Page 27 of Billionaire’s Game

He laughed. It was deep and sexy and it was contagious. Was there nothing that I didn’t find attractive about this man?

“An apple.”

“What?” I said, not knowing why he was suddenly talking about fruits and then I remembered my question. Jeez being around Magnus was apparently so distracting that I couldn’t even remember my own questions. “Boring.”

“Hey. No judgments. This car is a judgment-free zone. Ok. Your turn. How about you?”

I pretended to think deeply, but I was really just checking him out. He had long eyelashes and high cheekbones. I wondered about his ancestry. Maybe a hint of Native American somewhere along the lines?

“I don’t know. A grape.”

“A grape?” he said, sounding disappointed.

“I like to eat them.”

“I like to eat a lot of things but I wouldn’t naturally compare myself to any of those things. Like I wouldn’t want to be tofu.”

“You eat tofu?”

“Let me guess... You thought I stuffed myself with lamb chops, steaks and ribs all day?”

I thought about that and said, “Well, not all those things, but perhaps some of those things.”

“Well, I’m a vegetarian, so actually I don’t eat any of those things.”

“You’re a vegetarian?”

“Stop sounding so shocked.”

“I just associate vegetarians with being really slender and kind of soft looking.” My eyes traveled down his body before I could stop myself. I was just happy he was too busy paying attention to traffic to notice. “You don’t look... soft.”

“Go ahead and find out,” he dared me. “I can assure you that I’m anything but soft.”

I couldn’t help myself. I blushed. I could think of hard things and none of them were PG-rated.

I expected the conversation to take a sexual turn, but he surprised me with a gentlemanly response. “I get enough protein and I work out religiously, so I don’t have a high body fat percentage. I know a lot of vegetarians stuff themselves with pasta, but I’m not one of them.”

“I don’t work out at all,” I confessed.

“Well, then we know which of us will be doing all the pain challenges.”

“Great. I’m glad you nominated yourself,” I said jokingly. He laughed and I was surprised that he found me so amusing. Most people didn’t really find me to be a funny person. But I could be funny and even fun. Lacey had been right. I was so busy fitting into the box people decided for me, I’d even forgotten who I was.

And I found it very telling that I was finding myself again by just getting to know Magnus. I felt like I’d been living in a shell for years. I could be fun. I could be funny, but somehow being in school under all that pressure to perform had made me lose sight of me. I had been so busy pretending I was mature enough to be there, that I’d let other aspects of my personality fall to the wayside. I made a decision right then and there to be myself. I just had to remember who she was. Maybe if I hung out with Magnus enough, I’d get to learn about me even more.

“So tell me more,” I asked him.

“What’s there to tell?”

“Well, I heard you’re a billionaire. What’s that like?”

“It’s boring... like an apple,” he joked.

“Oh yeah, it must be so boring being a billionaire. Having everything you could ever want, never having to worry about bills, being able to come and go as you please must be so very boring.”

He nodded. “You guessed it...”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on. What’s it like?”