Page 32 of Her Forever Billionaire

Move on. And she was just another job, wasn’t she? Fabulous.

‘No point in dragging anything out and struggling over decisions for ages. You’ve just got to go for it, don’t you think?’ He tossed something into a pan and it sizzled. ‘If you can get the work bit done as soon as possible, then you have more time for the fun.’

Clearly cooking was in the work camp—he was obviously trying to get it done a.s.a.p. ‘Fun is everything to you, isn’t it?’

‘Isn’t it for everyone? Isn’t that how we should arrange our lives? So we can maximise time for the best bits?’ He glanced over to her—his gaze so filled with fire it stole her breath. ‘Life is for enjoying, isn’t it?’

She didn’t disagree completely. ‘But isn’t there more than just “fun” thrills to enjoy?’

His brows lifted.

‘I mean, once you’ve achieved one thrill, you have to reach higher, harder for another to beat it,’ she argued. ‘So where does it end? When are you satisfied?’

She understood the drive to create—she had it herself in her own work. But what about creating intimacy, like relationships, or like a home—like life itself? Wasn’t that an even deeper way of leaving a mark on the world?

He stopped cooking and stared at her. ‘I’m never satisfied.’ He turned back to the pan and stirred it viciously. ‘Not for long.’

She thought back to that day on the beach—how intense it had been. But how soon they’d both ached for more. No, that satisfaction didn’t last.

‘There’s always another challenge,’ he said curtly.

Oh, she bet.

He turned and read her expression. ‘Judging me again?’

‘Admit it, women are a challenge to you.’

He piled steaming vegetables into a bowl. ‘Yeah, I like women,’ he said boldly. ‘But I like getting to know a lover. I don’t just sleep with a woman and then sprint off.’

‘Don’t you?’ Anger swamped her. ‘Isn’t that exactly what you did that day on the beach? You slept with me and then said goodbye as fast as you could.’

‘That was different?—’

‘It’s only different now because I’m carrying your baby.’

‘Hell, Kelsi.’ He tossed down the pan and turned to face her. ‘Yes, you’re having my baby. I want this to work out?—’

‘Okay, but we don’t need to be in each other’s pockets to do that. You don’t need to be here like this.’ She couldn’t cope with the way she wanted him—and wanted more from him. ‘We don’t have to be friends.’

He seized her upper arms, jerking her to the edge of the stool, his face right in hers—too close. His eyes narrowed, focused for a second too long on her mouth, on her body—making her burn all the more. Ten, twenty, too many long seconds passed as he used his sensual power to make her suffer in a way she hoped he wasn’t actually aware of.

But maybe he was, because his gaze was lingering on her lips again. And she couldn’t move for fear of breaking the moment, just wanting him to move those few inches closer. To kiss her. To kiss her with the same blazing passion she had for him.

‘You’re right.’ He released her with a sudden vicious flick of his fingers that somehow bruised her soul more than a hard shove ever could. ‘We don’t.’

Shaken, she didn’t turn to watch as he walked away. Said nothing to answer his sarcastic parting comment. ‘Enjoy your dinner, Kelsi.’

EIGHT

The tribes of builders returned unreasonably early and started ripping down the walls in the ground floor. Kelsi didn’t see Jack all day but when she got home that night she found he’d set up some kind of makeshift skateboard park in the mess that was the front yard, with wooden boards making up an assortment of ramps. He didn’t appear at her front door to cook dinner for her and it took every ounce of will power not to look out of the window when she heard the scrape of the skateboard on the concrete.

They weren’t going to be friends. They weren’t going to be anything.

That didn’t stop her wanting so very much more in the wee small hours—no, in the smallest hours of the night she lay awake, listening for sounds through the wall. In the smallest hours of the night, when her will was at its weakest, she imagined going to him, touching him.

Only now she never could. Now she knew he didn’t want her.

Once more, morning came too soon. As she walked out of the house to head to work he was in the yard already, had clearly just come back from a run.

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