Page 97 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 11

Monday

I carried the bowl of salad that Chloe had finished preparing over to their kitchen table.

I’d eaten at Jacob’s house a million times.

But for some reason tonight felt different.

And I just stood there, not sure of where to sit.

Normally I’d just plop down wherever. But nothing about tonight felt normal. It felt monumental.

Jacob pulled over an extra chair for me.

I quickly sat down and was happy that he sat down next to me. I smiled as he served me some chicken pot pie. And then I helped myself to some salad.

His hand fell casually to my thigh. “This looks great,” he said to his mom.

“Just wait until dessert. Scarlett, I have a new cupcake recipe I’m trying out and I can’t wait to see what you think of it.”

“It’s amazing,” Jacob said.

I tried to focus on Aunt Brooklyn instead of Jacob’s hand on my thigh. But his touch was very distracting. “What flavor?” I asked.

“I think I’ve finally captured the perfect mint chocolate chip cupcake.”

“It tastes just like the ice cream,” Max said. He seemed very excited about this.

“Can I have ice cream for dinner?” Alora asked.

“No,” Uncle Matt and Aunt Brooklyn said at the same time.

I laughed. I was excited to try the new cupcake recipe. But this pot pie was pretty amazing too.

Jacob started tracing slow circles on my thigh with his thumb.

It made my skin tingle. And it was a little hard to focus on anything else.

My skin tingled when the kiss thief touched me too.

That had to be a sign. I knew I still had six other guys on my list. But I doubted any of those guys could make me feel like this.

And surely a drifter couldn’t. And surely Mr. Halifax couldn’t. I tried to shake away the thought.

“Scarlett,” Jacob said. “Did you hear the question?”

“What?” I said around a mouthful of pot pie.

He laughed. “Coach asked you how the yearbook committee was going. I didn’t realize you’d joined the yearbook committee.”

Crap. I’d completely forgotten about the lie we’d told Uncle Matt in order to get the football roster. I took forever to swallow my bite as I tried to think of what to say. “Yeah, Sophie wanted to. But it was short lived. We went to like two meetings and then quit. It definitely wasn’t for us.”

Jacob laughed.

I smiled up at him.

“What’s going on here exactly?” Uncle Matt asked as he looked back and forth between us.

“Coach.”

“I’m just asking.”

Aunt Brooklyn laughed. “Don’t interrogate them.” She turned to me. “You know you don’t have to do everything Sophie does. You might miss out on finding something that speaks to you. And how will you discover your passion if you don’t try new things?”

I had a lot on my plate right now. But I couldn’t really say that out loud. Searching for a kiss thief didn’t exactly count as an after school activity, even though it preoccupied a whole lot of my time. “What extracurriculars did you do in high school?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t really have time for many after school activities because I worked after school back in Delaware.

And then when I moved here, my uncle didn’t want me to work during the week.

But I still worked on weekends. At first, at least. It wasn’t until I was homeschooled that I started baking.

And I don’t know where I’d be today if I hadn’t found that. It’s my happy place.”

I smiled. “So technically what you’re saying is that you didn’t do any extracurriculars either.”

She laughed. “Okay, yeah. I guess not. Matt kept me plenty busy.” She turned to him. “Isn’t that right?”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “You’re acting like I monopolized your whole high school experience.”

“You did.”

“I absolutely did not. I only got a few months of you. And you hung out with Kennedy half the time.”

I knew Kennedy as Mrs. Green. I knew she’d been friends with Aunt Brooklyn in high school. She traveled the world with her family, but I’d met her a few times when she visited. Jacob called her Aunt Kennedy.

Aunt Brooklyn laughed. “Nonsense. I lived with you.”

“You also lived with Kennedy for a bit too if I recall.”

“Wait,” I said. “You guys lived together in high school?”

Aunt Brooklyn nodded. “After we got engaged...” She paused. “Well, technically a bit before that too.”

“You were engaged in high school?” I asked. Why did I not know any of this? I knew they’d been high school sweethearts. But engaged? As teens? How on earth had that happened?

“It’s a long story,” Uncle Matt said.

“So start from the beginning.”

Chloe groaned. “Please don’t. None of us need to hear this story again. And we’re trying to eat.”

I laughed. “But I’m so curious. My parents never talk that much about how they first met. And my mom refuses to let me read the book she wrote about it. But they met in college. You guys met in high school. So obviously we’re old enough to hear that story.”

“Story time is my favorite!” yelled a deep voice.

I turned to see Mr. Nigel closing the door between his house and the Caldwells’. He hurried through the living room, grabbed a chair, and pulled it up to the table right next to me.

“Oh, and what are we having for dinner? This looks divine, mademoiselle.” He nodded to Aunt Brooklyn and then filled up his entire plate with chicken pot pie. And I mean the entire plate. He’d served himself like half the pot pie.

Was he starving or something?

“Isn’t your family expecting you for dinner?” Uncle Matt asked.

Mr. Nigel shook his head. “No, they’re having sausages again. And I’ve already had plenty of meat for lunch. I’m watching my figure.” He patted his stomach, which was perfectly flat.

I wasn’t sure how eating a huge heap of pot pie helped him look after his figure.

And I hardly think he needed to worry about his figure anyway.

He looked the same as he had when I first met him.

When I was like...two. I swear the guy never aged.

He barely looked a few years older than me.

Him and Mr. Tanner must have had some kind of weird trillionaire skincare regimen or something.

“I thought you loved meat in all your meals,” Uncle Matt said.

Mr. Nigel shrugged. “Yes. But I’m not German. A normal boy can only take so much sausage. Unlike my girls. They love their sausage. Can’t get enough of it as a matter of fact.”

That was a weird thing to say about his wife and daughters. But for some reason I laughed. Mr. Nigel always said the weirdest stuff.

“And I also heard it was story time. And I love story time. Especially love stories.” He turned to me. “I was a matchmaker of sorts in another lifetime.”

What the heck did he mean by that?

“I told you to stop watching the security feed all the time,” Uncle Matt said.

“But it’s my job.”

“It is not your job.”

Mr. Nigel shrugged. “Not my only job. I have many jobs. Dozens, really. Master Tanner keeps me busy. But not busy enough to let my bodyguard duties falter. And I also heard there were cupcakes. I want to try the new flavor too.”

Alora looked up at Mr. Nigel. “Can we go to your castle again? I want to ride the horses.”

“You want to pretend to ride horses. In your imagination.”

“No.” She frowned. “I want to ride the real horses. At your castle.”

“Kids and their wild imaginations,” Mr. Nigel said with a laugh.

“But...”

“Weren’t we hearing a story?” Mr. Nigel asked. “Let’s do that.”

“But, Mr. Nigel,” Alora protested.

“I can’t talk,” Mr. Nigel said as he started shoveling food in his mouth. “I’m eating.”

Alora giggled.

I turned to Aunt Brooklyn. “Yes. Please tell us the story.”

“Well...” Aunt Brooklyn stared at Uncle Matt. “If I’m being completely honest, Matt was way out of my league.”

“Not in a million years,” Uncle Matt said.

She laughed. “Yes you were. I was from the wrong side of the tracks and Matt was from one of the most elite families in the city. I was only a student at Empire High because my uncle was a janitor there. I had a crush on Matt, but I knew it could never happen. So I started seeing someone else.”

I stared at them. It was like how my mom said she liked two men at the same time. And everything had worked out for Aunt Brooklyn too. I needed all the details immediately. “Then what?”

“Matt got very jealous.”

He laughed. “It was ridiculous. You didn’t even like that other guy.”

“I did like that other guy. And I was planning on giving him my first kiss. But then Matt pulled me into a dark auditorium and stole it.”

I lowered my eyebrows. He stole it? Had she really just said that?

“Ew,” Chloe said.

“Wait,” I said. “Stole it? What do you mean?”

“Matt was a dirty kiss thief,” Aunt Brooklyn said.

What?!

“And I promised to steal all her firsts.” Uncle Matt smiled down at her. “I’ve made good on quite a few of those.”

WHAT?! But...really. WHAT?! I stared at the two of them smiling at each other.

I had a kiss thief. Who promised to steal all my firsts. And he’d been slowly collecting them by pulling me into dark rooms.

This was too much of a coincidence. It had to be. I turned to Jacob. “How many times have you heard this story?”

“Way too many,” he said with a laugh.

Jacob was my kiss thief. There was no way it wasn’t him. He’d heard this story and was reenacting it. Right? It had to be him. He was doing some kind of romantic gesture that he’d learned from Uncle Matt. It was the only explanation.

But he didn’t need to kiss me in dark closets anymore.

I didn’t want him to.

I wanted him to kiss me in the light of day.

Jacob cleared his throat and his hand shifted on my thigh.

I looked over at him. I wondered if it was hard for him to hear this story. Because it was missing a very important person...his father.

But I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask how Aunt Brooklyn had met Jacob’s father at the dinner table. All I knew was that he’d been her bodyguard. Lines must have gotten blurred along the way.