All Chapters of FAKING IT WITH THE BILLIONAIRE : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Dinner stretched longer than either of them planned.They'd finished eating an hour ago. The plates were cleared, the candles had burned lower, and neither of them had suggested leaving.Izzy was telling him about the worst event she'd ever planned. A corporate Christmas party where the client had insisted on live reindeer."Inside the venue?" Alex asked."Inside the venue. Marble floors. Eight hundred guests. Three reindeer.""What happened?""What do you think happened?"He laughed. She watched it move across his face, the way it always surprised him slightly, as his own body caught him off guard. She'd noticed that early on. Alex Blackwood didn't laugh like a man who did it often.She liked that she could make him.*Stop,* she told herself. *Stop cataloguing things you like about him.*"The client blamed me," she continued. "Filed a complaint, left a review calling me 'catastrophically unprepared.'""For the reindeer situation she created.""People rarely blame themselves." She tur

She stepped back.Not far. Just enough to breathe.She poured the coffee, handed him a cup, and moved to the table like her heart wasn't doing something dramatic behind her ribs.He let her. That was the thing about Alex. He never pushed. He stated things clearly and then waited, and the waiting was somehow worse than pushing would have been.She sat. He sat across from her."Tell me something I don't know about you," she said.He considered it. "I failed my first company.""I know that. It's in every profile written about you.""Not the version where I had to call my father and ask for money to pay back investors."She looked up. "That's not in the profiles.""No." He turned his cup once. "I was twenty-six. I'd told him the company was doing fine. Told everyone it was fine. Called him at midnight and he wired the money without asking a single question.""Did he ever ask?""Once. Years later. I'd just closed the Blackwood Enterprises deal and he called to congratulate me. At the end h

They walked after dinner. Just the street, the cool air, the city doing its quiet nighttime thing around them. His hand found hers somewhere between the restaurant door and the corner, and neither of them commented on it.She was aware of every point where their hands connected. The way his thumb moved once across her knuckles, absent and unhurried, like it was natural. Like they'd done this before.*We haven't done this before,* she reminded herself. *This is new. Pay attention.*"Where are we going?" she asked."Nowhere specific.""That's very unlike you.""I'm branching out."She smiled at the pavement. He felt it somehow, glanced over, and looked forward again. Satisfied. She was starting to understand that about him. He collected her reactions the same way she collected his. Quietly. Without making a production of it.Two people keep evidence of each other.They walked another block before she spoke."Sophie is going to be insufferable about this.""About what?"She held up their

She woke before him.That surprised her. She'd expected Alex to be the kind of man who was already dressed and reviewing emails by six. Instead, he was still asleep, on his side facing her, one hand loose near hers the way it had been when she'd finally drifted off.She watched him for a moment. Just a moment.He looked younger and asleep. The particular tension he carried in his jaw, the line between his brows, all of it was gone. He just looked like a person. A person who'd told her she made things worth figuring out and then fell asleep holding her hand.She was in serious, irreversible trouble.She got up carefully and found his kitchen.It was the kind of kitchen that had everything and showed no signs of regular use. Good equipment, near-empty fridge, coffee that costs more per bag than her electricity bill. She found everything she needed and started making breakfast anyway.She was cracking eggs when she heard him behind her."You cook," he said."Occasionally. Don't make it a

He took her to dinner the next night as promised, no reservations this time. He showed up at her apartment at seven with containers from a place she'd mentioned once, three weeks ago, in passing. A Thai restaurant she'd said she hadn't been to since before everything got complicated.She stared at the containers."You remembered that," she said."You mentioned it once.""In passing. I mentioned it in passing, Alex."He set everything on her kitchen counter like it was unremarkable. "Do you have plates?"She got the plates. She was doing the thing where she had to actively manage her expression because he kept doing exactly this. Small precise things that proved he'd been listening when she hadn't known he was listening. It was becoming a pattern and the pattern was dismantling her carefully.They ate at her kitchen table. Her space this time, smaller than his, lived-in. Books stacked on the counter, a plant Sophie had given her that was surviving against all odds, her mother's old cer