Page 96 of The Reluctant Billionaire

I’d rather not talk to you till after the weekend. I know you believe you’re doing the right thing, but you’ve completely failed to consider my feelings, and that’s really hurtful. I’ll speak to you on Tues.

We’re in the Montagues’ jet thanks to my old friend Theo. I was at uni with him, I’ve known him forever, and we even fucked back when I was, like, seventeen. His family owns a massive group of high-end hotels, and Theo was the nightmare middle child and exhibitionist playboy until he reconnected with his now-fiancée, Nora, who was also at uni with us. Unlike Theo, she’s the most sensible person who has ever lived, and she’s been an amazing influence on him.

The man is besotted.

Also on the jet is my friend Honor Chapman, who we know through our gorgeous bride-to-be, Elle, and Honor’s husband, Noah, aka Dr Noah Thierry, aka Aide’s mate, at whose massive family vineyard the wedding is. While I’m always happy to see these two, I really hope Noah doesn’t go too Team Aide on me.

For his own sake.

‘Am I being unreasonable?’ I ask my friends, having filled them in on the sorry story of my absentee boyfriend as we took off. I cast a desolate look at the unoccupied expanse of soft cream leather beside me before taking a decent slug of my mimosa. Aide’s missing everything, including this flight, getting to know Nora and Theo, and the incredibly cute peony-print Zimmerman sundress I chose as my travel ensemble. I feel so hard done-by I’m tempted to throw a full-on tantrum. ‘And, obviously,yesis not an acceptable answer.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Nora says, sipping her drink. She’s willowy and gorgeous, with glossy light-brown hair and big green eyes. ‘I’d like to see Theo pull a stunt like that on me.’

Theo’sI wouldn’t fucking daregrimace makes me giggle, because I’d like to see him try, too.

‘It’s not cool in the slightest,’ Honor agrees. ‘But it’s incredibly irritating that he’s off doing good. It kind of gives him aget out of jail freecard, you know?’ She’s the ultimate private jet traveller in a sleek cream jumpsuit, her shoulder-length chestnut hair immaculately tonged and her full lips a perfect matte scarlet.

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘Look, I know it’s a new relationship. We’re still trying to work out how we fit, but it’s not a great start to pull out of our first trip together so he can go off and sate his saviour complex.’

I may have muttered the wordssaviourandcomplextogether far too many times in the past twenty hours.

‘It’s not a bad turn of phrase for Aide,’ Noah says. ‘It’s a real thing. But I suspect with Aide it’s more a case of good, old-fashioned guilt.’

‘Yeah,’ I say despondently into my champagne flute.

‘That guy spends his life acting like he can’t believe he got a place on the lifeboat, so he won’t rest until he’s pulled every last person out of the sea,’ Noah observes.

That gets my attention.

I raise my head and gape at him.

‘Even if it means he capsizes himself, I reckon,’ he adds.

‘Jesus Christ, darling,’ Honor says with an eye-roll. ‘That’s a bit fucking depressing.’

‘Seriously,’ I mutter. That’s the kind of analogy that makes me want to burst into tears, because if Noah’s right, my gorgeous, huge-hearted Aide can’t turn this off. He’s so consistently focused on the gap between what he has and what others don’t that he can’t enjoy his success, or even justify it to himself, unless he feels he’s acting to bridge that gap.

That’s going to burn a guy out pretty quickly.

‘Sorry,’ Noah says, putting his arm around his wife and shooting me the kind of radiant, competent, sincere smile that single-handedly explains how he bagged himself one of the most beautiful celebrities on the planet. ‘You spend as much time as me with people who are dying, you tend to fancy yourself as an armchair philosopher.’

‘You were right,’ I tell Honor. ‘The worst part of this is that I’m sitting here, on a private jet, slagging my gorgeous, amazing boyfriend off for being a thoroughly decent person. And I know he is. It’s one of the things I lo—adore about him the most. I’d just like to come first when it counts. And Theo’—I hold up a finger sternly—‘don’t even think about making an innuendo.’

Theo smirks. ‘Actually, I was going to say you should remind him that charity begins at home.’

‘That would be marginally less obnoxious if you weren’t sitting there drinking your parents’ Dom Perignon while you said it,’ Nora tells him, shooting him a look so contemptuous that I snort.

‘Ugh,’ I moan when I’ve recovered. ‘I won’t talk about him all weekend. I promise. I just miss him.’ I pick at a fleck of something on my dress. ‘I kind of wish he was just a nice, straightforward, hot builder, after all.’

‘How do you mean?’ Nora asks, leaning forward to daintily spear a slice of mango from the fruit platter with her fork.

‘Oh.’ I realise they don’t know the full details of our backstory. ‘Well, when I showed up to do the community centre refurb thingy, I thought he was just this grumpy dickhead called Aide who was also unbelievably hot.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ Noah says, his jaw falling open.

‘Nope. As a matter of fact, when you turned up I don’t think I knew who he was—no, I didn’t. He was so chippy and judgemental—he obviously didn’t approve of me. But then he kept making inappropriate comments about my boobs, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to rip off his stupid vest and lick those insane biceps, and finally we, you know, fucked. But I threw him out right afterwards because I’d found out right before that he’d been lying to me.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Honor says, her gorgeous tiger eyes wide. ‘What happened then?’

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