Page 124 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

And I’m thinking dangerous things, like,would a few more weeks of this hurt?

And,maybe he wouldn’t break my heart too much.

Chapter 21

Tabitha

We emergefrom the cabin at around seven in the morning. Rex was up at five, working away. I heard him discussing protective measures with Clark. He has a bad feeling about the Bellcore thing. Clark insists there was nothing to be found and so there must be nothing there, but Rex isn’t so sure.

We grab coffees and watch the sunrise from the sixth-level deck. It’s painted the eastern sky in pink—bright pink, deep pink, yellowy-pink, pale pink—all crazy pinks like a watercolor gone wild on the hugest canvas in the universe. Every east-facing surface of the yacht is bathed in a pink glow.

“Your color palette,” Rex says to me.

“Definite DO!” I say, and then I lean onto his shoulder. I’m a sponge, soaking up every last bit of him.

We sit there for a while. I quiz Rex about Clark, and he describes how they’ve worked together over the years, with Clark being the one who’s sensitive to people, while Rex is sensitive to markets. “Though economics is really just people in the end,” Rex says.

I kind of love that he says that. It’s so Rex. His job is a layer of numbers between him and people. I think that his scowls are a layer between him and people, too.

Eventually we head down to the main deck. We’re sipping coffees at the cappuccino bar when I notice that Marvin is toting that FedEx envelope around with him—still in that same bag. I dig my fingers in Rex’s arm and point at it with my eyes.

“It’s probably nothing,” he says to me.

“I’m having these visions of Marvin dumping hair and fingernails onto the breakfast table in front of Gail,” I mumble. “How will we explain it?”

“Maybe we enjoy testing other people’s DNA,” he says.

“Right,” I say casually. “Perhaps it is a hobby of ours.”

“Maybe we’re looking for long-lost cousins,” Rex adds.

“Or maybe we’re planning on doing an orgy later, and we want to make sure nobody here is a cousin of ours.”

Rex snorts. “I’m sure it’s a random delivery he picked up.”

Apparently the moment of truth is at hand though, because Marvin is gathering everybody around the table where he’s sitting with Gail. He stands up, holding the envelope with the air of a showman.

“Is he planning to make it disappear into his sleeve?” Rex grumbles.

“Or saw it in half?” I say.

But we fall silent as he begins to speak.

“The other day, Aunt Gail was talking about my mother, about the horseback riding lessons they used to take as children.” He smiles at her. “She was talking about what a beautiful memory it was. And we were looking at pictures of them together riding horses around an obstacle course.”

The way he’s holding the envelope, you still can’t see the address. But then he flips it around and starts digging in it, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Not ours.

My pulse ratchets down.

He turns to her. “It really has been so amazing to learn about my biological mother. Anyway, Gail told me how they would get a diamond horse pin for every year they were in riding school. And I remembered something…this box my adoptive mother had for me. The box contained school progress reports and trinkets, like my favorite polished agates, a few arrowheads, things like that. But in among the things there was a small pin. A girl’s pin in a small blue box the size of a fifty-cent piece.”

Gail gasps and turns to him.

“She called the little pin a family treasure,” Marvin continues, “so I let it be in there, though it was a bit girlish for my tastes. All this time I thought it belonged to my adoptive family, but…” He pulls a small blue box out of the envelope and puts it in Gail’s palm.

Gail closes her fingers around it, blinking fast, as if she’s holding back tears.

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