Page 52 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

An older man bumbles up and stands over Marvin, who proceeds to ignore him. The man gestures at the place setting. “I think this is me?”

Charles McKenzie to the rescue, I think.

Marvin’s got his phone up to his ear now. “Sorry, this is my seat,” Marvin says before he returns his attention to the phone. “Can you just…no, sorry, not you,” Marvin says into the phone. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

Charles looks bewildered. He’s a minor cousin and won’t be any match for Marvin, who is clearly determined to sit next to my fiancée.

“It’s your place,” I say to Charles. “Marvin,” I say. “This is Charles’s seat.”

Marvin shakes his head and puts a finger in his nonphone ear, as though to signal that he’s on an important call.

Charles is not helping. He’s doing a polite little pantomime now, acting out his thought process. “Well…this is Kitty Driscoll, and there’s Kitty Driscoll…this says Charles McKenzie, and I’m Charles McKenzie, so…”

Marvin points to his phone. “Sorry, I need to deal with this, Charles. It’s really not important, right? They change the seating every day. Just find a place to sit. Wait, hold on, what?” His attention is back on the phone.

Charles turns and wanders off. I guess I can’t blame him; Marvin has far more pull inside the Driscoll machinery. The people here are ranked by their proximity to the main family.

I feel a hand grip my thigh. Tabitha’s wearing an outraged gleam. I return her look with an annoyed one of my own. For a second, we’re together.

It feels…good.

I reach up and slide a lock of her hair through two fingers. If Marvin thinks I’ll let him sit next to Tabitha, he’s dead wrong.

I twist her hair around my forefinger. “Baby, will you go get us another round?”

She looks at me gratefully, reading my intention, I suppose. “Kitten would be happy to,” she says. “Excuse me.” Off she goes.

Marvin’s off his call soon enough. Because there was no call.

I set my arm over the back of Tabitha’s empty chair. “You’re from Ohio,” I say to him.

“Yes,” he says. “Dayton.”

“Tell me,” I slide into Tabitha’s seat. Does he think he’s a match for me? Does he really think he gets the seat next to Tabitha so that he can hit on her all night? Accidentally brush against her and all that? “Are you a Buckeyes fan?” I grill him on the Buckeyes. If he’s unhappy, he doesn’t show it.

Tabitha comes back and takes my place.

I turn to Tabitha when Marvin’s engaged in conversation with the cousins. “So much for the soap opera theory,” I say in a low tone that only she can hear.

“I don’t see it being wrong,” she says sweetly.

Horndog,I mouth.

Softly she says, “Just becauseyou’reobsessed with my beauty doesn’t mean every man is.”

She glances over my shoulder. Is he looking at her?

I lean in. “Ten months ago he’s a nobody, and now he’s a little nobody prince who sees something he wants and he’s pushing his boundaries.

She leans nearer to me now, sets her chin on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t automatically discount my theory,” she says in a low tone. “I know it seems implausible, but you should trust your teammate.”

Did she feel it too? That sense of us as a team?

“But what if my teammate’s perception is based on an idiotic soap opera plot?”

She grumbles in my ear.

Suddenly they’re serving the appetizers—each plate has a hunk of sushi-grade tuna on it, festooned with a vertical sesame rod like a curly flag, set atop colorful drips of sauce.

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