Page 55 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

“I don’t even know what a marble cake is. I mean, what the hell?”

“Kind of swirly?” She leans in. “That’s not important. I’m telling you, he didn’t sit next to us out of sexual interest. He was trying to trip us up.”

“You don’t know men very well, if that’s what you think.”

“Oh, I know men well enough,” she says.

Something twists uncomfortably in my chest. What the hell is that supposed to mean? What men?

I force myself to form words. “I know men better,” I say. “That was a power play. Marvin was trying to control the field with questions. Sitting next to you didn’t work, so he tried to do an alpha thing.”

“Gawd,” she says. “Poor Charles, right?”

What am I doing? I need to get back to work. I grab my bone china coffee cup and empty it in one gulp, setting it down beside her dessert tower. “We need to start our exit.”

Tabitha’s not finished. “Marvin’s suspicious of us,” she says. “It’s important for you to understand that. And when people are weirdly suspicious of other people? It means they’re up to something.”

I turn to her. “You’d better not be getting that from your soap opera.”

“Wellllll.” Here she does her one-eye-closed wince.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I growl. “You have to stop talking about soaps. People will think you’re addled in the head.”

She takes a bite of a mini-powdered donut. “Addled in the head,” she says, amused, because everything on the planet amuses Tabitha.

She looks up at me from under thick, dark lashes, and the boat seems to lurch.

I have this urge to remind her to tone it down, but the truth is, I don’t want her to tone it down. I don’t want her to turn down from eleven. I wouldn’t mind twelve, or maybe thirteen.

Suddenly she’s licking the powdered sugar off her lips, little tongue darting out here and there. And then she’s sucking it off her fingers, one after another. Sucking.

A gentleman might grab her a napkin, but I wouldn’t end this little display of hers for all the gold in Fort Knox. She starts on her other hand. My pulse races as she presses one finger into her lips, in and out, then another.

Heat spreads down my spine.

“Addled in the head,” she says.

I look at her, pulse racing, barely registering her words. I tear my gaze from hers and fix it on Marvin. He’s with Gail and some people, back turned.

“Anyway, I didn’t get it from my soap operas,” she continues. “I mean yes, it’s a feature of soap operas. But only because that is how people act in real life. At any given time, half the Quartermaines think other people are up to something, but it’s always the Quartermaines who are. Or Dorian Lord. She always thinks people are up to something, and she literally kept her rival in a cage in her basement. And don’t get me started on Stefano DiMera.” Here she swipes an already-cleaned finger through some frosting and licks it off.

My mouth goes dry.

“Did I hear a plural there?” I say. “Does this mean you watch more than one soap opera?”

“I switch around based on excitingness of storyline, but usually I’ll at least double up.”

I frown. Is this how regular people live? They sit down and watch several hours of TV without a second thought?

“The point is, when somebody’s up to something, it gives them a kind of radar for other people who are up to something. You know it’s true. Marvin is up to something, and it’s big.”

“Good god, are we back at the DNA-test thing again?” I pull out my phone, needing to tamp down the feelings swirling through me. Being separated from work this long is causing me to give way too much attention to Tabitha’s lips and fingers. Why am I even reacting? Who cares?

“Here are several facts about Marvin,” she continues as I scroll. “One, the man is watching us. Two, it’s not horndoggery. Impossible as that is to believe, of course. I mean…”

She stops speaking for an oddly long time. I make the mistake of looking up, and I find her striking one of her little poses—one hand on her hip, one holding a half-eaten brownie at shoulder-level. Her head is tilted, lips slyly pursed.

An uncomfortable feeling of lightness fills me. I roll my eyes to cover it.

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