Shepherd was dressed in borrowed clothes well before Ginny was finished getting ready. He wore dark shorts that felt expensive and required a belt to stay up, and a simple white shirt that still had a tag on it.
It was, in literal fact, expensive.
Ginny wore a linen dress that looked more like an oversized shirt. She was putting makeup on in her private bathroom, her attention currently on her eyelashes. Shepherd watched with no little fascination. “I don’t get what the big deal is, anyway, Ginny. You don’t even need makeup.”
“I know I don’t need makeup. No oneneedsmakeup. I just like it.”
“Your stepmom and step-grandma sure like makeup, too.”
Ginny blinked at her reflection. Her auburn lashes were longer and blacker than they had been that morning, and there was a sparkle on her cheekbones that lit up every time she moved. “Women wear makeup. News at eleven.”
Shepherd propped himself up by the elbow on her bed, in need of caffeine or he’d crash again. “They like Botox and hair dye, too, seems like. And nose jobs.”
She glared at him through the mirror. “What’s wrong with Botox and hair dye? And nose jobs?”
Shepherd sat up, staring at the mirror in confusion. “I mean, those women are mostly plastic at this point, Ginny. And you’re a natural beauty.”
Ginny huffed. She spun around to glare at him herself, fists on her hips. “You think this nose is natural? My mom and I went in for mother-and-daughter nose jobs the day after I turned seventeen. And do you think it’s normal for a woman in her thirties not to have any lines on her forehead?” She raised her eyebrows up slightly. Very slightly. There were no lines on her forehead. “I’ve also gotten Botox shots along my jaw to make that sharper, and I’ll have you know I get my hair done by the best guy in Miami. So.”
Stunned for only a moment, Shepherd’s mouth angled into a grin. “So you’re mostly plastic too, eh? Guess that’s why you weren’t worried about latex last night.”
Ginny rolled her eyes. “Haha, so funny. I’m ready. You want coffee?”
“God,” he groaned, standing, “I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.”
“Oh, that’s what you said last night!”
“Haha,sofunny.”
PART THREE
TWENTY-SEVEN
The aroma of breakfast—fresh coffee, sizzling bacon … was that, perhaps, a steak omelet in the air?—rose up the stairs and hit him straight in the stomach.
“Perfect,” Ginny said with a sigh, taking his hand. “Let’s eat before we’re spotted.”
He followed her down the stairs and towards the kitchen. Ginny. His employee. His supposed fiancée. Perfectly ordinary. Nothing at all complicated about their arrangement. If he had to define his relationship with Ginny right now under oath or to his daughter, he would not struggle at all. Not even for a second.
He could see the kitchen, hear the hiss of the bacon, when they passed by the secondary living room. Rich people and their double living rooms. Unfortunately, they did not go unnoticed.
“Ginny,” her dad called out. “Come here real quick.”
“We were gonna get coffee.”
“Coffee can wait.” That was her grandfather. Shepherd hadn’t been around the Kents long, but he already understood the most important rule. You don’t disobey Elwin Kent.
Ginny rolled her eyes but squeezed Shepherd’s hand. “Coffee soon. I promise.”
Ah, a promise. That meant he’d better come up with a Plan B on his own, or he’d be coffee-less forever.
All his plans, and none of them ever accounted for the chaos of Ginny Kent.
“Listen, after coffee, I have to go get Lex and take her to a friend’s house.”
Ginny nodded. “Great, I could use a Lex break after all this bullshit.”
Shepherd hadn’t invited Ginny. The fact that she invited herself, that she wanted to see his daughter, made something that had been tight for years loosen most pleasantly in hischest. He frowned, deeply disappointed with himself. He was a forty-two-year-old man. He didn’t need his heart going all pitter-pattering just because a pretty woman who slept with him the night before wanted to have breakfast with his daughter.Get yourself together, man.
