Page 18 of The Fake Dating Plan

“Why not. It’s my company.”

Either he sensed my animosity or he got tired of angering me and instead changed subjects. “Are you leaving Singapore after this?”

“Don’t see any reason to stay.”

“But the race is tomorrow. I thought that’s why you had scheduled it like this.”

The Grand Prix. I knew the race was this weekend, but since I hadn’t planned ongoing, I never bothered with the tickets because I was so busy.

I shook my head.

“Not even if I bet a million dollars that Ferrari will beat Mercedes tomorrow?”

“You know, you could just give me the million dollars now if that’s your bet.”

“So you’re coming?”

“I never said so.”

“You wanna be my date, Em?”

What the fuck?

“I am a fan of watching cars going round and round in circles making noise,” she said. I was pretty sure that was a sarcastic retort, but Tiago said, “Great! I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

Santiago and I both stared back at Ax. Where was that possessive tone coming from? In fact, the rest of the morning and afternoon he had been behaving oddly. He was always close or nearby the entire launch. And when we had to give interviews, I felt the heat of his eyes on me. There was something about him that made me aware of his presence, even when he was away from me. My heart pounded throughout the day and if I didn’t know better, I would have attributed it to the excitement, but I knew that wasn’t true.

I would have thought that he liked me if it weren’t for the repulsion he had expressed when I told him that there could be speculation we slept together. I wasn’t even saying we slept together. I was mentioning the sexist ridiculousness of it all and he took it all wrong.

“That’s because she’ll be coming with me.” There he goes again. The absolute nerve of the man!

I tilted my head to face him. “Did you ask?”

He sighed. “Emilia, do you want to go watch the Grand Prix with me on Sunday?” He sounded as if he thought I would automatically say yes. And why the fuck would I do that? Because we came on the same bus?

“Sorry, I already have a date,” I said, looking over at Santiago.

Santiago couldn’t help but grin. “Pick you up tomorrow. Where are you staying?”

I gave him the name of the hotel and my phone number. Meanwhile, I could feel the barely contained heat of… rage? Anger? Definitely not jealousy? Coming from Ax. I could tell Santiago was having a fun time niggling his brother.

“Great. Are those some of your jewelry?” he said, pointing to a showpiece on display. I nodded “Wanna check them out?”

“Sure.”

We left Axel with his bundle of emotions. Let him seethe.

Spending time with Santiago felt… odd. It wasn’t because he was dull. The opposite, in fact. It was a night race, so it started a little later. He had taken me to the pits before the race started. He was telling me how he had invested in a Formula two team he was hoping would graduate to Formula One. All very boring details, but Santiago had a flair for making them interesting. He introduced me to the drivers, and I got pictures with some of them and made sure the jewelry I was wearing would show well in the photos. If I was going to go to a race I didn’t care for, I might as well profit from it. He was fun to be around. The only problem was—

“This is not the vivacious Emilia Harris I remember,” he said as we made our way to our seats.

“Getting old does that to you.”

“Getting old! You’re barely thirty! Why do I feel like it has something more to do with someone else?”

I looked up at him; It had to do with him. He looked too much like his brother, only a younger version, which made it worse because the old Ax, the good Ax that came to my dreams at night, was the young Ax I knew.

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