Page 32 of Billionaire in Disguise

“It’s morning?” She gasped.

“It’s morning.” He smiled.

“It’s morning.” She cringed.

“It’s morning.” He frowned.

She sprung out of bed and plucked her dress off the bed. “This can’t be happening.” She grasped her bra off the floor. “We didn’t actually do this.” She took assorted clothing off the lamp, television and ceiling fan. It really had been an enjoyable night. “How did I allow this to happen?”

He scooted forward, grasping his clothing. He slid on his pants. “I’ve never been so flattered in all my life.”

She stopped, clutching the clothing in her hands. Her lips parted into a little O. “I didn’t mean– I wasn’t talking about–”

“It’s okay.” He lifted himself off the bed, and slowly approached her. He grasped her hands. “Just breathe. Everything will be all right.”

She inhaled deeply, and her color deepened from winter white to a soft blush. “I wasn’t talking about what we did. That was…” She bit her luscious lower lip, and his eyes tracked down. It was all he could do not to nip it.

Soon.

“It was extraordinary,” she breathed. “But I never meant to stay out the entire night. My family…”

He winced, and he was again a teenage boy, bringing back a date ten minutes (or hours) beyond curfew. “Any chance they didn’t realize we were missing?”

She grimaced. “My mother noticed when we arrived three minutes late for dinner.”

True. She’d also seemed particularly interested as to why they’d been late (they had been kissing). Of course they didn’t tell her (they had been kissing). However, her smile made clear she knew (they had been kissing).

If that was how she reacted when they were three minutes late, it did not bode well for six hundred minutes late. He pulled on his shirt, shoes and socks as she donned the rest of her clothing, then took a precious few minutes to change the sheets and straighten the cottage. “Let’s go.” He took a step, stopped. “Wait.” They couldn’t leave yet. He hadn’t told her the truth – not about who he was, and not about how he felt.

Not about the future he saw in her eyes.

Tonight her brother would arrive, and his cover would almost certainly be destroyed. If he didn’t tell her before then, he could lose everything. Yet even as he reached her, she strode forward, her dark hair swishing in the morning breeze. “We have to get back. We can talk at the house.”

He set his jaw, yet said nothing as they strode side by side. Yet just as they reached the door, it opened from the inside. Mrs. Lewis appeared in the doorway, wearing a bright blue sweater and a beaming smile. “Glad to see you two finally made it back.”

Well, this was awkward.Dominick couldn’t stop a grimace, yet it froze as a tall man emerged behind Mrs. Lewis. With the same dark hair and green eyes as Adrianna, there was no mistaking the handsome man.

The man smiled, but it faded as he turned to him. Confusion flared, then surprise and finally astonishment. Then two whispered words changed everything.

“Dominick Knight?”

Chapter 9

Reality shattered.

It rearranged, reformed, emerging as something entirely different. It couldn’t be.

“You look different with the beard, but it’s you, right?” Joshua strode to the man beside her. “I would recognize you anywhere.”

Deny it. Tell him it’s not true. Nick Walters cannot be Dominick Knight.

Yet instead, the man next to her said quietly, “I am Dominick Knight.”

Someone gasped. Several someones, actually, and in the back of her mind, she realized one was her. “No,” she breathed. He reached for her, but she backed up. “You can’t be Dominick Knight. You’re Nick Walters, the temp who–”

“No.” The single word, so strongly spoken, so different than Nick’s gentle cadence. She closed her eyes.

Nick Walters didn’t exist.

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