Page 127 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

I never bring women home, but I’m imagining Tabitha in my bed, on my couch. I’m imagining her sitting at my kitchen island, picking at food, or drinking something ridiculously frothy, making her half-wince face, one eye humorously closed.

I imagine learning more about her. Exploring every part of her. Learning the way her mind works, the ways her body works. Making her mine, little by little.

Three more days won’t be enough. Three weeks or three months or even three years won’t be enough. That’s what I know now.

I slide my finger up the back of her thigh, to the small crease right below her ass. “This is one of my favorite parts of you,” I say. “Sexy and hidden. Overshadowed by the big fun of your gorgeous ass.”

She turns in my arms. “I’m hearing you compare me to an ass in both parts of that metaphor…”

“My favorite ass.”

She touches the tip of her finger to my nose. “Um, thank you?”

I grab her finger, bite the tip. She squeals.

That’s when my phone starts pinging. I groan. It’s Clark—he’s one of the few who can get through on this setting. I reach over and grab it.

A moment later, my world starts careening.

I sit up.

“What is it?” she asks.

I stumble out to my office area, wake up the screens, and pull on some pants. My fingers fly to the keyboard. “Bellcore’s in freefall.”

She stands at the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. “That stock?”

“Yes. It’s a bloodbath.” There’s still more room to fall and definitely another shoe to drop. I’ve already got the team unloading it, but we’ve taken a hit.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“Recover.”

There’s just the sound of me typing away. My spidey sense told me there would be trouble, but I thought we had time. I thought we had until their launch.

“Was it sabotage?” she asks. “Somebody doing something shady in the company like you thought?”

“No, the CEO himself was doing something shady in the company.”

“Oh no!”

“It’s Enron-big,” I grumble, moving across the suite to unlock the door and let Clark in. He’s on the phone. He sets an open laptop on the desk. The team’s on, looking for leadership. The damage is bad. Deep.

It’s come out that Bob Bell has mob connections. One of his device trials was falsified. A researcher was threatened. The information has thrown the entire product array into chaos. And being that they’re the biggest players, the entire sector is spiraling, pulling down other firms. The market itself is affected.

“When did this hit the wire?” I ask Clark. “And where?”

“Thirty minutes ago. It came out somewhere obscure…”

And I wasn’t paying attention. I had alerts set, but that doesn’t work when your phone’s on do-not-disturb. It’s bad enough that the yacht has a slight delay compared to the lightning-fast internet in the city.

“Damn!” I say when the numbers refresh. “What was I thinking?”

“Everybody missed it,” Clark says. “Everybody is taking a bath. Except Wydover.”

“Except Wydover,” I say, staring at the graph. “He bet on this decline. He knew it was coming. He controlled the timing.”

“That’s the one you have Gail deep in,” Tabitha observes.

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