Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 27566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
"Not one word, Theseus."
But this only had the other man smiling. "That bad, is it?"
Maximo had a feeling he would regret asking this, but he asked it anyway as he turned to face Theseus. "What is?"
"Her effect on you."
And indeed, he was right.
"She's nothing to me," Maximo said curtly.
"What I saw implies otherwise." "She doesn't even know my name."
"But you're still talking to her instead of asking my firm to issue a restraining order. That implies something, too."
Maximo didn't answer. The lobby moved around them, all that money and marble, but he saw none of it, with his thoughts revolving around a girl who didn't seem to realize how wearing her heart on her sleeve made her so dangerously vulnerable.
"Seriously. Who is she to you, Maximo?"
"Someone forbidden," he answered at last.
Theseus frowned. "Because she's too young?"
A humorless smile twisted over Maximo's lips.
If only it was just that.
"No. It's worse."
Theseus's gaze narrowed. "How so?"
"Because she has Mary's heart."
Chapter Three
I GOT THE JOB.
I got the job. My first real, credited, someone-is-actually-going-to-pay-me-to-pretend job, and I'm standing in my kitchen the size of a phone booth, vibrating with the need to tell somebody, anybody, so I grab my phone and scroll to M for Mom and my thumb is already moving—
Oh.
Right.
My thumb stops, and my chest drops like the floor of an elevator giving out.
Because Mom made her choice a long time ago, and it wasn't me, it was the man who married her and looked at me like furniture, and you can't call a person to celebrate when they've already told you, gently, over a nice dinner, that maybe some space would be healthy.
So. Not Mom.
I scroll back up. Past nobody, past nobody, past...aha.
Mr. H.
Here's the thing about having exactly one number worth calling. A smart girl would play it cool. Wait a day. Not lead with her entire heart at nine on a Tuesday. But since this smart girl (hi, still me) is also lonely, broke, and about to burst—
"Hi, Mr. H, are you busy?"
And now I'm standing in the entryway of an apartment so high up the city looks like a rumor. Apparently are you busy translates, in the native language of Mr. H, to a car at my curb and a doorman who already knew my name, and the man himself is looking at me from across all that quiet money like he can't quite remember why he let me up.
It's the first time I've seen where he lives. I take back every mean thing I've ever thought about penthouses. This one could hold my entire life and still have room left over to echo. He's ditched the suit jacket. Sleeves shoved to the elbow, forearms out for the general public to deal with, and okay, a girl could lose an entire afternoon to those forearms, and my borrowed heart clearly agrees because it picks right now to start up, quick and giddy, thump-thump-thump against a set of ribs that did not order this.
Slow down, heart. We've talked about this. Racing is on the official list of Things That Are Bad For Us, right up there with grapefruit and skipping pills, and here it is, sprinting over a man's forearm like it's got a bus to catch.
Not helping, I tell it. Focus.
Because here's what I've finally figured out about my Mr. H, and you can quote me on it. He's the exact hero every billionaire romance warns a girl about, which works out beautifully because it keeps the initials. Has an obscene amount of money, the kind that makes waiters nervous. Hates anything with even a rumor of love or feeling attached to it. And is Hard to understand on a level somebody should probably study for a living. Hot, honorable, hers, and now three bonus Hs, free of charge. At this point the man's less a person than an acronym.
"Don't get any ideas," he warns me, like he can hear the whole internal monologue.
"Shouldn't I be the one saying that?" I gesture between us. Between his face and my everything. "You were the one who invited me up, not the other way around."
"You have a disturbing tendency to read something in nothing."
"Ouch. That's mean." I press a hand to my borrowed heart, wounded. "Is that your way of saying unappealing?"
"What do you want to drink?" he asks, already turning toward a bar cart worth more than everything I own put together, and I have to physically stop myself from pocketing something off it for the memory. Also—
"Since you didn't say no, then that means the opposite, right?"
I know he's already warned me against reading something into nothing, but c'mon now.
"You find me attractive!"
"Water, then." It's so cute when Mr. H tries playing it cool like this, and it has me smiling while I watch him pour with the unbothered economy of a man who's never once spilled anything in his life, and hand the glass over without letting our fingers touch. Which I notice because lately I notice everything about him, and that's rapidly becoming a full-time job nobody's paying me for.