Page 59 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

I’m just grinning stupidly at him. My face has a mind of its own at this point. “Don’t mind Antonio!” I say.

Benny gives me a strange look. “Somebody’s boisterous tonight,” he says.

“If that’s a euphemism, then yes, I am boisterous,” I say.

“Seconding boisterous,” Kelsey says.

I pull Benny closer, so happy he came. “We are so deeply in love,” I say to my friends. Then I turn to him and our gazes lock. It does something to me deep down. “He cannot stand to be without me. That is the kind of marriage that we have. He realizes his mistake what with the Swiss chalet. The bluebeard workout room. The wifely conscription.”

He gives me a warning look that may or may not be playful. It’s so wrong to think he’s sexy.

“He couldn’t be without me,” I continue. “So he came out into the night.”

Menacing heat emanates from Benny’s adorable face. Excitement skitters in my stomach.

“His penthouse feels empty without his sweet wife,” I continue. “A house that is not a home.”

The delicious heat beams on. I watch, lost in his eyes. My friends are chattering about something else, but all I can see is Benny.

He draws close, speaking softly. “I was just thinking, you know, what you told me about regretting staying out late. Athlete in training and all that.”

I blink. He remembered?

“And Alverson said he had dropped you here, and I just wanted to make sure…”

“That is very gallant,” I say.

“I am your husband,” Benny says.

“True,” I say. And he’s acting like a husband, and I’m enjoying it. I appreciate him trying to bring me to my senses. Itislate. Iaman athlete in training.

Five minutes later, we’re in the back of Benny’s limo, speeding toward home. Streetlights strobe his handsome features in soft yellows and whites with the occasional red flame of a taillight. Benny’s texting and scrolling. He mumbles something about morning in Europe.

I flash back on the way he walked in, so annoyed and determined.

“He couldn’t stay away from his beautiful wife,” I say. “No matter how hard he tried, no matter what measures he employed.”

He sniffs, still focused on his phone.

I smile.

Sculptors talk about chipping away at a hunk of stone with the sense that they are freeing the true form inside. I can relate. Benny is a beautiful, cold, hard statue that traps a beating heart that I very much want to touch.

I adjust his collar. “Thrice he visited the boxes,” I continue. “Even that did not suffice.”

“Are you going to make me regret coming to pick you up?” he rumbles.

“He sat upon the workout room floor surrounded by the boxes’ unspeakable contents, regretting bitterly that he didn’t sing ‘Alejandro’ to her when he had the chance. What, really, would it have cost him? He couldn’t sing a simple song?”

He finally looks up. “When will you stop with the song?”

I grin. “Ummm…”

He watches me, still in his quintessential stone-statue mode. Everything about him feels achingly familiar, yet so maddeningly remote.

Suddenly he begins to speak: “He sat at home in his lonely study, wondering why she keeps asking. Why does she care? Is it something he should be worried about? Has she perhaps contracted rickets? Or scurvy?”

I close my fingers around his non-phone-arm. I’m near enough to his whiskery cheek that I can smell his spicy scent, near enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. I can even feel his pulse rise. Or maybe it’s my pulse rising.

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