Page 9 of The Billionaire's Accidental Legacy

“Yes. But there isn’t usually a card table between us then. In fact, there’s usually nothing between us by the time their speech fails them.”

She couldn’t control her response to him. And she controlled everything.

She was not inexperienced with men by accident.

On the contrary, she knew everything there was to know about men in an academic sense.

But she and her sister had rules. An agreement.

The problem with a mind like theirs was that they did hang on to every detail.

Trauma, they had decided, would be a particular beast when one couldn’t forget. They’d already had their share.

They were far too clear on everything that had ever happened in their childhoods. They did not need to go tempting memories of an infatuation. Of heartbreak.

Sexual encounters that would burn each minute detail into their brains.

That would always live there. In that vast catalog of drawers in the back of her head.

Her sister had amind palace.

Jessie thought it was a stupid name. And she thought it was a waste of imagination. Her sister kept all of her memories in a great library in a castle out in the middle of the sea. It was all bright and airy andpink.

Maren was a romantic. Maren wasgood.

Jessie was more pragmatic. Sometimes she worried if her sister was good, she might be wicked. So she leaned into the organizational aspects of her personality rather than the wickedness. She liked a file cabinet. And alphabetizing.

Not a color-coded organization system that made absolutely no sense.

He was red, she decided just then, and she was annoyed.

She didn’t want to assign a color to him.

Red was intrusive. Strong. It was passion. Anger.

And she knew right then he would be filed under red forever, and she was deeply, deeply irritated about it.

Maren would think it was hilarious.

This was why they had rules about men.

An agreement. Until they had succeeded in getting themselves secure, they stayed well away from them.

The risk was too high. For them especially.

They could not afford to be compromised before they had finished.

Before they were safe. Before they were secure.

“I have to confess,” she said, hoping that this would throw him off. And make him complacent about her skills. “I might have worked my way into this room just to sit with you. I’m a fan.”

“Well, then, I’ll be sure to sign something for you later.”

His eyes caught hers, and held.

Everything in her went still.

Her throat dry and scratchy.

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