Page 8 of Save Me the Trouble
“Anything else?”
“Hobbies or other interests outside of work—and women,” I added quickly.
“My hobby is work. My interest is work. You don’t end up with all this by having…hobbies,” he said, practically spitting the word out like it was rancid on his tongue.
It was a lie. That little room he’d just shoved me in for a few minutes proved this was all a lie.
“There has to be something more to you than business,” I coaxed. “What about the books in your study? Do you like to read? Or the photographs. Did you take them?”
His mask slipped for a fraction of a second, a hint of vulnerability flickering in his eyes before it vanished, and his nostrils flared like the Beast when Belle wandered into the West Wing.
“Okay, let’s try something different.” I quickly veered to a different question, my eyes landing on one in the middle of the page. “Tell me about a moment in your life that shaped who you are today.”
For a moment, Killian’s mask faltered, and I caught a glimpse of something deeper lurking beneath the surface. “The moment I lost everything,” he said, his voice low and tinged with bitterness.
The story of the fall and rise of Killian Crown was so well known, it might as well be fabled. The man who thought he couldn’t lose had lost it all on a wager.
“The bet.”
He grunted. “And then I clawed my way back to the top. A true ‘rags to riches’ moment,” he said with a slight droll to his voice, like he’d given this veneer of his story a thousand times, trying to distance himself as much as he tried to distanceeveryone else. “Adversity has a way of revealing one’s true character, wouldn’t you agree, Grace?”
Air evacuated my lungs.He didn’t know—he couldn’t know.My heart tripped and lurched like a drunk college girl in my chest, unsteady on its own two beats.No, he couldn’t know about me. He hadn’t even known my name.
“Yes.” I licked my lips, tryingveryhard not to focus on the way he’d used my first name. “I would.”
I shivered.I was agreeing with Killian Crown—agreeing with a man I’d sworn to loathe before I’d even met him. What was happening to me?
I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, regaining my focus. “Why are you looking for a partner—a wife, Mr. Crown?”
His long fingers latched together like they were holding my neck between them.
“I’m not,” he said flatly. “But my grandmother thinks that being thirty-nine and still single isn’t helping my image.” He paused and pretended to flick a speck of dust off his lapel.Like dust had the fortitude to get close to this man.
“Is that it?”
His brow arched. “Should there be more?” He paused again, but this time I caught it—his tell.The brush of his thumb over his lip like he was loading a bullet into a gun. “How about you tell me, Miss Johnson. You’re clearly…” His gaze languidly raked over me. “A relationship expert.”
My jaw dropped open and then snapped shut.He was…infuriating.
My cheeks flamed, but that was nothing compared to the indignation burning in my chest. I wanted to launch across the table and carve a scarlet letter into his perfectly muscled chest—A for asshole.
“Is there anything else?” he had the nerve to ask when I didn’t reply immediately.
“Yes,” I clipped and snapped my notebook shut. “There is everything else, Mr. Crown. I need to recreate your profile from scratch, and that means I need data. Interests. Hobbies. Habits. Schedules. Favorite foods. Favorite movies. More than data. I need video clips introducing yourself—talking about these things.” His fist tightened as I spoke. “I might not have billions, Mr. Crown, but I do have a job to do just like you, and I don’t take kindly to spoiled, rich men wasting my time.”
“I’m spoiled?”
“And self-centered and egotistical.”Forget going to jail, I was going straight to hell.
“Sounds like you know me better than myself.” The little smile at the corner of his mouth would’ve been the icing on my irate cake if it hadn’t beena smile.In no photos, no video clips, no reels, and not even in person had I seen the hint of anything resembling happiness break through this man’s icy demeanor.
Until now.
When I’d insulted him.
“Maybe I do,” I said, lifting my chin defiantly. “So, if you don’t want to be bothered, I’ll be happy to fabricate your profile solely from my imagination. I’m sure your grandmother would love to see you marketed as a narcissistic, boring billionaire with no sex drive and a small Johnson to the entire world.”
His head tipped from one side to the other, his silence oppressive. I mentally stapled my smile onto my face, refusing to let it flinch.
