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“Even that,” I agreed, nodding.
“That’s absurd. I will get something reasonable and you can take that two-hundred-and-sixty thousand and invest in renovating Lucky Corner Market,” she told me.
“The place we just came from?”
“Yeah. That place kept me from starving to death as a kid. The owner, my old friend Velle’s father, was robbed and injured pretty badly. They need to catch a break. I was going to invest what I can. But you—“
“Can invest considerably more,” I filled in for her.
“Exactly.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? Okay?” she asked, giving me small eyes, suspicious.
“That’s it,” I agreed, nodding.
“You can’t just go around dropping three-hundred grand like it’s nothing.”
“I can’t?” I asked.
“Not if you want to stay rich.”
“Well, the way I hear it, I am going to be coming into more money soon since I’m going to be renting out my place in the Maldives. Maybe we should build a youth center around here while we’re at it.”
“There is no we, Bellamy,” she said, voice even more guarded than usual.
“No. No, of course not.”
“I mean it,” she insisted, zipping her bag.
“Of course you do, love,” I agreed as I followed her out into the hall.
But it was getting harder and harder to deny that, despite it making no sense whatsoever, a part of me was really starting to like the idea of the two of us.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Shawn
We were just going to pretend that there hadn’t been some weird little flip-flopping sensation in my stomach when he used the word we to talk about us.
We weren’t a we.
We were never going to be a we.
Not that way, anyway.
Not even if my stupid body got its own ideas about it.
Luckily, I didn’t let my body make my decisions.
Well, aside from the hammock sex. And the linen closet sex.
But that was it, damnit. There wasn’t going to be any more sex.
“Shawn?”
“What?” I asked, tone a little sharper than I meant it to come out. Because I was pissed at my body, not necessarily him. I mean, what was there to be angry about? He’d swooped in like some damn romance movie to try to save the day, whisking me away on his private jet to some secure location to keep me safe.
For all his faults—and there were many, I was sure—he couldn’t really be faulted for how he handled the situation. The man had lost sleep to try to track me down and get me safer.
Did a small part of me want to bristle over the idea that he thought he could protect me better than I could protect myself? Sure. But at the end of the day, the fact of the matter was that he could. Seeing as I damn sure didn’t have my own safe house anywhere.
Anywhere I went would leave some sort of trail.
Unless I camped my ass in the woods somewhere.
With the bears. And the wolves. And the fucking fist-sized mosquitos.
I was pretty sure I would prefer having Adams kill me rather than having to camp in the woods.
“What are you thinking about?” Bellamy asked, brows furrowed.
“Camping,” I admitted.
“Camping,” Bellamy repeated.
“Yeah, you know. With the tents and the ticks and the mountain lions.”
“Mountain lions?” Bellamy repeated. “Where have you been camping?”
“I don’t do camping.”
“Then why are you thinking about camping?” he asked, no less confused as we waited on the tarmac for his plane.
“Have you ever been camping?” I asked instead of answering. “And, no, some luxury-ass cabin in the woods doesn’t count.”
“I went to summer camp pretty much my whole life. In the woods. We had cabins. But we camped in the woods sometimes. What?” he asked, making me realize I was smiling.
“Nothing. I’m just picturing a bunch of the guys I’ve seen at all those events over the years in the woods with their personal butlers following behind them with cans of bug spray,” I told him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bellamy said. “They also carried our water bottles and sunblock,” he added with a smile, making a surprised laugh bubble up and burst out.
I mean, you had to appreciate a man who was so hard to rile up, right? Someone with a short temper who was easily offended would get sick of me really quickly. In fact, all my previous dalliances ended when they got butt-hurt about something I’d said. Something true that I’d said, mind you.
Guys and their fragile egos.
It was a tale as old as time.
Except Bellamy didn’t seem afflicted. Which made no sense. If anyone should have an inflated ego, it was a good-looking billionaire with the world at his fingertips.
But Bellamy just didn’t seem bothered by much.
I guess maybe it all circled back to his time in the military, doing shit he probably didn’t even agree with because that was what was expected of him, taking on that darkness. Once he got out and got his hands on the family business, I could understand him dedicating his life to light and frivolous things, trying to constantly chase the darkness away.
