Page 92 of Most Eligible Billionaire

I step out into the night, afraid to face him. Did I screw up again?

A strong hand grasps my arm. Henry spins me back to him. I’m flush up against him.

He gazes down at me, breath ragged, pulse banging beneath his strong jaw. He looks at me like he wants to say a million things, eyes full of tenderness. Wonder. People never look at me like that. But Henry does.

I brush my knuckle along the scruff of his beard, a whisper of a touch with enough electricity to light up the night.

I mouth his name:Hen-ry.

“Goddamn,” he grates, dark and needy.

His lips come down on mine.

There’s nothing tender about this kiss—he devours my mouth. His tongue sweeps lewdly across mine. A fist closes around my ponytail. He pushes into me, or maybe that’s me, pushing into him, finding the way we fit, hot and perfect.

He pulls away. “The hell,” he says. “How did I not believe you? How did I not trust you? All this time—god, I was an asshole.”

“It was a lot to ask, that level of trust.”

“Not when it’s you.”

My heart slams out of my chest.

Henry smooths back strands that escaped my ponytail, tucks them behind my ear.

“I didn’t listen to what I knew about you. You’re amazing and beautiful, and you take my breath away. And you said things will turn out. You gave me your word. It’s good enough for me.”

I press trembling fingers to his lips. “The circumstances are what they are.”

“To hell with the circumstances.”

I tighten my arms around him, press my forehead to his chest. “Thank you.”

Smuckers waits patiently below us, panting. Just another day for Smuckers. He looks like he has to pee. “He has to pee,” I say. “But not on flat pavement.”

“So. Freaking. Romantic.” Henry pulls Smuckers to a light pole. “Come on, boy.” The light pole is way more Smuckers’s peeing jam. “So romantic,” he whispers.

“You’re not mad?” I ask, circling my arms around from behind him. “About the meeting?”

He turns in my arms and rests his hands on my hips. “Mad?”

“From me doing theSmuckers saysthing?”

“Baby, I have spent a lot of time on the wrong end of theSmuckers saysthing. I have not enjoyed it. In fact, you could say I’ve pretty much hated it. Couldn’t wait to be free of it.”

I swallow.

“But seeing the Dartford brothers victimized by it?” He leans in. He brushes a kiss over my lips. “Priceless.”

After Smuckers finishes fake covering up his pee with pretend dirt expertly kicked from his hind legs, we head over to the limo.

I slide in and Henry slides in after me, sitting right next to me. He shuts us into the small space and puts up the window.

“Here’s something else I need to tell you,” he says. “You made that joke, and I know you were being funny, and I reacted like an idiot.”

“You care about the company—”

“No, I know you wouldn’t do something like that, paint the cranes like that.” He takes a strand of my hair.

---