Page 45 of Blackmailing the Bad Girl

He couldn’t see where this was going. “So what’s the problem?”

“She thinks there’s something between me and Danny.”

“And is there?”

“No!” Was she too emphatic? “But she doesn’t believe that.” She shrugged. “I don’t want to cause problems, but he’s my friend and I don’t want to lose him.”

He still had no clue where this was going. “How can I help?”

“Well, I thought if I had a boyfriend…”

He could feel a grin spreading across his face. “You wantmeto be your boyfriend.”

“I want you to be mypretendboyfriend. Just for one night. Just so Sherry can meet you and finally see that I’m not after Danny, because I have someone of my own.”

“You think I’m a better boyfriend than this Danny?”

She shrugged. “You’re rich and you’re okay-looking.”

Talk about being damned with faint praise. “Hey, don’t go overboard. I might get bigheaded.”

She bit her lip, and then a smile broke through. “You’d make a pretty impressive boyfriend. Besides, I don’t have any other options.” She pursed her lips. “Though I suppose I could ask Sam. He’d help me out. But I don’t want a real boyfriend, and I suspect Sam would try to make it real.”

His hands fisted at his side, but he kept his expression bland. Was she playing him? Probably. “Definitely don’t ask Sam then.” He studied her for a moment, but she wasn’t giving anything away. “And you don’t believe I would want to make it real?”

She snorted, and an expression of disbelief washed over her face. “You might want to sleep with me, but men like you do not go out with women like me.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘men like you’?”

“Rich assholes,” she muttered.

He almost laughed. She really did have a low opinion of rich men in general and him in particular. “Where did you get your high opinions of billionaires, Summer?”

Her eyes widened in what he was sure was mock amazement. “Are you really a billionaire, Nik? Wow. I’m so impressed.”

“No, you’re not. For someone who went to enormous lengths to get her greedy little hands on large amounts of money, you don’t really seem interested.” She was such an enigma. Her simple clothes, lack of jewelry, the fact that she shared a place with her friends—all of it revealed her as someone who didn’t give a toss about material goods. So what had she done with his money? Maybe he’d get Harry to start up that investigation again. Perhaps the money trail would finally reveal who she really was.

She shrugged. “Maybe I gamble. Badly.”

Could that be it? Perhaps he’d take her to the casino and watch. But he didn’t believe it. Because if it was true, she wouldn’t have told him. His Summer liked being an enigma.

“So you’ll do it?” she asked. “The boyfriend thing?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Her smile widened. “Thank you. It means a lot.”

“When do you want to do this?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Dinner tonight?”

“I’ll call Danny and set it up.”

He allowed himself to smile as she walked away, watching her ass sway beneath the tight black skirt. It looked like he had a girlfriend.

…