Page 126 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

“Like, happily ever after?”

“No, more in terms of karma. Horrible people eventually regret what they’ve done. Dark schemes bite the schemer in the ass. Secrets always get revealed. It takes a while, but karma always happens. And people who do good deeds without getting discouraged, even when life throws the worst at them, they come out ahead in the end.”

He waits, listens. Like he knows there’s more.

I say the rest. “And when bad things happen, it still turns out okay. The woman who gets burned and abandoned finds happiness. The man who abandons her is bitterly regretful. And her daughter wouldn’t want to leave. The daughter would help the mother get over that addiction.” My heart pounds. What am I doing?

“You were a kid.” He looks me clear in the eye. “A little kid shouldn’t be asked to save a parent. Not ever.”

“Why do I still feel like the asshole, then?”

“Because things in real life don’t make sense. But you’re not the asshole in that drama, trust me,” he says. “Who here is the asshole expert?”

I feel my lips curling into a smile.

“It was up to them to stand by you, not the other way around. And that motherfucker Jacob, too,” he growls. “What the hell? Don’t even get me started on what he did. A man doesn’t do that.”

I swallow. “Thank you for saying that.”

“Don’t thank me, it’s just true,” he says in his angry-on-my-behalf way that I love.

We’re silent for a while. The waves splash against the hull. I like being quiet with him.

“What about the phone call?” I ask. “Should we tell her?”

He turns his gaze out to sea. I study the hard line of his jaw, waiting to see what he says. “The phone call alone without any evidence of wrongdoing doesn’t feel like enough. Clark and I haven’t been able to find anything amiss with Bellcore. If it turns out there was evidence of foul play, that’s one thing, but there is a lot of nothing there. All we have is a guy talking in a suspicious way. And we don’t know what the person on the other end was saying. Also, Gail’s not an idiot.”

“No,” I agree. I only have a few more days of being around Gail, too. Of seeing the world through her eyes, of Gail seeing me as this real businesswoman who might actually be more than a visiting hairdresser.

“And Marvin’s her people.”

“I wish she was my people,” I whisper.

“I know,” he says, squeezing our joined hands together.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he says.

I’m flooded with affection that he knows, that he cares enough to see it—to see me. I breathe in his masculine scent feeling almost like I’m taking a last breath, storing the memory of him.

I wishhewas my people.

But he’ll get off this yacht and be sucked back into the cold, slushy world of Manhattan. I’ll be back to being a hairdresser. There’s no way it can be anything other than that.

Or maybe I’m just scared to want more than that. To deserve more than that.

Chapter 22

Rex

I slidea finger over the perfect silhouette of her hips.

“Mmm,” she says, rolling over lazily with a satisfied, well-fucked look on her face. It connects to something deep in me. Putting that look on this woman’s face, showing her how much I appreciate every inch of her body, is every bit as satisfying as any business victory.

More satisfying.

I lean over and kiss her shoulder.

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