Page 97 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

But it’s impossible. Like it’s fate or some other sort of bullshit that I never would have believed a week ago.

The microwave beeps, and I jump to open the door to make it stop before it wakes Frankie. I want to be the one to do that.

As I dunk one of the Earl Grey tea bags, whose label I’ve seen dangling from her thermos mug when she’s walking around outside in the mornings, into the hot water, there’s a knock at the door.

From her position curled up on a chair, Thelma meows, disgruntled.

“Same,” I tell her. “Who the hell comes over this early?”

Maybe it’s finally the hay delivery and it’s the only time they could fit it in?

I’m wearing just the chain saw boxers that Frankie grabbed for me last night, but whatever, the guy won’tgive a shit and I can just tell him to take the hay to the shed.

The old floor tiles are cold under my bare feet as I move toward the door.

I open it a crack, stick my head around it, and freeze—not only in terms of becoming completely motionless, but also in terms of my blood turning to ice crystals crunching through my veins.

At the same time, in a manner that would confound biological science, my heart thumps lava-hot blood to my brain.

My mind spins, whirls, performs feats previously only achieved by aerobatic aircraft, all in an attempt to search for a way to dodge the horror standing on the doorstep that’s now careering toward my life at the speed of light and is about to smash it to smithereens.

It can’t find one.

“Miller?” Wade Skinner could not look more shocked if the door had been opened by a penguin playing a banjo.

His brow furrows into deep, objectionable lines, like it’s a piece of rotten, shriveled fruit. “Miller Malone, what the fuck? Why the fuck…? What? What the fuck are you doing here?”

He scans my one naked shoulder that he can see—the rest of me is still behind the door. “And why the fuck are you naked?”

“Not naked.” For some unknown, godforsaken reason, I open the door wider to reveal the presence of my underwear.

“Well, fuck me. That’s not a whole lot better. I preferred it when you were behind the door.”

As my spinning brain catches up, the shock at seeing him is replaced by rabid fury at how he’streated Frankie and her grandpa, combined with the wild panic that I need to get him out of here before Frankie sees him. Or he sees Frankie. I cannot allow their paths to cross until I’ve come clean with her first.

This is going to be a hard enough situation to salvage when she hears the story from me. It’ll be dead on arrival if she hears it from him.

“I think the question is what the fuck areyoudoing here?” I say.

Needing to keep the noise down, I step out onto the bristly doormat and pull the door almost closed behind me.

“So now you’re coming out into the cold wearing just your nut coverers?” he sneers. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Clutching the door handle is the only thing stopping me from punching him on his wise-ass nose.

“You need to leave.” My blood pressure is rising so high and so fast it might just blow the top off my head. “Right now.”

“I need to speak to Miss Channing. Or Mr. Channing.” He puts his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels as if to demonstrate that, being fully clothed, he could cheerfully stand here all day. “Or just anyone who isn’t you.”

“Frankie told you to leave last time. So leave.”

“Frankie?”A slimy smirk spreads across his face. “Now, let me think…” He gazes up at the sky and taps his chin, feigning deep thought. “You’re on first-name terms and in her house wearing almost nothing. Now what could that possibly mean?”

“Fuck off, Wade.” Not the most professional or adult response, but I really need him to go right now. “Get lost.Come back later if you like. But for now, just fuck the hell off.”

“Why in such a hurry to get rid of me?” Wade drawls, like he has all the time in the world. “I can just wait if she’s not around. Or not, you know”—he gestures from the top of my head to my bare feet—“dressed.”

My simmering blood reaches boiling point and before I know it I’ve let go of the door and taken a step off the doormat toward him.