Page 11 of My Ex’s Dad (Scandalous Billionaires #1)

Chapter five

Amalphia

I t’s taking Warrick an unusually long time to get changed. It also took him an eternity to get out of the pool.

I noticed the way his eyes lingered on my body longer than they should.

He’s a man. He wasn’t checking me out because he wanted to check me out.

I was just a body, a wet body, and we were both in each other’s line of sight.

It was like a rhetorical question. A rhetorical gaze .

It didn’t get me all hot and bothered or anything.

Fuck, I’m such a bad liar.

I’m still feeling the shape of his huge, strong hands as they grasped my hips and scraped along my breast on the way to my shoulder while he propelled me off the bottom of the pool.

I had no idea what was happening. My eyes were closed, and I was focused entirely on my breathing exercises.

I know what I was doing was dangerous, but I’ve been working at it for over a year already.

If there was one thing I didn’t doubt about this whole arrangement, it was the pool.

I love swimming. I’ve always had to do it at a community pool, which involved swimming underwater so that I didn’t get the lifeguards hauling my ass out, thinking I was drowning, just like Warrick did.

My skin erupts into a fucking bonfire when I think about where his hands grazed me.

I’m putting together sandwiches with organic tomatoes, toasted garlic and onion specialty pickles, roasted red peppers, fresh basil, cheese from a block that proudly declares it’s been aged three years, and thick-cut back bacon, but I’m having trouble focusing.

The kitchen is so vast and empty that my knife echoes with every chop on the wooden cutting board.

Chop. Chop. I wonder if Warrick couldn’t get out of the pool because his body was burning too. Because he had issues down under. Chop. Chop. Stop it. You can’t go there. Chop. Chop. The dick department is not a store your mind should be shopping at. Chop. Chop.

Chop, chop, boom, boom, boom.

Warrick’s heavy tread echoes down the metal and glass staircase.

Great. There’s zero chance I can compose my face. I’m probably ten shades past red.

You know what’s even more attractive than wet, waterlogged Warrick in a pool with all his clothes slicked tight and outlining every muscle in his body?

Freshly showered Warrick in a T-shirt that shows off the black and grey ink on his arms as well as all his numerous bulgy muscles and veiny veins.

His jeans are faded and soft-looking, so I quickly keep going and get to his footwear.

The tan loafers should scream Dad, but all they’re doing is taunting, DILF, DILF, DILF. Loudly.

It could be that I have a problem.

It could be that the problem is Warrick is hotter than fucking fuckitty fucknuts. Maybe I’m just fucking fuckitty fucknutted.

I wonder if there are groups out there dedicated to not having sexual thoughts about your ex’s parents. Dadaholics Anonymous or something.

“That looks good,” he says, his voice a little gruffer and deeper than normal.

I clear my throat, whipping my eyes back to the sandwiches. “Yeah, uh…yeah.” Nice. I’ve spent over a week here by myself, and this is what I have to say?

He saves me by pulling out a sleek black leather chair from the island that looks futuristic.

The chair, I mean. Although the island is so modern with a weird pebbled tan texture on it, and the rest of the countertops have it, too, that I could also be referring to that.

The cabinets are flat black with wood grain at the back and glass shelves.

They’re mostly open, which makes dusting a nightmare.

Also? Who makes shelving with glass that looks like it could shatter if you breathe on it?

I swear the underwater breath-holding training comes in handy when I’m cleaning.

“Do you have any questions?” Warrick asks. He rests his elbows on the island top and links his fingers in front of him, giving me a view of his stunning forearms. Both of them have Greek gods etched all the way down. I don’t want to stare, even if masculine artistry draws my eye.

And the tattoos too.

“About the job?” I ask, my tongue thick in my mouth.

“About anything.”

I glance up before I slice my fingers off. His knives, like the rest of the house, are no joke, expensive and good quality. “You mean about you?”

He’s got his granite face on, and it gives nothing away. “I want you to feel comfortable here. I know you’ve likely heard things about me.”

“Actually…”

“I know you took the job because you needed the money for college. I’m not going to pretend you would have left your family and your hometown and wound up here otherwise. The offer was too good to refuse. You said so yourself.”

You might be too good to refuse.

Wait. Damn it!

“I think it was my granny who said that, actually,” I murmur, making a fresh, concerted effort to get these sandwiches together before I spontaneously combust and grill them with the flames from the fiery human inferno.

“She got her meatloaf, by the way. We ordered from this little mom-and-pop shop that specializes solely in it, and Granny even got to pick out the shape she wanted. She picked a horse, but it looked more like a roadkill deer when it came.”

He laughs while I keep cutting the cheese. The flames are percolating deep inside me, and I can feel their sparks shooting off into my bloodstream.

“Was it good though?”

“Delicious,” I reply.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

I get his sandwich assembled and slide it into the pan. After grilling it on his state-of-the-art gas stove for a few minutes, I slide it, perfectly golden brown served with a few slices of what is probably the world’s fanciest pickles, into the space directly in front of him.

He inhales, sighing in appreciation.

Forget about combustion. I think I’m going to spontaneously ovulate over here.

“I hope it tastes okay. The bread is kind of funky.”

“It’s low carb.”

“Ooh, that would explain a lot. I figured someone who, um…looks like they could handle four thousand pushups followed by eighteen thousand crunches and twenty-two million burpees wouldn’t have a diet of ice cream and crackers and cheese, but you know, those things are good too. Sometimes. Okay, all the time.”

He takes a bite, and his eyes close in what can only be described as a foodgasm.

I whip around before I can experience what can only be described as a…complete mental break.

“You do realize that even if I did a burpee every second, it would still take around six thousand hours to do twenty-two million of them?”

“Did you just do that math in your head?” I slip the second sandwich into the pan, giving him my back.

“You can break it down easily.”

I still can’t turn around. I’m far too flustered.

I don’t have his granite countenance down.

The only thing my face has down is down for the count.

“I guess that’s why you’re CEO of a business.

You would have had to take intense math classes for that, I’d imagine.

Even if you didn’t, it’s probably your everyday thing now. Reports and mathing and such.”

“I’m CEO because it’s a family business, and it was always clear that when my dad retired, I’d step in, just like he did for his father and his father did for his grandfather.”

“Holy sausages, I didn’t realize refrigeration is that old.”

“The first air conditioning was invented at the turn of the century. But I didn’t major in business. I’m a mechanical engineer. I was always more fascinated by how things worked than by the office side of the business.”

“Oh. That’s handy, though. Isn’t it? Or does it just make doing something you don’t really want to be doing suck extra?”

“I made my peace with it.”

The second sandwich is done, and I can’t just stand here eating it and not face him, so I slowly pivot around. I keep the island between us and nibble at the corner. After I finish a few bites, I figure I owe him something.

“I didn’t hear that much about you or anything. Reginald never mentioned you except once, and it was lucky he did, or I wouldn’t have known how to find you to come and beg you to help.”

I don’t mean to search his face, but I guess I do. He sighs this long, drawn-out, windy gust.

“I’m still extremely thankful that you did. I know I came to you, and my guilt trip game was strong, but you did have a choice,” I add.

He watches me like he’s trying to figure out if what I just said is code for something entirely different. I’ve never been good at silence or doing anything awkward, so I let my mouth run on.

“It’s not my place to say this, but I do know Reg’s mom a little better, and I can see why maybe things didn’t work out between you two.

You said you’d been used before, and that’s what put you off believing me.

You thought I was there to extort money as some kind of sham orchestrated by Reg and Candice.

That’s dark, but if it was bad before or after Reg was born, I can understand why you reacted the way you did.

” I’ve confessed this much, talking so fast that my words all cram together, so I might as well just keep burying myself.

“I thought you were a first-class jerk, and I cursed your ass seven ways to Sunday, all while I drove back to Harrisburg that morning. I’d like to apologize to you right now.

And if my curses took hold and have anything to do with your tummy, I’m doubly sorry. ”

His brows crash down. It’s the first frown he’s given me through everything I just said. He should not look so adorable with a side of panting hotness just by lowering his eyebrows like that. “It was solely the cabbage. I’m feeling much better now.”

“Did Candice hurt you?” Whyyyyyy can I not shut up and just eat this cheesy goodness with the questionable bread?

It takes him a minute to answer, and I’m about to blurt that he doesn’t owe me an explanation when he seems to make up his mind about something.