Page 37 of The Billionaire Is Back

It’s like she’s walking in slow motion. She is walking way too slowly. Now I’m starting to think she’s totally aware of all the eyes on her and is putting on a show. If Jake were here, he’d throw a towel at her while simultaneously shoving those guys’ faces into the sand. So I give the plastic bin to Damien, who’s still staring at Vera. Before he even starts complaining, I’m picking up the beach towel that’s in a big bag next to where Vera is standing, and I storm over to Claire, wrapping the towel around her bare shoulders.

“What the hell?!” She is totally taken aback.

“All right, show’s over!” I call out to the perverts who are throwing their arms up in the air in frustration.

“Grady?!”

“It’s what your brother would do,” I explain, realizing my arm is around her shoulder and one hand is clinging to her arm over the towel.

She stares up at me with so much confusion in her pretty gray-blue eyes.

I let go of her and drag my fingers through my hair. “You should dry off.”

“Is that what I should do?” she says in a husky voice that’s a little too reminiscent of the one she used in my filthy head earlier.

I clear my throat, nod, and walk back to Damien, who appears to be having an argument with Vera.

“It’s too early for them to be racing!” she’s saying asshe waves her arms around, still wearing nothing but a bikini.

Damien continues to make it look cool to hold large plastic containers with live lobsters and seaweed in them. “They’re my lobsters. It’s my training schedule,” he says calmly, through gritted teeth. His attention is so focused on her face that it is painfully obvious to me how hard he has to work to not look at her body.

“Don’t you want to win?” she taunts. “Or are you just going to half-ass this too?”

“Oh, I’m whole-assing it, Vera. My entire ass is going into this. It’s nothin’ but my ass.”

“Well, Clawdia and I are going to beat your whole ass today.” She grabs the handles of the top container and gently lifts it up.

“You won’t. But bring it.”

“Consider it brung, D-man,” she says as she turns her back to him and calls out to Claire. “Claire Bear! I’ll be at the racetrack! You coming?”

I stand nextto the lobster racetrack with my arms crossed, staring down the beach at Claire, who has stubbornly decided that she will not be joining us over here and also decided not to cover up her amazing voluptuous bikini-clad body.

I’m certainly glad she hasn’t brought that amazing voluptuous bikini-clad body over here, but I am notpleased to see it on display for all those other men to drool over.

“How much longer do we have to be here?” I ask Damien.

“We literally just got here,” he reminds me.

Vera has thrown on a T-shirt and shorts. She and Damien each remove a lobster from a container—how they can tell which is which, I don’t know and will never care.

This setup is pretty impressive, though. There’s a big plexiglass racetrack on a covered stage. Each saltwater-filled lane is one level, so it looks like a big clear staircase. Each uncovered step is about two feet wide and ten feet long. There’s a big tub filled with saltwater nearby. Vera and my brother place the lobsters in there—I guess so they can warm up? But you know, not get too warm, or else they’d start to cook.

I can’t fucking believe I’m even here for this, but Damien seems really into it, and the sea breezeisrelaxing.

I take a moment to check my phone and find that Alice has already texted me five options for dates to the gala. I quickly check the Instagram links she’s sent me and scan through their pedigrees. Maybe if I was in my office in Manhattan right now they would seem more appealing to me. But standing here, on a beach in my hometown, next to some live lobsters…these women just don’t seem real to me.

“Oh, hello, everyone!” The loud, relentlessly positive, slightly out-of-breath voice belongs to Stacy Hutchinson, the very fit middle-aged mayorof Beacon Harbor. She must be out for a lunchtime jog. She gives us all a double wave while trotting over, off the paved walkway. “Grady. Vera. Damien.”

We all acknowledge her as she stops in front of me, jogging in place. She checks her fitness watch before staring intently into my eyes. God, she’s intense. “Grady Barber. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. Have you had time to read my emails?”

Mayor Stacy has been emailing me at 8:01 on the dot every morning since my return. Most of the messages have been requests for various appearances around town, some of them philanthropic events, but she has repeatedly invited me to give a speech at the end-of-summer Shellibration.

Suddenly, Claire is dressed and standing right next to me, beaming at the mayor. “Mayor Stacy! Hi. Did you get the email I sent you last week? The one with the link to the Dropbox folder? With the sketches for the cake designs? It’s all part of my pitch. I was wondering because I updated some of the designs yesterday. I just want to make sure you see the most recent versions.”

Wow. I’ve never seen Claire Sweeney so hungry for approval. She always did have a weird thing about the mayor of Beacon Harbor. Why doesn’t she care this much aboutmyapproval? Am I jealous of the mayor now? Or am I picturing Claire being hungry for my approval in a totally different circumstance? Yeah. Filing that away for later.

“Yes, Claire Sweeney, hello! I did get your email. I haven’t had a chance to look at the sketches yet.” Sheturns to me again, still jogging in place. “So, did you get my follow-up messages, Grady?”

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