Page 59 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

She knows what it did to me when Jacob broke off our engagement while I was in that hospital bed, frightened to go into my fifth surgery after the bike accident. She knows how young I was, how alone I was. How devastated.

She doesn’t want me to be in another one-sided romance. I love her for reminding me of it, for caring like that.

I joke about Rex as a way to reassure her that things are strictly fun and transactional. I say things like,Captain Sternpants and I are going at it in our room for the twelfth time today,always with some clever emoji, and then she emoji laughs back, because of course I told her about Rex’s stamina claims.

But that thing I said to Serena about Rex showing me his soft side? I really do feel like I can see it sometimes. I think I see it in countless little chivalrous actions. The way he gives me his jacket when he notices I’m cold, even before I can ask. The way he unwrapped a little hand wipe for me after a breakfast of caramel rolls one morning, even before I realized my fingers were impossibly sticky.

I imagine I see his soft side even in the way he listens to me, like he really hears what I have to say. Even when I’m telling silly stories to people at various functions, he seems not only to listen but to silently reflect on what I have to say.

I think I see it in his hawkish monitoring of Marvin. I get that we’re supposed to be fake engaged, but some little part of me thinks it’s more. Wants it to be more, anyway.

Maybe I am a masochist, like my employee Amanda suggested.

Now and then, when I’m stuck in my room, I put my ear to the door to listen to them talk, or I crack it open and peek at their backs. I enjoy seeing Rex in action.

Also, I’m not used to these long stretches of solitude. The sky and water view reallyismonotonous after a while.

I try to get in a lot of socialization at mealtime, but it’s not enough compared to what I’m used to.

I miss two whale sightings.

Sigh.

Supposedly there will be more of them, but I really wanted to see a whale, and even more than that, I wanted to be with the group, to share the excitement of it.

But like Rex says, I’m getting paid well for doing nothing.

Sometimes I hear laughter as people pass by the window, and I try to put the voices to faces. I really like the people that I’ve met—except for Marvin and Serena.

I’m definitely looking forward to doing Gail’s hair. I run into her at breakfast one day, and we set an official appointment to meet in the salon room for the following Sunday. Rex acts grumbly about it after she leaves our table, but he mostly seems concerned about my wrist.

I try not to let his concern for my wrist touch me too deeply. I try not to let it make me hopeful, because that is where the danger is.

Rex works like a demon—he really does. Part of his work seems to revolve around testingthe algowith hisquant teamback in New York. Which is all about using computers to do really fast stock trades.

As if that’s not enough, it turns out that there is some kind of stock market open no matter what time of day it is, though Rex seems particularly obsessive about the London and Tokyo markets, which he merely callsLondonandTokyo, because to Rex, the entire significance of each city is the numbers that spill out of its markets and how that relates to his world domination plan.

Rex and Clark are always secretly checking the overseas markets on their phones.

And if they have to be involved in some social activity during the hallowed trading hours of the New York Stock Exchange? And people are watching them so that they can’t check their phones? Let’s just say that the futures are soaring in Crabbins City.

Not to toot my own horn, but over the next few days, I get really good at sensing when they’re freaking out on their phones, and I work extra hard to monopolize the attention of whoever’s around, turning myself up to eleven, as Rex would say, to give them space to work.

Rex’s other main business activity seems to be creating some kind of proposal or vision for Gail’s review—a kind of vision of what he’d do if he could get Gail’s funds fully under management. Plans and charts and whatnot.

“Do you guys think you can get the account?” I ask Clark while Rex is on a conference call in the other room one day. “How likely is it that you win this review?”

“I don’t know,” Clark says. “The whole thing’s a mystery. She’s definitely buying you guys together, and she really does like you. But she’s still forcing this review. Why? Why is she pitting him against a less worthy competitor? Is it still about Rex’s bad publicity, or is it something else? And if so, what? It’s a mystery to me.”

“I get the feeling she likes Rex,” I say.

“I think she does. So what’s going on, then?” He lowers his voice. “Rex came up poor as hell, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I read about it on the internet.”

“Early on, less qualified competitors beat him out for accounts because those people had money and connections that Rex didn’t have,” Clark says. “When you lose to somebody like that, it’s never spelled out, it’s always a decision that didn’t make sense otherwise. I was there, I remember.”

“You’ve been with Rex from the beginning?”

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