Page 59 of Billionaire Grump's Baby

No, I think.Don’t put your mask back on. Stay with me.

“Trust me, this is amazing news,” Sarah patters on. “You know Noah Turner, that big editor over at Spark House Publishing? He heard you were helping to write Luke’s autobiography, and now he wants to meet you. He thinks he might have a project for you.”

“Nonfiction?” I ask.

“Yes. I know helping rich barely literate businessmen write their autobiography isn’t your first choice,” Sarah admits. “But Noah Turner knows everybody. If you impress him, it could really help when you’re ready to start shopping your next novel around.”

“Ok,” I hear myself say. Maybe it’s that sixty seconds ago Luke was ready to thrust himself inside me and now I’m naked while Sarah gives me practical career talk...but I don’t know how to feel about what she’s telling me. My emotions soar and swoop in a tangled, tumbling mess.

“Here’s the thing. He wants to meet us tomorrow morning at nine thirty. I said we could do that breakfast place in the Village with the good pancakes,” Sarah says.

“Nine-thirty?” I blink. “That’s so early.”

“Again, I remind you, you’re not actually having a wedding night. And this is a really important opportunity,” Sarah says. “Go to bed now, get a great night’s sleep, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Nine-thirty sharp.”

Then she hangs up on me.

Luke hands me a hotel bathrobe. It’s silky and black and impossibly luxurious. I pull it on, grateful for the coverage, but disappointed at what I think it represents.

Luke has slipped his own shirt back on and buttoned it up halfway. And the condoms are gone from the bed.

“Sounds like you’ve got an early morning meeting tomorrow,” he says, like we’re back in his office calmly discussing our schedule for the day.

I hate it. I hate it with every fiber of my being. “Luke...”

“It’s a good thing we were interrupted,” he says briskly. “We got a bit carried away, but we would have regretted it in the morning.”

“But—”

“You said you’d let me lead,” Luke says. “So let me lead. I have more experience in these things than you do.”

The way he says it makes me feel foolish and naive.

Had I really thought all I had to do to seduce him was get naked and give him a kiss? When he’d said multiple times that he wasn’t going to have sex with me?

I raise my chin and gather what little of my pride I can. “I agree. Sex would only make things unnecessarily complicated.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

We stand there awkwardly.

“Do you still want to take a bath, or...?” Luke asks. “Because I’d like to shower.”

Thecoldpart of the shower goes unsaid.

“Oh. No. Go ahead.”

I watch him walk stiffly into the bathroom.

Then I change into the leggings and T-shirt I wore this morning to the hotel. I use three makeup remover wipes to get all the wedding makeup off my face. Then I turn out the lights, crawl into bed, and try not to think about what Luke and I almost did. Or what weactuallydid.

Leave it to a man to think giving a woman the best oral sex of her life won’t make things awkward in the morning, but penetrative sex somehow would.

I don’t say anything when Luke emerges from the bathroom and joins me in bed.

Then again, he doesn’t say anything either.

I do my best to fall asleep, already dreading the morning.

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