Page 248 of The Billionaires

The fire seems to have stopped, but I smack Adrian with the wet rag one more time, just to be sure.

“Are you okay?” I ask Adrian, who looks stunned.

“I think so.” He touches the spot that was just on fire. “What happened?”

I glare at the dog—who’s devoured the peanut butter already and is chewing on the paper plate itself. “Someone was being a bad dog.”

“It was my fault,” Mary says sheepishly. “I shouldn’t have come so close to you with the candle.”

“Hey,” I say. “I was the one who tempted the dog with the peanut butter.”

“It’s okay,” Adrian says. “I’m totally fine.”

I bet this is another lie, just as expertly executed as the previous one. Yeah. It would’ve been ironic if, instead of his hair, his pants were on fire.

“I’m so sorry,” Mary murmurs mournfully.

Swallowing the last bit of the plate, Leo finally picks up on the tension in the room and whines.

“I can fix this.” Mom stands up straighter and examines the charred section of Adrian’s hair the way Superman would a falling plane. “You’ll just end up with a shorter hairdo.”

Before anyone can so much as put in a word edgewise, Mom herds Adrian into the bathroom, makes him sit on the closed toilet seat, and pulls out her scissors and clippers.

“You might want to take off your shirt,” Mom says. “Else your collar will be itchy.”

Seriously? There’s no way he?—

Adrian unbuttons his shirt and takes it off like it’s nothing.

Underneath, he has nothing on, of course, so my eyes feast on his hard muscular chest, his six pack, and his oh-so-lickable arms.

God help me. I might need a change of panties.

There’s a gasp nearby.

Oh, crap. Mary is looking at the same droolworthy muscles as I am.

“Go watch the dog,” I say to her, and then I position my body in the doorway to block her view. A ten-year-old is much too innocent to be exposed to something like this. She’ll be ruined for all other men.

Heavens. Miss Miller feels a scandalous womanly condensation in the part of her anatomy that an unmarried lady shouldn’t even think about.

Mom starts turns on the clippers, and the buzzing noise dampens my libido… a little.

“This reminds me of that horrible scene in Thor: Ragnarok,” Mary whispers from behind me. “When they cut Chris Hemsworth’s hair with a device that looked like the blades of a blender.”

I ignore Mary because I’m annoyed at how close Mom is getting to my fake fiancé. Relatedly, does she need to put her boobs in his face when trimming the top of his head? Why is she even cutting that? The burned hair was in the back.

Whatever.

After fifteen minutes that feel like a month, Mom’s hair buzzer stops.

“Have a look,” she says.

I know she’s talking to Adrian, but I’m only human, so I check him out—and blow out an annoyed breath.

If someone burned and then cut my hair, I would surely look hideous. But for Adrian, his already-sharp cheekbones now look like they could cut steel, and the angularness of his face has become more angular somehow, daring my fingertips to trace over his features and my tongue to?—

“Great, thanks,” Adrian says with merely a glance at himself in the mirror.

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