Page 106 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

“Not the aspect I was questioning,” he says.

Breaking and entering is the least of my concerns. Growing up the way I did, going through locked doors was commonplace. I can’t count the number of times my friends and I would slip into that random apartment lobby we had no business in late at night because the street was feeling wrong. Or let ourselves in the home of a school friend who’d probably let us in if they were there. Half of our neighborhood break-ins were stealing your shit back from whoever stole it in the first place. Locked doors didn’t mean the same thing back then.

“So…what’s going on?” he asks.

“We’re having fun.” It’s the truth, and also a lie of omission.

“You don’t like fun.”

“I like fun with the right person,” I say.

“You like fun with theright person,” Clark repeats pointedly.

“Is it so hard to believe?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. You hate anything that’s not work. Suddenly you’re sitting in hot tubs and cabanas? Doing this detective thing? A room search? It’s just…”

He trails off, but clearly he has more to say. “Spit it out,” I say.

Clark leans back and crosses his legs. “It wasn’t a hate list at all, was it?”

“No,” I confess, thinking about how I’d anticipate the strange combustion of our Friday night haircutting sessions. How I’d yell at the housekeeper to have a nice suit teed up for Friday. My annoyance when people were still in my office when our time rolled around.

My version of hell was always to be trapped with a woman after I’d had sex with her, but as I was lying there in the salon with her yesterday, my instincts to get away didn’t kick in for once. For the first time in my life, I actually wanted to stay with a woman.

I go to the window. Being in a relationship looked like prison when I watched my parents fight in that dark little apartment behind the bar, all of that resentment and needy despair. I wanted nothing to do with it.

But I have this strange idea that Tabitha needing me would be a different experience. If Tabitha needed me, it would mean she was letting me in past her armor of fun. It would mean she was trusting me.

“What kind of list was it, then?” Clark asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You’ve never been good at emotions,” he observes.

A series of alerts announces that things are popping. We get to work. Time flies by.

The next time I look up, she’s there in a black dress, her shoulders are squared, her thick chocolate curls caught up in a twist that makes her neck look long and elegant and insanely kissable.

She takes my breath away.

“Take a picture, it might last longer,” she says.

“Maybe I will,” I say.

“As long as it’s not a mug shot!” She clutches her small bag to her chest, sparkly gold nails shining in the light. She looks hot in the dress, but her nails are my favorite part of her outfit—the one part that she herself chose.

I go to her, lower my voice to the tone she likes. “Nobody’s getting mug shots.”

She’s happy that we’re going to do this thing. It makes me happy.

Clark groans and excuses himself to change.

Dinner isuneventful unless you count the pleasant undercurrent between Tabitha and me. The feeling of us having a secret. We’re seated with distant cousins and the musicians, and Marvin doesn’t try to sit with us this time.

Clark comes to join us after the dessert course. “A lot of people would charge extra for what you’re about to make me do,” he says.

Tabitha grins. “You’ll have to give us the full report.”

---