Page 67 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

Tabitha looks over at me, because I don’t like her being social on deck without me.

“Are you in, Rex?” Gail asks. “You and Tabitha? On my team?”

And with that, I’m trapped. “Sounds fun,” I say. “Sign us up.”The guys volunteer to play on her team, too. All of us on a fucking team.

I stare at faint wisps of clouds at the edge of the blazing blue sky.

Gail leaves, and finally the two guys heave themselves out, dripping like wet dogs.

“A hot tub and now croquet?” I mutter once we have the entire deck to ourselves. “Whatever you tell me had better be good, because I’m doing time in a hot tub, and now I’m roped into croquet? You know what I hate more than getting turned into a stewed turnip in a tub? Do you want to guess?”

Her mouth twists into a merry little bud. Only Tabitha would think this is amusing.

I stare at that half-smirking twist of pink lips, fighting the urge to grab her hair and pull her face to mine, and it wouldn’t be a brush of a kiss that I give her this time. I’d do every kind of lewd thing to those pretty little lips.

“Umm…” she finally says. “You hate games? I’m guessing all games?”

“That’s right. I hate all games.” I twirl my finger in a strand of dark hair. I let it tighten, lowering my voice, tugging softly. “I hate them very, very much. So let’s hear it.”

“Uh,” she says, eyes flared, lips parted, her tell that she’s turned on, I’ve noticed. I love that look on her.

My blood races. I shouldn’t be touching her, but I can’t seem to stop. “Spill it,” I grate out.

She sits up and pushes away my hand, forcing me to relinquish the curl. “It’s two things, actually. Wait—three.”

I put my hands on the tiles behind me and lean back, forcing myself back under control. “I don’t need you to tell me how many individual things you have for me. We both know the number will be wrong anyway. Just tell me what you need to tell me and be done with it.”

“My goodness,” she says, turning to face me with a shift of water I can feel on my feet. She’s facing me now, elbows up on the side of the tub. Her wet arms glisten in the sunshine. She looks sexy, and mind-bendingly fuckable. It’s not even about fucking, really; I want to make her feel good. I want to see that turned-on face even more turned on. I want to see her coming face.

What is happening to me?

“Get on with it,” I say.

“Somebodyneeds a jasmine-scented towel over his eyes.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Fine, fine!” she says. “Fact one, Marvin doesn’t want me bonding too closely with Gail. He can see that we have a fun connection, and it threatens him. You wanna know how I know?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“He got some scissors and cut adivotinto his own hair, just so that he’d have a reason to play beauty parlor with us. He literally ruined his own very nice haircut as a pretext. He said it was a barber flub, but it wasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Beyond the fact that no barber would let a client walk around like that? Because we’ve been on this boat for a few days and that snip was fresh.”

“You can tell a fresh snip?”

“It’s my business to know these things, Rex. And even if I hadn’t examined the follicles up close, I think I would’ve noticed a freak chunk out of his hair the day we boarded. He thinks it’s small, but to my eye? Please. He cut it and ran up there to join us.”

I frown. “Maybe he hoped that Gail would leave so that you two would be alone.”

“He makes his hair look stupid as part of his seduction technique? No. Anyway, he specifically wanted to interact with Gail, not me. He was all about Gail and taking Gail’s attention off of me. I mean, he sat down and he just started talking about stuff that I wouldn’t know about. Conversations that specifically excluded me. I think Gail was a little miffed, but she is really sweet, and she’s trying hard to include him in the family.”

“Family is her blind spot,” I say. “But this only suggests that he’s ragingly insecure. And it has nothing to do with the review.”

She says, “It comes out, in the conversation, that Marvin is driving the review. Not Gail.”

---