Page 22 of The Grumpy Billionaire

It was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced—until the moment he seemed to come to his senses, fully awake.

“Stella?!” He was irritated or angry, or I didn’t know what.

“Oops,” I said. “Uh…wrong person.” I got out of there in a flash, reeling. Mortified.

We never spoke of it again, and Hugo would barely look at me after. I’m sure he put it out of his mind, but me?

Hell no.

I thought about it constantly. That kiss burned so hard and deep into my heart that it changed me in some fundamental way. It changed my soul. That kiss stayed inside me, acting on me like a powerful forbidden drug, and I was addicted, chasing after that high ever after, and never coming close.

So the mistaken-identity kiss is the wrong thing to be thinking about here, but I can’t stop remembering. Though to be honest, remembering is the wrong word for what I’m doing. I’m luxuriating in the echo of the kiss, letting the feel of him resonate through my body.

It was the hottest moment of my life—by a mile, and I’ve had some hot moments.

When I raise my eyes to his, I think he might be remembering, too.

Though his memory is probably the opposite of mine. Instead of amazing hotness, he’s likely recalling the amazing awfulness of being accosted in such a way during his nap by his best friend’s stupid kid sister. Or else he forgot about it.

I shake myself out of it, averting my eyes from the way his shirt stretches tight across his chest. “Your guard dog almost wouldn’t let me in,” I say. “What’s up with her?”

“I don’t know that there’s anythingupwith Brenda,” Hugo says.

“She treasures the galena that you gave to her.”

“Is there a point to all this?”

I grin. It’s just so, so, so nice to see him again, and I know he wants me to leave, and I know he spent years avoiding me. And of course there’s my Hugo moratorium where I stay away from Hugo and all Hugo types, but somehow, I can’t bring myself to leave.

Self-discipline never was my strong suit.

I trace the crisp corner of his glass desk. “How’d you know a hunk of galena would be her favorite present in the world?”

“It’s a little something I like to callobservation skills.”

That’s such a Hugo response. “It’s more than that. You act like you don’t get people, but with these gifts? It’s like you see right into a person’s heart.”

He shrugs. “Primitive humans thought thunderclaps meant that the gods were angry at them. That turned out to be wrong, too.”

I snort. Of course he acts like it’s nothing. Hugo the sexy, untouchably icy detective.

And the sad truth is, he could’ve given me a bent paperclip and I would’ve treasured it like the Diamond of Sheba.

“Brenda is also under the impression that chia is a vegetable and tau is a number, I’ll have you know,” I say.

“She would be right on those counts.”

My heart pounds. Hugo being Hugo is my catnip.

“That would be news to my mom. Remember how she’d collect all those Chia Pets and have them growing?”

“Oh, I remember,” he says darkly.

“Hugo,” I whisper, barely able to contain my happiness. “Do you hate Chia Pets?”

He gives me the stern eagle eye. “A hunk of clay designed to grow sprouts that badly resemble hair? Cultivating a plant where it shouldn’t be and in the place of hair, but it deliberately doesn’t work as hair and is wasted as a plant?”

I’m biting my lip so hard. Is it possible he’s become sterner and sexier? Yes.

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