Page 10 of Billionaire Unreachable: Wyatt

Nobody had ever ignored me or needled me the way she had, and I hadn’t particularly liked her sarcasm directed toward me, even though I was a master at it myself.

“Please,” Tori said again in that cajoling voice she knew I couldn’t refuse.

I forked a perfectly cooked steak and dropped it on my plate. I then started taking some of everything on the island until my plate was so full that I couldn’t fit anything else on it.

It was hard for me to say no to Tori. She knew that, and right now, she was taking advantage of one of my few weaknesses.

“No promises,” I said vaguely.

Honestly, my cooperation was going to depend on Shelby Remington’s attitude.

If she was as surly as she’d been the evening of Chase and Vanna’s wedding reception, all bets were off.

All I really wanted to do was eat in peace, and leave as quickly as possible.

“Go and eat,” Tori insisted as she cut what I assumed was a piece of that irresistible cake for me and put it on a smaller plate. “The chair right next to Shelby’s is available.”

I stared at my little sister suspiciously. “Are you trying to set me up?”

It wouldn’t be the first time.

She rolled her eyes at me. “No, I’m not setting you up. But it would be nice if you got to know her since she’s my friend. I think everything that happened between the two of you was a misunderstanding. She told me about the blind date thing a year ago, but only because I forced her to cough up that information. Refusing to meet her after she’d already agreed to meet you was kind of a crappy thing for you to do. She was new in town, Wyatt. She didn’t have any friends here. She didn’t have any ulterior motives. All she wanted to do was meet up with a friend of Kaleb’s.”

Fuck!I’d really hoped that Tori hadn’t been informed aboutthatincident.

I put my loaded plate down on the counter and ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “Kaleb didn’t tell me that she knew he was attempting to hook us up. I thought he’d askedmefirst, so I nixed the idea right away. I didn’t know he’d already asked Shelby.”

Tori looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Why would he ask you first? She’s his cousin, and they’re really close. Of course he cleared it with her before he asked you. You hurt her feelings, Wyatt. I really don’t blame her for being a little standoffish and short with you when the two of you finally met in person.”

“Short?” I protested. “She called me a superficial asshole and indicated that she thought I was conceited. For some strange reason, she seemed to think I refused to meet her because of the way she looked.”

Tori shot me an accusatory look. “She’s gorgeous, and any guy would have to be an idiot to refuse a date with her, but did you do it because you didn’t think she was attractive? That’s the reason most guys refuse a blind date, which does make them superficial and stuck up.”

“I had no fucking idea what she looked like,” I said grumpily. “We’d never met. Not even when I visited Montana to see Kaleb and his family. I was never around when she was, and all I’d ever seen was pictures of Shelby with her cousins when she was nothing more than a child. I have no intention of getting romantically involved withanywoman. I’d rather not lose my mind like all of my friends and my brother. She was better off never meeting me at all. I don’t have a romantic bone in my body, Tori. You know that.”

“She was no more interested in romance than you were. So you were afraid of jeopardizing your friendship with Kaleb?” she queried. “And you don’t find her…unattractive?”

Fuck, no.Shelby Remington was beautiful. Statuesque and gorgeous, with large, flaming red curls that looked softer than silk and a curvy body that had made my dick twitch the moment I’d seen her. However, I wasn’t about to share those little details with Tori.

Truthfully, Shelby Remington’s audacity had challenged and surprised me, which hadn’t happened in a long time. Sure, it had been somewhat annoying, but it had also intrigued me…at first. Before she’d ran away like she couldn’t tolerate another moment in my company. But I wasn’t confessingthatto Tori, either.

My little sister was always insistent that I just hadn’t met the right woman yet, and I didn’t want to encourage her to keep making that incorrect assumption.

If Tori knew that Shelby had stood out from other women in any way to me, she’d jump all over that information.

I shrugged. “I was mostly worried about my friendship with Kaleb. But it was for her own good, too. I’m a jaded asshole who spends most of my time working. What female wants to deal with that?”

“All she wanted was a friend,” Tori said softly.

“Yeah. Well. I’d suck at that, too,” I informed her bluntly. “I’ve never been friends with a woman.”

I’d spent the majority of my adult life in special forces in the military, many of those military years leading Delta Force missions with the same guys over and over again.

I knew zero about being there for a female when she needed me, and even less about how a woman’s mind worked in general.

That was a lesson I’d learned a very long time ago, and I wasn’t eager to try and fail at it again.

“You have a little sister, and I’m also a female. You’ve always been there for me when I needed you,” Tori reminded me gently.

---