Page 44 of The Grumpy Billionaire

I’ll get something, and Hugo will be out of my life.

Yes, his lips were deliciously glommable, and touching him after all these years—the guy I’d been obsessed with since I was a kid—it was beyond everything.

My palms skimming over his hot, muscular back, my fingertips tracing the stiff line of fabric at the top of his waistband, inches from the promised land that my wicked imagination had done mega-lascivious things with over the years.

Perfect staple smash.

I spent years replaying the mistaken-identity kiss.

I kissed other men after that, but no kiss ever measured up to that. Nothing even came close.

As the years wore on, I wondered whether I was remembering the kiss as being more exciting, more epic, than it really was. How could one kiss contain so much earth-shaking feeling? Was it because I was so young?

It turns out I wasn’t remembering it wrong—not judging by yesterday’s kiss.

Relent to me, Stella.

Who says that? In my mind, relent is a word you use for weather, as in, “we’ll go hiking once the storm relents.” Or a rule or policy— “when will they relent on the two-gummy-worm rule?”

Butrelent to me?

How do you relent to a person? Knowing Hugo, it’s an arcane but accurate usage that is perfect in every way.

Unruly. Reckless. Incorrigible.

This is my bar? Ruin my career and insult me, but hey, if you kiss me well enough, I’ll forget that I’ve sworn you off?

I know better—so much better.Can the red flag of Hugo’s freak-level perfectionism get any redder?

If I kiss him again, if I so much as think hot thoughts about him again, I deserve whatever happens. I deserve to have my heart fed through a meat grinder because I know better.

I’m like a girl in a horror movie whose friends never come back from investigating the strange sounds in the basement. She knows not to go down there. And if shedoeshead down there after them, she deserves whatever happens to her—the scary doll stabs her. A creep surgically sews her to some other people to create a human centipede or whatever else, just like I deserve to have my heart broken if I go for original, full-strength Hugo.

I’ll be staying upstairs in the creepy-doll-and-meat-grinder-free living room, thank you very much.

A hush descends over the admin floor.

I know it’s him without even looking up. It’s like my thoughts conjured him.

He’s up at the courier desk, mere steps away from my post at the copier, him and his dusky brow furrows and mighty, hawklike harshness.

And let’s not forget the stern frown that always seemed to cow everybody into submission, though it never worked to subdue preteen me. Quite the opposite—that stern frown would energize me. It would spur me on. It would make me turn myself up to eleven.

And it’s having that effect on me now, because I’m feeling very eleven, and I really, really want to taunt him.

I force my gaze down, but my heart won’t stop pounding. He’s just so supremely serious.

When I next look up, our eyes meet. And before I can stop myself, I plump out my nostrils and lower one eyelid. This face was a Woodward dinner table staple, a very subtle face, very wrong face that I like to refer to as “nostril dragon.”

Hugo’s gaze sharpens, like he’s suppressing disbelief and extreme exasperation.

He turns to Tinley, who is yet again wringing her hands, and speaks in growly tones.

“Stop making eye contact!” Jane scolds. “Trust me.”

“Right. No more eye contact.” I’m back to stapling, quivering with delight.

And because I have no self-control, I look back up and make the face again.

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