Page 60 of Return Billionaire to Sender

She frowns, and visions of kissing that frown crowd my mind. “You have to find an uninterrupted hour. You have to find one.”

“Or what, little country mouse?” I ask, pulse racing.

She straightens, brow furrowed. “Okay, then,” she says, slipping a second iPad from her bag. She opens the hedgehog-themed cover, and fires it up. Deftly she punches in a code and navigates a few screens to some sort of grid hosted by Bexley Partners.

“Do you see this empty square?” she asks.

I’m barely listening.

She turns to me, chin up, so fucking determined to hold her ground. Wildly, I imagine cupping that chin between my thumb and forefinger. Tipping her face to me. The idea has my blood racing.

“Do you see it?” she demands.

“I do indeed.”

“That is where I put your check marks…whenyou earn them.”

“Uh-huh.” Is she doing this again? I should probably be annoyed.

She straightens up, seeking to occupy her full height. “If you can’t agree to uninterrupted sessions, I’ll be forced to give you an X instead of a check mark.”

I swallow back a smile. She’s totally bluffing, of course—no way will she follow through on her threat, but it’s hot that she’s trying. “You wouldn’t do that,” I say confidently.

“Wouldn’t I?” she taunts.

I’m ready for her threat this time. I spoke to my lawyers about this. I inform her of what they said. “Companies like mine wouldn’t agree to use companies like yours if they had a history of flunking clients. My lawyers would’ve insisted on a different firm.”

“Maybe that was true in the past,” she says, “but it’s a new day. And if you do not complete the lessons properly, and that includes not having them presented in a chopped-up fashion, I will put an X here. And then Iwillhit submit.”

“And then your employer would fire you,” I say.

“Maybe I don’t care about that,” she says. “Maybe this program is just that important to me.”

I smile. So fucking unexpected. “A good girl like you? Not caring if you get fired?”

“That’s right,” she says. “If you are unable to agree to uninterrupted sessions, youwillget an X in this box. Once I hit submit, the X is sent to several parties. Do you know who those parties are?”

She’s breathtaking—she really is; David to my Goliath—if David had been quietly sexy, and Goliath had been, let’s face it, a bit more competent. She’s standing up to me with everything in her, magnificent and vulnerable at the same time, and it makes me want to consume her—her lips, her skin, her neck. I’m a vampire, driven to devour her goodness.

“No?” she asks. “Is this you not agreeing, then?”

I give her the smug smile that seems to get under her skin.

The air between us sizzles with energy.

She reaches out her forefinger, the deft little finger that she uses to hit play but she’s hovering over something on the pad. She taps something and a large X appears in the box. I grin. She’s taking it all the way to the edge. She won’t hit submit though.

She wouldn’t.

She hovers her finger over the blue SUBMIT button, taunting me.

“You won’t,” I say.

“I will.” Her eyes flash. “Unless you agree to unbroken sessions.”

“My day is too busy to carve out an hour, I told you that.”

She tapssubmit.

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