Page 110 of Return Billionaire to Sender

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Noelle

We’re workingside by side, dreaming up Malcolm’s proposal, slowly putting the pieces together.

I was feeling a bit tipsy at dinner, but the crazy drama of the evening got me stone-cold sober, and then there are the snacks and coffee that Malcolm sends for around midnight.

He’s developing this without the traveling team. He wants things airtight.

Most of the time he spends on the phone organizing things. It’s kind of amazing to be a proverbial fly on the wall and witness him in his element. He runs people hard; he’s woken people up all over the globe to pull this together. He has poor social skills, that’s for sure, but he is never overtly mean to anyone. And they all seem to want to help.

The traveling team isn’t the only group that’s proud to be with him—does he even see that? Or does he filter everything through this idea that he’s a villain?

I take a short rest and lay my head on his shoulder, briefly closing my eyes. “People say you’re a villain, but you’re really just niceties challenged,” I mumble.

I can feel the gentle shake of his chest as he chuckles at this. “Like a serial killer is letting-people-live challenged?”

“Shut the bruschetta hole,” I whisper.

“You should sleep,” he says. “You’re asleep now.”

“I’m just resting my eyes,” I inform him. “After which I’ll be bright as a daisy.”

The next thing I know, I’m curled up next to him with a blanket over me as he taps away on his laptop. I doze off to the soft, baritone murmurs of him on a phone call. The next thing I know, I’m squinting blearily at the red numbers on the bedside clock.

Six in the morning.

My tank top and yoga pants are twisted around me from tossing and turning. I kind of can’t believe I put my home outfit on last night; it’s not the kind of outfit I wear in front of guys. But Malcolm is different. He feels like my people in a way that other guys don’t.

I don’t let him know I’m awake, because I’m enjoying listening to him on his calls—he’s so blunt with his employees, and they seem to understand that’s Malcolm. He doesn’t start conversations with small talk. He barks one-word questions. Maybe he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t soften up his sentences.

Malcolm’s an unlicked cub—no mother. A father who clearly despises him.

His harshest phone call is reserved for his security person—he really does seem upset about the mole—his team means a lot more to him than he lets on, maybe even to himself. “It’ll be a blockbuster offer,” he mumbles softly. “Once I make it, there’s no way our mole could resist letting Dad know.”

He and his security person seem to be hatching a plan to flush out the spy. It sounds to me like they’re going to do something temporary with the internet maybe or something—I can’t tell, but I hear the woman on the other end talking about grabbing communications that go out as long as the person doesn’t go down to the street. There’s a backup plan for anybody who calls or texts from the street during the break.

Whatever the plan is, Malcolm seems to like it. As usual, the sign of Malcolm liking something is him turning the gruffness down a notch.

Maybe it’s the strange clarity of being in that state between sleeping and waking, but working with him the way I have, and now meeting his dad, I feel like I get him in a new way, beyond what he presents to the world. I see a man who doesn’t trust easily. He thinks he’s a villain. Maybe that’s how he survived.

His mother lied to him. The potential spy in his organization has him in knots. And what am I doing? Running the biggest deception of all.

I have to tell him the truth before it goes any further. Before he works it out, and before AJ tells him. I have to stop this. I knew it tonight in the restaurant when he asked me about obstacles to us being together. I know it all the more so now.

A ball of emotion forms in my throat, like my own body warning me not to do it. As soon as I tell, I’ll lose him. More than lose him—he’ll push me away as forcefully as he’ll reject the mole when he finds them, but the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll be—for him.

The building will be done for. It doesn’t matter. Somewhere along the line, his well-being has become extremely important to me.

I shut my eyes tight against welling tears. God, what have I done?

I’ll tell him after he nails the negotiation—he needs to nail this negotiation. He needs to have this plan go right. It’s something nice for him to have. And then I’ll tell him.

“About time,” he says.

I squeeze my eyes closed harder, willing away the sadness.

“I know you’re awake.” He takes my hand and kisses it, and then my wrist. I’m still curled in a ball next to him and he’s kissing up my arm. And I’m smiling through my tears. Because I’m falling for him so hard, it’s crazy.

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