Page 42 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

“Are those the offers?” Miller points at the papers on top of the pile I’d shoved to the end of the table.

“Yup.” I chase a cube of potato around my soup.

“So youareconsidering selling, then?” he asks. “I mean, I know you said you wouldn’t. I just wondered?—”

“Not even remotely. People like that disgust me.”

“People like what?”

“People like that Skinner guy. He’s been bombarding Grandpa with calls and emails for months, and showed up a few times. What a total sleaze bucket.”

Miller chuckles at the term.

“Opportunistic bullshitters like that only care about making more and more money and are only out for themselves.” I put down my spoon and it clangs against the bowl. “Fuck them and their fight to get our beautiful land so they can wreck this area and add another few million to their bank accounts.”

His eyebrows shoot up, like he’s shocked by the strength of my feelings. “Then why do you still have the contracts? And keep them out where you can see them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because althoughI have all the faith in the world that I can do anything I set my mind to, I can’t be totally sure that I can pull this off.”

A lump rises in my throat as if I’d just swallowed one of the hunks of crusty bread whole and it got stuck there.

“So, you’re keeping these offers as, like…a backup plan?” His voice is soft and caring, but also curious and interested, like he cares about what happens here.

I shrug and pick up my wine. The coolness of the glass against my fingertips is somehow grounding.

“Would you like me to look them over?” he asks. “Not that I don’t think you’re perfectly capable of assessing them yourself. Just that sometimes it’s good to have a second opinion.”

“A second opinion that we should sell?”

“If that’s what’s right for your circumstances. Which it…” he raises his dark eyebrows as he hesitates, “might be.”

“I’m okay for now, thanks.” Of course he thinks that selling is the sensible thing. He’s a business guy. And I don’t need to hear that again. “I’ve decided to hold a big Thanksgiving event to give the fundraising a big boost. And, right now, all my attention is on pulling that together.”

Those words sound pathetic. Like I’m a child who thinks they can buy their parents a new house if they just get a few more pennies in their piggy bank.

There’s silence for a few moments as we both eat and sip.

“Is your grandmother part of the reason you don’t want to let this place go?” He says it as if he’s spent the whole silence working himself up to ask that question.

The remainder of a slice of bread falls from my handinto my soup with a heavysploosh. “What makes you ask that?”

“You mentioned her earlier. That you have such amazing memories of her at that big art barn.”

“Windwood Barn. Yes.” I fish out the bread with my spoon. Grandma would have been proud that I didn’t just stick my fingers in to pick it out. “And amazing memories of her here too.”

“How long ago did you lose her?” he asks.

“Eleven years.” The lump swells in my throat, so I drop the soupy bread onto my side plate.

“Tell me if it’s too personal or you don’t want to talk about it.” He rests his elbows on either side of his bowl and settles his chin on his hands. “But had she been ill?”

A surge of emotion swells inside me, not just to tell someone about Grandma, but to tellhimeverything. What is it about this enigmatic virtual stranger that makes me want him to know my stories?

I clasp my hands in my lap under the table and look at Miller. “She had cancer. In her liver. It was very fast. Six weeks after she was diagnosed, Grandpa found her in the big barn. The one you’re staying in. She’d collapsed near the tractor. But she was still alive. Thank God he found her because he was able to hold her in his arms and tell her he loved her before she went.”

Miller turns a hand to cover his mouth as he blows out a long breath. His eyes look as shiny as mine feel.

Something passes across the table, something similar to the charged sparks that fizzed between us when he backed into me in the kitchen yesterday. Similar but different. This isn’t just surface-level attraction and chemistry. This has more layers. Like he can actually feelwhat I’m feeling.