Page 72 of Most Eligible Billionaire

“Hold up,” he says. “Don’t think I’m letting you out before finding a successful one.” He finally gets it, hands me the phone.

It’s the bridge—string and toothpicks supporting quarters, but the shot gets his face, and that’s what I love. He’s maybe eleven, crouching behind the table with a shit-eating grin on his face and those dimples in full force. Happy. Proud.

Eventually, we reach the bottom and the cage door opens to a group of guys in hardhats. They help me out first, all apologies. Henry goes to inspect the motor with them.

I wander over to the reclaimed junk he wants to incorporate into furniture like it’s something I super need to check out.

I’m afraid to think it’s real, but I do. My heart pounds like a happy drum. I smile. I shove at the pile with my foot and smile like a madwoman.

I feel him near. I don’t know why I always feel him.

I say, “They used to make everything so ornate. Even the most lowly electrical thing was ornately designed. Buildings had pretty flourishes they didn’t need. Why don’t they do it anymore?”

“We still do,” he says. “Just in a different way.”

I pick up a piece of grate with a vine pattern.

“How cool would it be incorporated into a table or seating?” he says.

I kneel and pick up a metal circle the size of a dinner plate with elaborate edge pattern, trying to get my head straight. It has numbers and a bird logo pounded into it. A patina of scuffs from across the ages.

I toss it onto the pile and pick up a block of weathered timber with old nails in it and a shiny metal plate the size of a playing card stuck to the side. “I know how to get this made into furniture. More awesome than you can imagine.”

It’s Latrisha I’m thinking of. This is her jam.

“Tell me.”

His eyes lock onto mine and I’m back on that roof, breath coming in shaky tremors, awash in the goodness of him. Still holding my gaze, he tosses it back into the pile. It’s a sexy, confident, screw-it-all move that I love.

It’s the kind of thing Vonda would love even more. It’s weird to imagine that, against all odds, he senses that fun, wild Vonda part of me. He trusts her.

He doesn’t know the most important details of my life or even my real name or hair color, but he knows my Vonda side. And he knows my maker’s heart.

“You got a truck?”

He comes to me—slowly. My blood races as he nears. Is he going to kiss me? I would let him kiss me.

But instead of kissing me, he stops.

I look up at his gorgeous lips and sparkly golden-brown cheek stubble and enchantingly uneven dimples.

“Did you just ask Henry fucking Locke if he has a truck?”

An hour later,we’re rumbling over the Brooklyn Bridge in a heavy-duty diesel pick-up truck with the Locke Worldwide logo on the side.

It’s loaded with the best stuff from the site, courtesy of the crew that Henry called over. He told me to point out the best bits, then he disappeared.

He was on the verge of losing the Most Eligible Bastard’s manliness competition at that point for not helping to load…but then he came back in work clothes—a long-sleeved green T-shirt and jeans and boots and gloves—and he started loading with the guys.

He went for the heavy stuff, like the hunks of concrete. He sometimes grunted, muscles bulging like melons under the light fabric of the shirt. I tried not to stare too hard as he worked. Or when he’d wipe the dripping sweat off his forehead with his big freaking glove, sometimes leaving smears of dust.

Manliness portion of Most Eligible Bastard unlocked!

We’re heading deep into Brooklyn, away from the trendy parts.

“And you’re not telling where we’re going.”

“Take a left up here on Oakerton,” I say.

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