Page 229 of The Billionaires

“You don’t think Bossi-poo is worse?” Leo demands. “Or pomapoo, or peekapoo, or shihpoo, or sheepadoodle?”

“I think if anyone should be called a sheepadoodle, it should be Leo,” I say. “Seeing how he looks just like a sheep.”

“My favorite is doodleman,” Adrian chimes in. “Which sounds like a superhero who can fight crime with his scribbles.”

I grin. “Mine is huskypoo. Which sounds like something that happens when you’re really, really constipated.”

Miss Miller has just had a fit of the vapors.

Adrian’s stomach growls.

My grin widens. “We should get something else to eat.”

“Want to come over to my place?” Adrian asks. “I have some leftovers from a meal I made the other day.”

“Sure,” I shock myself by saying. “Let’s go.”

Miss Miller considers going to an unmarried gentleman’s house unchaperoned the equivalent of taking a job at a brothel.

“I love NYC architecture.” Adrian looks around with an excitement I’d expect to see on the face of a boy on a playground.

“You do? Why?”

“It’s some of the best in the world,” he says reverently. “Like that building.” He points at the skyscraper to our left. “It was built soon after World War II and was the first time some of those techniques had been used.”

“What techniques?”

He tells me, but I don’t understand much, as what little I know about architecture I picked up when I read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand back in school. Obviously, I was much more focused on the romance subplot of that book than on anything else.

Still, since he enjoys explaining, I nod and let him talk as I only listen with half an ear.

The feeling I’m trying to shake is that I’m going to a guy’s house on our first date.

I mean, with my rational parts (the brain), I know this isn’t a date, and that Adrian isn’t just some guy. However, the rest of me (my loins?) still feels like we’re on the way to my GD—which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Hell’s bells. Part of the reason I haven’t lost my virginity is because I’m too smart to trust men, especially with my heart. That distrust goes double for rakes in general, but especially ones I find attractive, like Adrian. Rakes are where historical romance and reality diverge the most. In the novels, the reformed ones make the best husbands, but in the real world, they disappear from their daughters’ lives, never to be heard from again.

“Sorry,” Adrian says. “Am I boring you with all this architecture trivia?”

I shake my head. “No. It’s actually interesting. Are you an architect yourself?”

“If by that, you mean someone who’s designed a few buildings and made sure they were built, then yes,” Adrian says. “If you mean someone who makes a living designing for builders all the time, then no.”

“Languages, painting, music, ventriloquism”—I look down at Leo—“and now architecture. What else? Do you juggle in your spare time? Breed medicinal leeches? Milk snakes?”

He chuckles. “Is milking a snake a euphemism for something?”

Flooded by naughty images of Adrian fisting his cock, I blush crimson. “Which is your favorite building?” I blurt to cover it up.

“The Seagram Building,” he says without hesitation. “That is, if you didn’t mean my own work.”

I look around. “Where is it?”

“The Seagram? On Park Avenue,” he says and pulls out his phone. “This is what it looks like.”

“Ah,” I say, not bothering to cover my disappointment. “I’ve seen it before. How is it different from other skyscrapers?”

He tells me, but once again, the architectural subtleties mostly go over my head.

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