Page 110 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

Thelma lets out an extra loud meow.

“Okay, let’s go. But you have to not fight me,” I warn her.

She stands up and moves next to me.

And doesn’t let out a peep when I pick her up.

As I carry her back to the house, that ache in my chest asks what else about Miller I might have missed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FRANKIE

“Oh, hi.” I did not expect Grandpa to have a guest with him when I walked into his room.

He and a very neatly dressed and coiffed woman are sitting in side-by-side armchairs, both leaning into the gap between them, and giggling like a pair of mischievous kids.

“Frankie, Frankie.” Grandpa beckons me in with a grin of Cheshire-Cat-who-got-extra-cream proportions. “Come and meet Elsie.”

“Oh, Elsie. Yes. Hi.” I tuck the large brown envelope I’ve brought with me under my arm and scuttle toward her, hand outstretched. “I’ve heard a lot about you. How lovely to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Elsie says with a warm smile as she shakes my hand.

“None of it good,” Grandpa says with a wink.

“Oh, Sam.” Elsie bats at him but intentionally misses. “Your grandfather is incredibly proud of you, Frankie.And incredibly grateful for you looking after everything while he’s here recovering.”

The sight of these two in what is obviously the first flush of something fills my whole being with more squishy warm love than I could ever imagine.

Well, more than I could have imagined before I found Miller asleep with Petunia and almost passed out from the cute hotness of it all.

Shit, just that quick thought of him turns the warm squishiness into a ripping sensation tearing through my middle and I have to press my hand to my stomach to try to keep it under control until I’m back outside in the truck and can cry again.

Right now, I’m here to think about Grandpa’s future, not my own. And his seems to be glowing.

“I could not be more delighted to do it,” I reply to Elsie. “And I’m happy he has such good company to prevent him from spending all his time worrying about how I might be messing things up at the sanctuary.”

“I would never think you’d mess things up, Frankie.” He looks genuinely hurt by my joke. “Why would I ever think that? I trust you implicitly.”

“Just kidding.” I turn back to Elsie as I take a seat in the third armchair. “I hear you were one of Diane von Furstenberg’s dressmakers for a long time.”

“Best years of my life.” Elsie raises her eyes to the ceiling as if praising the heavens for such a fulfilling career.

“Not necessarily,” Grandpa says, a twinkle in his eye.

Is that how I’ll look back on my career when I’m Elsie’s age? Sitting in a retirement home, feeling wistful about my amazing life in marketing?

Christ, how laughably hollow that sounds.

It’s hardly like I create something lasting the way she did. Something that makes people other than my bosses happy. Something that can change the way people feel about themselves. A legacy to look back on.

Grandpa definitely has that. The sanctuary is his stunning legacy. And it definitely changes the donkeys’ lives. And the lives of the people lucky enough to adopt the ones who can be rehomed.

And look at what Miller’s created—solid buildings that change the way a city looks for maybe a hundred years and are filled with people living their lives and perhaps building families. Christ, there I go again. Thinking about him again, when he’s the last person I want to be thinking about.

But I can’t clear my head of Paige’s suggestion that everything he did to me was based on him protecting his family.

Anyway, just when I thought I was already wallowing at the bottom of the pit of inadequacy, Grandpa and Elsie have made me wonder if the one part of my life I thought I have together—my career—is actually a pile of meaningless shit too.