Page 6 of Falling for My Sister's Heartkeeper
So. Not Mom.
I scroll back up. Past nobody, past nobody, past...aha.
Mr. H.
Here's the thing about having exactly one number worth calling. A smart girl would play it cool. Wait a day. Not lead with her entire heart at nine on a Tuesday. But since this smart girl (hi, still me) is also lonely, broke, and about to burst—
"Hi, Mr. H, are you busy?"
And now I'm standing in the entryway of an apartment so high up the city looks like a rumor. Apparentlyare you busytranslates, in the native language of Mr. H, to a car at my curb and a doorman who already knew my name, and the man himself is looking at me from across all that quiet money like he can't quite remember why he let me up.
It's the first time I've seen where he lives. I take back every mean thing I've ever thought about penthouses. This one could hold my entire life and still have room left over to echo. He's ditched the suit jacket. Sleeves shoved to the elbow, forearms out for the general public to deal with, and okay, a girl could lose an entire afternoon to those forearms, and my borrowed heart clearly agrees because it picks right now to start up, quick and giddy, thump-thump-thump against a set of ribs that did not order this.
Slow down, heart.We've talked about this. Racing is on the official list of Things That Are Bad For Us, right up there with grapefruit and skipping pills, and here it is, sprinting over a man's forearm like it's got a bus to catch.
Not helping, I tell it. Focus.
Because here's what I've finally figured out about my Mr. H, and you can quote me on it. He's the exact hero every billionaire romance warns a girl about, which works out beautifully because it keeps the initials.Hasan obscene amount of money, the kind that makes waiters nervous.Hatesanything with even a rumor of love or feeling attached to it. And isHardto understand on a level somebody should probably study for a living. Hot, honorable, hers, and now three bonus Hs, free of charge. At this point the man's less a person than an acronym.
"Don't get any ideas," he warns me, like he can hear the whole internal monologue.
"Shouldn't I be the one saying that?" I gesture between us. Between his face and my everything. "Youwere the one who invited me up, not the other way around."
"You have a disturbing tendency to read something in nothing."
"Ouch. That's mean." I press a hand to my borrowed heart, wounded. "Is that your way of saying unappealing?"
"What do you want to drink?" he asks, already turning toward a bar cart worth more than everything I own put together, and I have to physically stop myself from pocketing something off it for the memory. Also—
"Since you didn't say no, then that means the opposite, right?"
I know he's already warned me against reading something into nothing, but c'mon now.
"You find me attractive!"
"Water, then." It's so cute when Mr. H tries playing it cool like this, and it has me smiling while I watch him pour with the unbothered economy of a man who's never once spilled anything in his life, and hand the glass over without letting our fingers touch. Which I notice because lately I notice everything about him, and that's rapidly becoming a full-time job nobody's paying me for.
"Have you eaten?"
"Actually, I wanted to inviteyoufor dinner." And here it comes, the whole reason, bubbling up out of me. "I got the job! My firstone! There was an audition and everything, this director, he had me read in his suite at the—"
"You went inside the hotel room of a man."
The temperature of the room drops about forty degrees.
"I mean, when you put it likethat—"
"How stupid can you get?" His jaw has gone to stone. "You could have been raped."
"I have pepper spray," I offer.
"And what if he has a gun?"
"It was broad daylight."
"You really think sunlight will keep a psychopath from hurting you if he wanted to?"
And here's the truly unfair, upside-down thing about me. He's furious. Properly furious, the kind that has a man like him spending a word likerapedin that expensive unbothered voice. And he's furious because he doesn't want me hurt. A smart girl would be chastened. Instead my whole traitor chest goes warm and my heart does its little unauthorized skip because apparently his temper is just one more thing to love about him, which is the exact opposite of the lesson I'm supposed to be learning here.
