Page 93 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 11

I was too annoyed to be thrown off-kilter by his exposed six-pack. I hadn’t agreed to the original deal we’d made. I’d been under duress. And I didn’t agree to this amendment either.

***

My sneakers squished as I made my way onto the elevator. There was no way I could walk into my apartment like this. I hit the button for the floor beneath the penthouse. I needed to borrow something to wear from my Russian neighbor. And check on the hole.

I knew nothing about construction. But it was becoming very clear that I needed to fix this problem myself.

My first thought was that maybe I could rearrange the furniture in the guest room.

Just...push the bed into the middle of the room.

But I was a little worried that the entire floor might collapse as soon as someone sat on the bed.

Moving the bed could be a temporary fix though.

I grabbed the key from under the mat and unlocked the door.

All the lights were on in the entranceway. I cringed. Sophie and I had left in such a hurry the other day. We’d probably left them on.

I pulled off Jacob’s jacket as I made my way into the Russian woman’s bedroom. I started humming as I walked into her closet.

It took a while, but I finally found a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. This chick had so many bikinis. Whenever she was in New York, she must have only ever attended pool parties.

I tucked my wet clothes under my arm and smiled to myself. Now that I was dry and almost home an eerie sense of calmness washed over me.

Had tonight gone perfectly?

No, not even close.

But Jacob had given me his varsity jacket. And asked me to homecoming. And told Noah off when he’d kissed me. And said that the kissing booth had made him jealous. I squealed. It was a great night. A really freaking great night.

No, Jacob hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend. But maybe he would on Monday night when I went over to his house for dinner. For just a few minutes, I wanted to forget about everything else. I’d been waiting my whole life for a night like this. And I just wanted to focus on the good things.

I started humming again as I walked out of the closet. But my feet froze when I heard the sound of a power drill.

What the... I tiptoed down the hallway. And then I could hear the sound of humming that wasn’t mine. Crap. Was the Russian woman home? I should have gone out the front door, but I was too curious. I kept tiptoeing.

The door to the room with the hole in the ceiling was closed. But the humming was definitely coming from in there. I opened up the door.

Uncle Rob was holding a power drill in his hand beneath the ladder. He hummed to himself and twirled around in a circle before grabbing a screw.

“Uncle Rob?”

He didn’t hear me as he shimmied his shoulders and stepped up onto the ladder.

What the hell was he doing here?

“He has earbuds in,” someone said.

I jumped. Someone was sitting on the couch, his face hidden behind a magazine.

I screamed.

And then Uncle Rob screamed and dropped the drill. He cursed as he pulled his earbuds out of his ears. “Shit, Scarlett. You scared me.” He laughed and picked up the power drill and screw. And then he proceeded to climb up the ladder and start drilling again.

Mr. Tanner lowered the magazine he’d been paging through. He looked at the wet clothes tucked under my arm. “Rough night?” he asked.

I stared at my parents’ friend in horror. Wait, my parents! I looked around, waiting for my parents to pop out of nowhere and yell at me. But unless they were hiding behind that couch... Wait. This room had been empty. Where had that couch come from?

“There,” Uncle Rob said and blew on the end of the power drill. He hopped off the ladder. “We still need a few more items. And maybe a fresh coat of paint. But it’s a work in progress. Why is your hair all wet?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Mr. Tanner started whistling and looking through his magazine again.

“I asked Tanner for help,” Uncle Rob said. “He’s not very handy though.”

“I’m handy when no one is looking,” Mr. Tanner said as he kept flipping through the magazine.

What the heck did that mean?

“I know your Uncle Matt knows how to do all this stuff,” Uncle Rob said. “But I thought he might freak out about this. Since he has a son your age and all that.”

“Speaking of which,” said Mr. Tanner. “Is that Jacob’s jacket? Are the two of you dating?”

I held the jacket a little tighter. “I don’t really know. We’re going to homecoming together.”

Mr. Tanner looked very excited about that news.

Uncle Rob smiled. “You’re dating then.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Kid, he gave you his jacket and asked you to homecoming. Yes. You’re dating.”

I smiled. But then my smile immediately fell when Uncle Rob tossed his power drill into a toolkit. “I still don’t understand what’s happening.”

“You couldn’t have picked a better lad than my grandson,” Mr. Tanner said. “I knew this was going to happen. I predicted it when you were just kids.”

Had he? I smiled. Mr. Tanner wasn’t Jacob’s actual grandfather. But when Jacob had moved to New York City when he was little, he’d called Mr. Tanner Abuelo and it kind of just stuck. The two of them knew each other well. Mr. Tanner must have known about Jacob’s crush on me this whole time.

Wait. “That’s not what I was talking about when I said I didn’t understand what was happening though. I’m talking about...this.” I gestured around the room.

“Sophie has a vision for the place,” Uncle Rob said. “We need to order a few more things, but it’ll be all decked out soon.”

“She circled a lot of things in this magazine,” Mr. Tanner said and tossed it aside. He stood up and stretched. He was in a full suit even though it was the middle of the night. “I’ll handle it from here.”

“You...I...” Ah! “But...this...” Did they not know we were standing in someone else’s apartment right now? They had to. Because we literally were. “My parents are going to kill me.”

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Tanner said. “We’re not going to tell your parents about your secret lair. Or Matt.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this. RJ was supposed to fix the hole, not get you to turn this into a...what?”

“Secret lair,” Mr. Tanner said. “It’s going to be pretty epic.”

“So epic,” Uncle Rob said. “I always wished I’d had a secret lair growing up. As soon as RJ told me about the hole, I knew what I needed to do. It’s going to be fantastic. It’ll be the perfect place for you kids to hang out. A little better than a treehouse, I think.”

“A tree what?” asked Mr. Tanner.

“A treehouse.” He stared at Mr. Tanner. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a treehouse, weirdo.”

Mr. Tanner laughed. “Sounds like a pauper thing.”

Uncle Rob shook his head and chuckled. “Anyway, it’ll be done soon. In the meantime, you better get up that ladder. It’s almost one. Isn’t that your curfew?”

I just stared at them. “You’re seriously not telling my parents that we put a hole in the floor?”

“The hole is fixed.” Uncle Rob pointed to the trapdoor. It reminded me a lot of how you got in and out of the treehouse actually. “So there’s nothing really to tell.”

There’d be a lot to tell if they actually turned this into some kind of secret lair. “If my dad finds out about this...”

Uncle Rob laughed. “We both know he had this coming. He’s too strict if you ask me. And stalking you at school? Not cool, man. It’s the least we can do to help.”

Sometimes I had a hard time remembering that Uncle Rob and my dad were brothers. “Thank you.”

Mr. Tanner glanced at his watch. “You best hurry, Scarlett. You don’t want to be late.”

I nodded. It weirdly felt like the two of them were my fairy godmothers, warning me to hurry so I wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin when the clock struck the hour. I hurried up the ladder and pushed open the trapdoor in the ceiling. “Goodnight,” I whispered down to them.

“Congrats on your first boyfriend, Scarlett,” Uncle Rob said.

I smiled, closed the door behind me, and replaced the rug. I tentatively put a little of my weight down on the carpet. Huh. It was actually secure.

Uncle Rob’s words spun around in my head. I had my first boyfriend. And I made it up to my room without being seen. I sighed and fell backward onto my bed. Jacob Miller was my boyfriend. I just need him to officially ask me.