Page 51 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“You have to guess.”

“Tell me,” she demands, beaming at me.

Something lifts in my chest, and I just want to grab her and kiss the little crumbs off the side of her mouth and then devour her like an almond croissant.

She leans in closer. “Tell me!”

“Or what?” I tease. “Will you give me an X?”

She’s grinning outright now. “Maybe I will,” she says.

I shrug. “He’s in love with Maybell, of course.”

She straightens, studies my face. “What? You think he’s in love with…Maisey?”

“You can’t see it?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Looks to me like they’re just friends.”

“Back it up. To the part where all of those people are in the lobby with the pink-haired girl. When she’s giving the announcement.” Elle backs it up and finds the place I mean. “The way he looks at her. Everybody watches Pink Hair except John. He watches Maymie. He always watches Maymie.”

“Maybe they’ve known each other a long time or something,” she says.

“He beams at her when she talks,” I say. “The woman rambles like nobody I’ve ever heard, but John could listen all day.”

“Maybe they’re just friends is what I’m saying.”

“The way he looks at her? Come off it,” I say. “Anyway, men being just friends with women? Very rare. Go to that roof part. I think it was in yesterday’s highly instructive emotional intelligence program.”

She goes to the part I mean.

“Do you see?” I say. “Maybelle is absolutely insufferable in her rambling, but John can’t keep his eyes off her.”

“Hmm,” Elle says.

“I’m sorry, that’s not enough for you?” I take the iPad and navigate to the beginning, pause it on Maisey’s shirt. “What is this pin she wears? With every outfit.”

“Gerbera daisy.”

“She wore a belt buckle with that same kind of daisy, too, one time—in that dull pink color,” I say.

“Salmon,” Elle mumbles.

“Now, I’ve only seen a few days of footage. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the salmon gerbera daisy is Maybelle’s favorite flower. And let me ask you, what sorts of flowers does ol’ John grow in those pathetic little coffee cans up on the roof?”

Elle takes control of the player and rewinds to yesterday’s section of footage. When she gets to the John-and-his-sad-flowers-growing-out-of-coffee-cans section, her lips part in surprise. “God, that is so observant of you,” she says. “He grows the flowers that Maisey likes.”

“Do I get my tick now?” I say.

“You are really observant,” she says, stunned.

“I know,” I say. “Maybe I’ll use my amazing powers for ill and make a billion dollars someday. Oh wait, I already did.”

“No, it’s amazing,” she says. “You really see people.”

“All the better to crush and destroy them on my way to the top.”

She looks at me, challenge in her eyes, lips pursing and then un-pursing, as if she wants to say something, but isn’t quite sure what. Maybe she wants what I said not to be true. Unfortunately, it is true.

---