite the workout in recent days.

He studies my face, expression unreadable. He does that sometimes. Like he wants to know me. To figure me out. Again and again I tell myself it isn’t real, but it feels so good.

And I want to kiss him. I want to press GO on us. I want to stab that button so hard he flies to me. I want him to print every inch of my skin. I’m not sure what that means in his mind, but I want it.

“You know what I’m doing?” he asks. “What would that be?”

“You want me to love Locke like you do,” I continue in a breezy tone. “You can’t trick it out of my evil clutches, you can’t seduce me, so you’re doing the next best thing. Trying to humanize it.”

“Don’t count out the part where I seduce you. That’s still going to happen.”

“Uh,” I say, belly tightening. “You probably think all women would just die for your magic peen.”

“Not all of them.” Casually he cracks another piece of popadam. “Just the ones I’ve slept with.”

Gulp.

“And for the record, my seduction of you isn’t goal oriented. I’d seduce you if all you had was a dog bow tie Etsy store. Though, really, I should turn you in for animal cruelty. Because those bow ties you put Smuckers in? No.”

“He likes his little bow ties.”

“Trust me,” Henry says. “He doesn’t like the little bow ties.”

“I think you’re just jealous.”

His eyes sparkle. “That’s what you think?”

“Maybe I’ll make one for you.”

“My neck has a lot of girth.” He lowers his voice. “You’d need a lot of sequins.”

I snort, but I don’t look at him. I don’t want to see that on-camera smile of his turned on me.

I say, “You’re trying to make me see how important Locke is to all your family. Keeping me from killing it. You think I’ll kill Locke, but you don’t have to worry. Things are going to beokay.”

“I don’t think you’re going to kill it,” he says in the voice he sometimes uses when he feels like his communication is important.

I want to believe him. His opinion has become important to me, stupid as that sounds.

I grab the last popadam. “Right now, I’m thinking about killing this. You mind?”

I look up to find him gazing at me in his infuriatingly hot way. What is he seeing? What is he thinking?

I snap off a bit. “Crackly,” I say. My forced brightness is designed to cover the hopeless feeling.

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