Page 40 of The Runaway Billionaire's Inconvenient Baby
“You like books?” I ask. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. I guess I hadn’t taken him for the kind of guy who has a lot of time for reading. I guess, in my head, a billionaire is the kind of guy who parties every night and goes to movie premieres every day.
Noticing my expression, Willow mutters under her breath. “Some date this is.”
I kick her under the table, but it doesn’t stop the smug look on her face.
She’s been saying for years that one day I’ll fall into a relationship and realize that I am capable of love, and I’ve been missing out all this time. I’ve always rolled my eyes at that. Of course, I’m capable of love. I adore romance. It was always something I was going to do, eventually. When I had time. When I felt like it.
I hadn’t been expecting it to smack me in the face this much. Not that I love Jacob. Not exactly.
Maybe not yet.
CHAPTER 20
BILLIE
“This is a bad idea,” he tells me again.
“You look cute. This is a great idea. You’ll be fine.”
“What if someone wants something?”
I place my hands on my hips and stare him down. “They will want something. This is a cafe. They’re the customers. The whole point is for them to want something and for you to give it to them.”
“But—” he starts, and I silence him with a raised finger.
Today is Jacob Ford’s first day at work in his first real menial job. I’m making him stand behind the counter at the cafe for a few hours.
He argued against it, of course, deciding he’d be useless at it and not wanting to put the effort in. I told him that this was his way of repaying me for room and board. He tried to spin it that the effect his kisses had on me was payment enough, but even after he attempted to prove it, and we lay in my bed breathless and sweaty, I still wasn’t dissuaded.
It’s good for him, I told him. To be treated like a person, he’s got to act like one. And to act like one, he can’t go around feeling like he’s worth more than a lowly server.
“You can use the register. You know what a croissant is. I’ll make the coffee. You just stand there and smile. You’ll be fine.”
He opens his mouth as if to argue, then clamps it shut again, his shoulders sagging as he sighs. “Fine, okay. But if this goes wrong, it’s not my fault.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Whose fault will it be ifyoumake a mistake then?”
“Yours?”
The wide-eyed pout he gives me is utterly irresistible, and my heart melts inside my chest. I lean forward to kiss him, our lips brushing chastely, before pointing to the door. “I’ll take the fall. But I think you’ll be just fine.”
Like a wet dog with its tail between its legs, he slinks out to the front, the ties of his apron flapping behind him.
I give him a second before I follow. It’s a Thursday, which is why I roped him into this today; it’s usually our least busy day. Plus, it’s the afternoon, so all we’ll really get are occasional tourists and the regulars who’ll treat him like entertainment and forgive him if he screws up.
Already his first customers are arriving. They’re tourists, bumbling up to the counter, frowning at my handwritten chalkboard menu to try and decide what they want. They talk quietly among themselves, and Jacob stares blankly at them. I give him a nudge. He frowns at me.
“Say hello,” I mouth.
He frowns again like the concept is completely alien to him, then takes a deep breath and says, “Hello, there. Do you want something?”
I bite my lip to stop myself from laughing. It’s not the worst way he could have started this conversation, but it’s certainly not the way I would have trained him to.
The gaggle of tourists don’t seem to notice his weird behavior, and instead they debate about what they want for a long while. Jacob stands there frowning at them.
“Make conversation,” I hiss, the silence growing intolerable.
“Have you decided yet?” he asks. Again, not great, but better than nothing.
