Page 68 of The Billionaire Is Back

As the elevator dings, Grady opens the doors to the landing, and eight delivery men walk through, carrying big bags of food. He directs them to leave it all on the console table and tips them. I inspect all the bags. Dinner from Chinese, sushi, Italian, and Mexican restaurants.Cookies from Levain, éclairs and macarons from Dominique Ansel, ciabatta from a family-run Italian bakery in Brooklyn that I may have mentioned wanting to visit, and cupcakes from Magnolia.

All of it.

I will eat all of it.

And okay, yes, I want to slap my own face for being so stubborn about resisting Grady. But we’ll both be so stuffed after we finish all of this, we won’t be able to do anything physical anyway, surely. I can’t stop shaking my head in disbelief.

Grady disappears down another hallway and then returns holding a covered tray. He presents it to me. “I figured you’d be too tired to go out tonight. Open it,” he says, nodding at the silver catering tray.

There’s a one percent chance the head of his last dinner date is under that dome and a ninety percent chance that I’ll just laugh it off because I can’t wait to eat those éclairs. Instead of a severed head, I find a bouquet of John Hughes Blu-rays. Cue “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. I look over my shoulder, just in case there’s some other woman standing behind me that this was all meant for. But there isn’t. There’s just me. I’m the woman.

This.

Now,thisis a move.

We take the food and the movies to the library, eat on the floor, and watchSixteen Candles,followed byPlanes, Trains and Automobileson a projector screen. When the sun goes down, he lights candles and uses an app on his phone to close the drapes. It is the most low-key decadentthing that I never knew I needed to experience. I have never been this aroused and frustrated while watching a John Candy movie, but Grady is giving me a foot massage, and by the end credits, I’m thinking we should name all of our kids after John Hughes characters.

“This has been really wonderful, Grady. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” he says, still looking at the screen. A less skilled negotiator would make his pitch now, try to sell me on the wholereal relationshipthing at this perfect moment at the end of a perfect day. But he doesn’t. He simply continues to rub my feet and watch the end credits.

He makesmebring it up.

“But I still can’t be with you. Not for real.”

“Why not?”

“Because as wonderful as this is, it’s not sustainable. This is a lovely vacation for me, but?—”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not,” I say forcefully. Well, as forcefully as I can after ingesting seven thousand calories while having my feet kneaded like dough by a handsome billionaire.

“You are.” He finally lets go of my feet and turns to face me, his warm brown eyes intense and wide open. “This is not unfeasible. This could be your life, Claire. This could be our life. I can fly us anywhere, anytime. I can bring Vera here. Your family. Mine. I can take us back to Beacon Harbor. We can’t be there all the time, every day, obviously. We can work up to this. You can get your bakery to where you need it to be, to where it runs itself—which is possible—and until then, I’ll come visityou whenever I can. But I can absolutely make this sustainable. I can give this to you, Claire. I want to.”

He reads my face and the solitary tear that falls down my cheek. Sighing, he wipes the tear away. He knows better than to keep pressing. He stands up and holds his hands out to help me up again. That I will allow him to do.

He insists I leave everything in here for Rosario to clean up in the morning, which is almost as difficult for me to do as turning down Grady’s other offers. However, moving is very difficult right now, so I agree to leave the dishes and empty takeout containers where they are. He does me a kindness by letting us take the elevator to the second floor this time.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to unpack your bags right now, but there’s room for your things in this walk-in closet.” He indicates the sliding doors to the right of a short hallway that has closets on either side. This closet hallway leads to his bedroom. He brings my bags into the walk-in closet, leaves them at my feet, and then starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Well, I guess this is good night,” he says, as if he didn’t just promise me the world a couple of minutes ago. “I don’t have to be at the office until eleven tomorrow, so I hope to see you after I get up.”

“Great. Cool, cool, cool. I’ll probably take a bath or something,” I say, also unbuttoning my shirt.

“Great. There are Epsom salts in a container in your bathroom.”

“Wonderful.” I wait for him to lean in to kiss me.

He doesn’t.

He removes his shirt, smiles at me, and walks away, into his bedroom.

I unzip my suitcase and pull out five pairs of panties and my cosmetic bag. When I’m trying to find my pj’s, Grady saunters past the door, shirtless, in navy blue pajama pants, brushing his teeth. He must exfoliate with crushed gemstones and massage truffle oil into his skin every day to get that smooth. His abs are sculpted and beautiful, but it’s his chest that I can’t stop staring at. He has the perfect amount of dark hair covering his pecs, and I just want to be sandwiched between him and that leather sofa for, like, five minutes while inhaling his sexy armpits.

But I won’t.

He winks at me.

And then shuts his bedroom door.

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