Page 143 of Handsome Devil
He said he wasn’t.
“Anytime I stay somewhere more than a week,” he said simply, “I buy cars. And my wife tells me she won’t move to Toronto. Which means I’m spending at least part of the next four months here.”
Right. I had mentioned that.
But I wasn’t really liking the way that I was now wondering how much time he’d be spending in Vancouver over the next four months and how much time he’d be away, like it mattered.
When I said nothing, he added, “Why waste money on rentals?”
“I guess.” I eyed him. “The last I heard, a Bugatti would run you about a million or more.”
“It’s just a Veyron. Two million and change. I have a Chiron Sport back home.”
I swallowed. “You like powerful cars, I take it?” I could feel the power of this thing in my bones. Way too much power to be bogged down in traffic on city streets.
“Of course,” he said, like this was a given. “If I had more money, I’d collect them. I only have a few. I race in my spare time.”
Jesus. That was too sexy. I could totally picture him behind the wheel, racing luxury cars with his billionaire friends on some race track.
I watched him now, in the driver’s seat, in that suit. He looked like a damn commercial for the life you were supposed to want. And now I had it… for four months.
Weirdly, I wasn’t sure I even knew what to do with it.
Just be yourself.
Why was this all suddenly making me so uneasy?
“I didn’t know you had spare time,” I said lightly.
“I have some.” He glanced at me. “Have to show the wife a good time, right?”
Right. That statement, and the look that accompanied it, brought back every little detail of last night—when he fucked me with his hand. And I came with his fingers deep inside me.
I looked away.
“So, I’ve been thinking about this,” he said, his tone growing serious. “We can say whatever we want in the media, but there are actual people who’ve seen you and I interact this last week. People at the agency. People who assume we just met. People who might’ve sensed some… tension between us. And I’ve been talking it over with Velma. You know, my senior EA. She’s worked for me for several years and I bounce a lot of things off of her. She’s got a good gauge. So—”
“Gauge?”
“Yeah. Like, a common sense gauge. Regular person gauge. Human gauge.” He glanced at me, looking almost uncomfortable. “Let’s just say she possesses certain skills that I lack.”
“You mean, the ability to think like a human being who hasn’t been obscenely wealthy since the moment they were born?”
“Yeah. That. So… I told her about us. The truth, I mean. She’s the only person I’ve told the whole story to. I needed to talk it through with someone. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah. I guess so. I mean, I told Katie everything. And I always will. So, you should be aware that anything you say or do might go straight into her ears. She would never betray my trust, though. Never. We’ve been best friends since we were kids.” I studied him. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell your best friend. Or your cousin. Or someone else close to you.”
“Well, I told Velma. That’s what I’m comfortable with for now.”
“You trust her that much?”
“Yes. And so you know, she’s contractually bound to keep it to herself.”
“So, what did she say about it?” I was curious what someone who knew Dane, at least in a professional sense, and had his trust, would say to him about this. I’d met Velma at the gala; she’d sat at our dinner table, and I liked her. She seemed intelligent, competent, mature. Overqualified to be the executive assistant of a spoiled billionaire employer; that was how I saw it then. Now, I really hoped she gave him some solid counsel on this situation.
Like maybeDon’t be a dick to your wife.
“She said people will want to know how we met,” he said. “How this whirlwind romance came about. And she’s right. If we don’t tell them, they’ll just speculate. They’ll start to dig.”
