Page 16 of Below Deck Billionaire
There were. And it sounded idyllic. She could certainly picture herself sitting with her back to the harbour wall, laptop balancing on her knees, sun sparkling on a crystal blue ocean, as she weaved her mermaid stories and waited for her fisherman to bring home his catch.
Which was why she definitely had to leave.Now!
Lurching forward, she grabbed her laptop and stood. ‘I’m going to turn in.’
‘I’m sorry, I interrupted your writing.’
‘It’s fine,’ Tiffany assured, not quite meeting his eye as she busied herself, shoving the computer under her arm, grabbing the stained towel with one hand and the empty wine glass with the other. ‘I’m just in the planning stages. It’s all good.’
She threw the towel over her shoulder to quell the sudden urge to tug the perfectly decent hemline of her oversized T-shirt lower. ‘Well…’ Clearing her throat, she tipped her chin in the direction of the stairs. ‘Goodnight.’
Theo’s softly spoken ‘Kalinyhta, Tiffany’ followed her all the way to her cabin.
* * *
‘Theodorus, you good-looking bastard.’
Theo laughed as the first of his London friends stepped on board from the tender. ‘Jealousy is a curse, Rufus,’ he said as they embraced.
Hugo, Ben, Fabian and Irving all followed to much backslapping and smack talk. ‘Aha,’ Rufus said, his gaze falling on Kelly, who was also there to greet their guests with a tray of beers. ‘This is Kelly,’ Theo introduced.
‘And what a treat you are, too,’ Rufus said, in full flirt mode.
For a guy who looked like he’d fallen from the ugly tree and smashed into every branch on the way down, Rufus always scored well with women. That could of course be because he had a lot of money, oodles of charm and one of those evenly modulated British accents that women apparently went gaga for.
The castle in Yorkshire didn’t hurt.
No one ever took a picture through his French doors though because the difference was, Rufus had made his fortune behind the scenes and was able to remain anonymous.
Rufus and Fabian were the only two unattached members of the party. Ben was married to Patrice. Hugo was married to David. And Irving had been with an American girl called Neve since last Christmas.
‘Dial it back, man,’ Theo chided good-naturedly. ‘Unless you want her giant Scottish husband who is up top readying the boat for departure to make your ball sack into a sporran.’
Rufus winced slightly and the other guys laughed as they each took a beer. ‘Could I take him?’ he asked Kelly conspiratorially.
She laughed. ‘Depends how fond you are of your ball sack, I guess.’
More male laughter as they all moved up to the main deck where Maria had laid out a fresh batch of baclava. ‘Tuck in,’ Kelly said. ‘Tiff will be here soon to give you the tour.’
The guys needed no further instruction, wolfing it down in five minutes flat as Simon bought up their bags from the tender. But just the mention of her name pulled Theo’s stomach muscles taut AF. Their paths hadn’t crossed since last night given the staff were now in guest mode, which meant they’d eaten breakfast in the crew mess and they’d been busy making last-minute preparations while he’d been plotting a rough course for island-hopping all the way to Santorini on the nav system.
But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been thinking about her non-fucking-stop since their tête-à-tête on deck last night.
Theo had never been particularly interested in the backstories of the women he’d taken to bed. He took great pains to keep everything superficial, and yes, he knew that made him akavliaris, but it wasn’t like he’d ever pretended otherwise. Or that said women gave a crap about his backstory either.
When he was between the sheets, his sole focus was on sending his one-and-done away with a smile on her face.
And the same had been true for Tiffany. But then he’d woken to an empty bed, a head full of sexy memories and her scent all over his body, and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. Had her Cinderella act been a challenge to his masculinity? Maybe. Was he butthurt that she was the first woman ever who had done the walking? Possibly. But then she’d turned up on theNeridaand he’d known the issue was much more complex.
Which had only been hammered home on the deck last night. Because not only had he wanted to know everything about her, but he’d wanted her to know everything about him.
And that was a first.
Not to mention how he’d jerked off to visions of her as a cowgirl complete with hat and fringed vest swirling a lasso around her head. Was he proud of that? Not particularly. But this last twenty-four hours, this fucked-up, no-sex dare had felt like an especially heavy yoke around his neck. Which, surprisingly, it hadn’t been. Out here on his boat, he actually hadn’t missed the merry-go-round of women or the constant paparazzi attention.
And then Tiffany had stepped on board and he was suddenly aware of every celibate hour of the last two months.
As if he’d conjured her from the febrile roil of his thoughts, Tiffany appeared just as the last dregs of the first beers had been chugged down, and Theo could suddenly feel the dull thud of his pulse everywhere.
