Page 22 of Baby for My Billionaire Rival

Lunch with the Simmons is like eating with giants. Thank God I have Lori there to tether me to reality where not everyone is over six two and doesn’t need three helpings of food.

Not to mention, the food is delicious. Fresh biscuits and deviled eggs, homemade sweet tea, collards, the juiciest corn I’ve ever had, and fried chicken. I feel spoiled beyond belief. If Gram saw the way my plate was piled high with all this rich food, she’d surely look at my stomach and frown.

Here, though, having a full plate is a mark of pride.

“Damn, Jake. Your girl can eat,” Sean, the only brother who inherited Lori’s dark eyes, says as he licks grease off his thumb.

“Not my girl, Sean,” Jake corrects in a low voice.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish I was Jake’s girl. I wish I had a place at this table again and again. Must be pheromones or something, because I barely know the guy.

Something about all this feels right despite it being foreign to me.

If I was a part of all of this, I could regard the empty chair at the head of the table with some amount of respect rather than trying not to look at it, knowing it’s the chair of a dead man.

I like Jake Simmons’s world, what can I say?

For dessert, there’s peach cobbler that smells divine. My stomach feels like it's about to explode and I try to refuse, but Lori won’t take no for an answer.

“Why don’t you two take your dessert and go chat about your project out on the porch?” Lori suggests. “Bugs won’t be too bad out there this time of year.”

Jake and I sit on the porch swing hung from the veranda, negotiating space apart from one another, not like the golf cart rides that smushed our hips together and had my heart racing. I take one bite of the cobbler and though my stomach says no, my heart saysyes.

“Do y’all eat like this every day?” I ask.

Jake nods sheepishly. “Mama’s way.”

“She treats you like kings,” I say and take another bite.

“And we treat her like a queen. Promise,” he says.

I’d like to see Jake treat a woman like a queen. That woman namely being me. I put my plate in my lap, waiting for my stomach to make some more room for the cobbler. “Youalllive in the house then?”

“Golly, no. Can you imagine?”

“I can. Although it’s sort of ridiculous. Like a fairytale or something. Mama Lori and her Five Giants.”

Jake flushes and laughs at the same time. “Naw, only Ev and Sean are still in the main house. Brody and Coop have their own places and I live over by the pasture. Converted the old hay loft into a house.”

I get a flash of Jake sawing a plank of wood shirtless with his flannel wrapped around his waist, his chest slick with sweat.Caroline, stop it. You have to work with this guy one-on-one for the next few months. And who knows when he’s going to piss you off next. “I bet your Mama loves that.”

“Yeah, she does, she does.”

We fall into silence. Midday breeze slinks around us. Our forks clink on our plates.

“So, uh… what do you think?” Jake finally asks. “About… all this,” he adds with a gesture of his hand.

I look out over the pebble driveway where my Audi sits looking very out of place and, past that, the acres and acres of land unfolding. “It’s amazing, Jake.”

His blue eyes catch in mine for a second before he smiles down at his next bite of cobbler.

“I never expected it to be anything less,” I go on. “I know I’ve given you the impression that you have something to prove, but I promise, that’s never been the case with me.”

Jake sighs. “We got off on the wrong foot.”

“Yeah. And like, I want to respect what you said, we don’t have to be friends. But we do have to work together.”

His tongue pokes into his cheek. “Of course.”

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