Page 52 of Bad Boy Billionaire Protector

“I know. Still missed you.”

She laughed and got into the passenger side of my car. We drove back to my apartment and once we were inside I poured us both a glass of wine.

She settled down at the kitchen island while I cooked up a simple plate of seared beef and Chinese five spice vegetables with noodles.

“Here you go. You still get an approximation of a Chinese meal, even though you didn’t get your dim sum,” I said as I plated her meal.

She dug in and forked up some noodles. “Mmm, delicious,” she moaned.

“I’m glad you like it. It’s one of the dishes I enjoy cooking. So simple to make but it tastes so good. I love Chinese five spice.”

“You’re a really good cook.” She gushed, forking up another bite.

“I enjoy cooking. It’s something I learned to do in college.”

“Was any of the stuff you told me before real? Or should I just forget any of the things you told me about Christos?”

“Some of it was real. It was actually quite a simple cover to learn because Christos’ life mirrored mine so much. The big difference is that my family is in international shipping, not pharma. Plus I’m twenty-eight, not twenty-four.”

“Oh,” she said, putting her fork down.

“I know, I’m a bit older than you thought, but I had to pretend to be younger to fit in with the grad student identity.”

She picked up her fork again. “That’s okay. I forgive you for being seven years older than me. Older men are sexy.”

We both smiled.

“My parents wanted me to study law or business so that I could take over the family business when they were ready to retire. But I didn’t want to go that way. So I studied Classics and then joined the FBI. I was headhunted at college actually. I guess they saw something in me that they thought could be used by the Bureau.”

“That must’ve been so exciting.”

“Yeah, I was flattered at the time. I made my mark pretty quickly and I’m proud to say that I’m damn good at my job.”

“Almost too good,” she chuckled.

I smiled and ate some of my noodles.

“What about you? What’s your family like?”

“Well, my parents are in medicine. Mom is an infectious disease doctor and my dad a cardiologist. I have an older brother, Jackson. He’s in banking, married, no kids yet but they’re trying. They all live back in Boston.”

“What was it like growing up in Boston?”

“It was good. I had a blessed childhood, you could say. I was allowed to express myself and my parents took me to all the lessons I wanted to go to, including ballet, clown skills and GIrl Scouts. I changed my mind about what I wanted to be often, but I always had my head in a book. I’ve always loved reading ,so that’s what made me choose English Literature as my major.”

“Cool. What do you want to do with your degree?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe teach English, or maybe become a writer.”

We finished our meal and I topped off our glasses of wine. We took them over to the sofa and sat wrapped around each other. It was time to broach a subject that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to.

“So, what about you and Adam? How serious were you two before things got out of hand?”

She looked up at me and smiled sadly. “We were pretty serious. Best friends, too.”

I winced. I could remember him calling because he wanted to invite her out to Naxos for a family vacation, and he wanted to make sure it was okay with me first.

“We wanted to get married,” she continued. “We were planning to meet each other’s parents and tell them, but we never got the chance. Adam ‘died’ and then…” She trailed off and looked away, a tear in her eye.

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