Page 25 of The Billionaire's Bad News Baby

“Don’t apologize,” he said, sitting back in his chair and watching the sun turn the leaves orange. “It’s been nice. Having you here.”

“You’re just saying that to be nice.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but saying things just to be nice isn’t really my strong suit.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not much better at that if we’re being honest.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Kayla slapped his arm playfully, and Elio, possessed by some force he had no control over, reached out and took her hand in his. Her fingers were warm and light as he held them in his own. When Kayla didn’t pull her hand away, he felt brave enough to look her in the eye. She was just watching him back, those mismatched eyes taking him in like they took in everything else around her. She wasn’t smiling, not exactly, but she looked happy.

He’d done so much talking with her over the last few hours, the last few days, more than he ever usually did. The words had flowed so easily around her, like wine straight out of the bottle. But now they had gone and abandoned him, leaving his mouth dry and empty. How did he put what he was feeling into words? This mix of feeling flushed and weightless mixed with the feeling of standing on the edge of a precipice. After a few seconds of trying and failing to form a sentence, he gave up and, still possessed by that force, took her hand and put her fingers to his lips.

She didn’t pull away, and the world around them seemed to become very soft and still. For all Elio cared, this island was the extent of the universe. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could compare to this. The sun seemed to disappear fully then, the orange glow being replaced by the cool blues of evening.

“It’s getting dark,” Kayla said simply. But she still didn’t pull away.

Elio still had her hand, and quite frankly, he never wanted to let it go, so as he stood, he pulled her to her feet along with him. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was just some sort of cabin fever after being stuck here through the storm. Hell, maybe it was some sort of mental break caused by stress. He couldn’t really find it in him to care as he leaned down and kissed Kayla, pressing his lips to hers, their noses touching, reaching up to caress her cheek with his hand, his eyes closed the whole time.

For a split second, panic ran through him, turning his blood cold. He’d been presumptuous. He’d overstepped. Of course she didn’t want this. He was being absurd… But then her lips started moving against his and his blood thawed instead, beginning to boil in a matter of seconds. As she kissed him back, her free hand caressing its way up to his neck, he felt himself stepping off of that imaginary precipice into the unknown.

They had to break for a breath at some point, as loath as Elio was to pull away from Kayla. Though looking at her like this, so close that their noses were still touching, her eyes bright and her lips flushed, he ceased to mind.

“We should probably head inside,” he said, his voice husky and raw, even to his own ears. Kayla nodded, licking her lips, her breath quick as it hit his cheek.

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

But before they could start walking, they were kissing again, and Elio was lost in it.

CHAPTER 9

KAYLA

Kayla was used to waking up in strange beds. Hotels weren’t out of the ordinary in her particular line of work, especially when Tony and other lawyers like him were willing to send her here, there and everywhere to make sure their papers were served without fail. Waking up in a foreign country wasn’t even all that different, not when all bedrooms pretty much looked the same.

It was having the weight of a body next to hers that felt alien. Wonderful and slightly surreal, but completely out of the ordinary. Elio shifting in his sleep had been what woke her up with the morning sun dappled across them and the rumpled sheets.

Well. This certainly hadn’t been what she’d expected to happen when she’d been told to go to Italy to serve some guy papers about a lawsuit. Not that she was complaining. Right at this moment, there was absolutely nothing that sprung to mind that was worthy of complaint. Her whole body felt heavy in a pleasant sort of way, like she could sink right through the mattress and the butter soft, thousand-count sheets, the faintest breeze coming through the window ruffling the curtains and skimming across her bare shoulder. Elio was still sound asleep opposite her, despite the shifting around that had woken her up, a sheet slung low over his waist. He really was more handsome with his hair all messed up like that.

In sleep, he was more relaxed than she’d ever seen him, surpassing even their picnic dinner last night, where he’d actually talked without restraint for the first time. His face was soft, his eyelids fluttering occasionally as he dreamed about something, and Kayla was momentarily lost in a sort of daydream of her own. She imagined them waking up together and going to the kitchen to eat whatever they could find. She would make a meal, and he would joke about serving wine only to make the most exquisite coffee she had ever had. They could do the same thing the morning after — and the one after that as well. What a life that would be, to live in that sort of haze on a private island with someone that you clicked with so well that it seemed like magic.

But then reality started to sink in. That little fantasy might be nice and all, but she didn’t actually live here. She wasn’t even supposed to stay on the island longer than ten minutes, let alone several days. She definitely hadn’t been supposed to sleep with the man she was serving papers to. So padding off down the hallway together, hand in hand, to eat breakfast was a nice idea and all, but it was just that, an idea. She couldn’t stay here. She had a life to get back to on the other side of the world, one with bills and parking tickets, grocery shopping and visiting dollar stores. What was she doing in bed with a billionaire? Billionaire with a B. That was more money than she could ever conceive of having, and frankly, it made her uncomfortable to think about the numbers, especially when Elio talked about things like buying islands as if that was a completely normal thing for a person to do.

Even if he was nice and charming and a little too shy for his own good, Kayla had seen the fallout of falling for a man from a foreign country. As much as she loved her mom, Kayla didn’t really want to walk in her footsteps in regards to Liz’s love life. She’d prefer to avoid heartbreak if she could, like any sane person.

The storm was well and truly over. There was no reason for her to stay.

Elio was deeply asleep enough that she was able to slide out of the bed, collect her clothes from their various places around the room, and make a quick escape to the guest wing. Even just slipping back inside the whole suite that she’d been housed in was enough of a reality check to get Kayla moving; anyone with a guest wing inside their vacation home belonged in an entirely different sphere to her. She showered quickly, got dressed and made sure she had her phone in hand, but it wasn’t like she had to actually pack anything, not when she’d stayed here with nothing. So should she kill the time until Elio woke up and go back to the kitchen and eat breakfast, or was that just an excuse to wait around longer, dragging out her time here? But if she called a boat to come to the island and get her while Elio was still sleeping, that made her feel like she was running from something. And she definitely wasn’t running. No, it was just making a sensible exit back to the rest of her life, back to normalcy. There was no running away involved here whatsoever.

Kayla stood frozen in the middle of the guest suite, deliberating over the best course of action for the better part of ten minutes. A gentle knock on the door interrupted her frozen panic. Opening it to see Elio was both a relief and absolutely terrifying. He was still all ruffled from sleep, his dark hair curling around his ears, a linen shirt and trousers thrown on at random, and Kayla hated how much the sight of him like that had her heart squeezing between her ribs.

“Hey,” he said with a small smile.

“Hey,” said Kayla and she had to force herself to remember her internal conversation about needing to go back home.

“I really should get going,” she said, trying to sound as casual and confident as possible. Whether she succeeded or not, she had no idea; her heart was thrumming too loudly in her ears to have much of an idea of what she sounded like. Elio seemed taken aback by that.

“Oh, right. Well, yes, I suppose you do need to head off.”

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