Page 53 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

I can feel my practiced smoothness draining away.

I want to make it better. I want to kiss her.

I’m sure that would be hilarious to her, to bring out the awkward, worshipful nerd in me.

It won’t be happening. That kid isn’t in the driver’s seat. Not anymore.

Twelve

Francine

“I know my limits,”I say to him, willing him to stop talking about my knee. I can blow off Kelsey’s concern—she overtrains as much as I do.

Same with my fellow dancers—don’t throw stones at glass houses and all of that. The company powers that be have no idea how bad an injury it is. And Noelle believes me when I minimize my injuries. And my parents on their Zoom calls from the back of the tourist shop in North Dakota—they don’t know.

But Benny seems to have figured it out what with his weirdly intense way of zeroing in on people and things to the exclusion of everything else in the world. It’s not just that though; his concern feels dangerous, and for whatever reason, I want him to believe it’s okay. Maybe even need him to believe it.

“And like you told Alan,” I continue, “we are both very focused on our own careers; you steer clear of giving opinions on my career the way I steer clear of giving opinions on yours.”

A hint of a smile appears around his eyes, and the beauty of him takes my breath away.

He steps closer, and I know he’s going to deliver some sort of gotcha, and I don’t even care. I like having him near. Maybe I need my head examined.

“Like when you told me I was an idiot for selling the company and working for somebody else?” he rumbles. “Steering clear like that?”

I grin. “That wasn’t an opinion, it was the truth, and you very much are an idiot in that respect, but I know that I can’t save you from yourself, so I’ve stopped giving that opinion. Just as you know that you can’t save me from my very grave tax troubles.”

“Oh please,” he gusts out, like I’m the peskiest person on the planet. “I’m gonna handle your tax troubles.”

“What?” I say.

“You would just bungle it,” he says. “It’s excruciating—just absolutely vexing—to imagine how badly you’d bungle it. I shudder to think what sort of accountant you’d hire. It probably wouldn’t even be an accountant. You’d go for an insane clown. You’d get yourself into more trouble by trying to fix it.”

“You don’t have to put things so diplomatically,” I say. “Tell me what you really think.”

“I have people sitting around waiting for me to assign them tasks like this. It would be maddening to know you’re trying to handle it with ninety-three point five percent pure incompetence.”

I get in closer to him, get into his face. “How much incompetence was that?”

“You heard me the first time,” he says.

“What if I like it when insane clowns do my taxes?” I ask.

He draws in, near enough for me to be able to see the whorls of his tawny-brown brows. “Too bad.”

“The insane clowns are donning their giant shoes as we speak,” I say dimly, eyes falling to his lips. “Sharpening their water-squirting pencils.”

As if he knows I’m studying his stupidly attractive lips, he forms the words carefully, dramatically, fetchingly. “You can’t stop me.”

And this burst of affection and happiness rushes over me.

And I want to touch him—needto touch him. To kiss him. To press into him. He’s a magnet I must shamelessly glom on to. It’s a physical need, but also emotional. I feel so close to him now.

Maybe it has to do with playing his wife all week, sarcastically calling each other “honey” as we pass back and forth between the penthouse and our busy lives. Fun little snipes here and there. Being surrounded by his things, his scent.

But it’s more than that. It’s confiding in me about Spencer. Trusting me enough to be vulnerable about it, to show his heart. The little he did, that’s big for Benny. It makes me feel closer to the guy he was in Vegas, and that strange magic of us then.

And the idea of him helping me with my taxes—I reallywasworried about the tax thing. I’m bad at numbers-and-red-tape situations. And mostly there’s my knee.

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