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Now, he was talking to me like he was genuinely interested, and sharing his own stories about growing up with one much older sister and a succession of nannies in place of parents, when he wasn’t away at boarding school. My heart broke a little more with every snippet of his past he showed me.
“No wonder you don’t smile,” I murmured, thinking my voice would be covered by the wind.
But he heard me. “I smile. Just not in public. And not around women.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “You know the nickname. You must have heard about the contest.”
“The what?” I turned to face him, clutching his jacket around me as the wind pulled at it. “There was a contest?”
He groaned. “Yes. It’s why I bought out that damned magazine. They’d decided to up their game—that instead of just speculating on who I’d end up with, they would challenge the ‘women of the world’ to try to crack Grumpy Grantham’s face of steel. Or some sort of crap like that.” He lifted an eyebrow while I tried to stifle a laugh and ended up snorting.
“Really? Like America’s Grumpiest Bachelor: Make Him Smile Edition?”
“Hmm.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “It sounds like fun until it’s you being bombarded with women losing every scrap of dignity they possess for a cash prize.”
I stifled the growl that tried to emerge from my throat at the thought of women chasing him. Possibly eventouchinghim.Grrrrr.
“Is that your stomach?” Giovanni’s eyebrows flew high.
It absolutely was not my stomach. But I wasn’t about to admit I’d just experienced my first true omega growl. We only made that sound when we felt like an alpha was ours, and another woman was too close to the one we wanted to claim. Candy had made it when she met her true mate.
Could he be mine?
I banished that thought as fast as it had appeared. Giovanni Grantham, while he might be my fantasy man, was never going to belong to me. He could hardly stand me. He’d made no secret of it.
“You know omegas,” I bullshitted breezily. “Sensitive digestion. So, women were chasing you? What did they do?”
He scowled. “They came at me in droves, night and day. One even drew a picture on her butt and mooned me on my way to work.”
“Her butt wasn’t nice?” I pressed my mouth shut against another impending growl.
He made a face. “It was my widowed neighbor, Georgiana Leopold. Eighty-seven years old, and at least that many wrinkles on her ass.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Three others tried to sneak in with singing telegrams. One rode a unicycle into my main office lobby, juggling dildos. Fourteen more women dressed like clowns.”
I blinked, trying to picture it. “All at once?”
“No. One at a time, like water torture. Who the fuck thinks clowns make people laugh? That shit is terrifying.”
I was wheezing with laughter as I sat on a narrow cushioned bench. “God, yes. What else?”
“Amateur comedians started taking jobs as hostesses at my favorite restaurants. My barber was out sick one week, and his replacement told some of the funniest jokes I’ve ever heard while she cut my hair. To be fair, if I hadn’t noticed her phone on the counter, recording it all, I might have laughed.”
“Laughing counted?”
“Apparently. People started speculating that I’d had Botox to freeze my face.”
I giggled. “Did you?”
He turned toward me, his face completely blank. “Of course not. The Botox was for the wrinkles. I’m smiling on the inside right now, can’t you tell?”
I completely lost it and fell back, holding my sides. “Oh, Grumpy, I can see it now. How long did it go on? How did I not hear about this?” One of my ridiculous heels had come off on the deck, and I took off the other one, wiggling my toes.
“I bought the company the week the contest started. And you know money can take care of a lot of things. Even bad publicity.” He slid onto the seat next to me, and we both stared up at the stars.
