Page 256 of The Billionaires

She frowns at me. “Please tell me you don’t donate to World Series Wrestling.”

“What? No. WSW stands for Whales Save Whales. Uber-wealthy donors, also called whales, donate their money to, well, save the ocean whales.”

“Huh,” she says. “I like whales. The ocean kind.”

The limo stops.

Jane looks at me questioningly. “Are we there already?”

I nod.

She grins. “We really were a walking distance away.”

With a shrug, I get out and hold the door for her.

As she exits, I enjoy the scent of guava with a hint of begonia—and I have no idea if this is something the makeover team spritzed on her, or if this is Jane herself.

“This way.” I offer her my right arm.

“How gentlemanly.” She slides her hand through the crook of my elbow.

As we pass my fellow whales inside the venue, I begin to understand something I previously found abhorrent—shallow billionaires who get themselves trophy wives. Jane is so beautiful that I’m proud to parade her on my arm, even if I don’t deserve any of said pride. Then again, a trophy wife may be a bad analogy here. People stereotypically think they lack intelligence (even though I know that’s not always true—case in point, my mom), but in the case of Jane, she’s the sharpest person I’ve met, and that fact makes me feel even prouder to marry her… or rather, fake-marry her.

“Oh, my,” Jane gasps when we step inside the hall. “This is the closest one can get to a ball from one of my novels.”

CHAPTER 19

JANE

I stare at my surroundings in awe.

If the palace-like venue had a theme, it would be something like “blue blood.” Even the parking valet and the waiters look richer than their usual counterparts. The actual whales downright exude wealth—and make me realize that Adrian is pretty down to Earth in this regard… in comparison to his peers, of course.

“Thoughts?” Adrian whispers.

“This is basically the ton,” I whisper back. “And I’m a milkmaid.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re a diamond of the first order.”

“It’s water, not order,” I say as butterflies somersault in my belly.

“Water?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

“The brilliance of a diamond is called its water.”

Before he can retort, Adrian frowns at something behind me. When I turn, I see a woman smiling at us like a shark.

With her amber eyes, silky black hair, and small face, she reminds me of what I could’ve grown up to look like if I had eaten caviar all day from kindergarten on, had had a personal trainer since grade school, and had swum in a pool of gold coins from birth.

But no. In no alternate universe could I manage to look this haughty. If it’s true that it takes ten thousand hours to master a task, that must be how long she’s had to stare at people down her nose to get this good at it.

“Adrian,” she says, her voice dripping with hauteur. “Why would you bring your assistant to The Ball?”

His assistant? Hey, she could have called me his cleaning lady.

Miss Miller finds the term “cleaning lady” quite misleading—maids clean, ladies manage the household. Having said that, even more incongruent would be the term “cleaning gentleman.” Oh, and since we’re on the subject, the term “crazy cat lady” also raises a lot of questions, like: Why isn’t she in Bedlam or locked up in an attic? Are all the cats there to rid her of the mice in said attic, or is she crazy in such a way that she uses them as an aloof source of protein?

“Jane, meet Sydney,” Adrian says, sounding more formal than I’ve ever heard him. “Sydney, meet Jane.” He turns to me. “Sydney is Piper’s mother.”

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