Billionaires Dollar Series

“Something like that.”

“Picked up along your own adventure,” I say. Her hair has slipped forward, blocking her cheek from view, and she pushes it back with a slim hand.

“I think I’d be more interested in finding someone to go on adventures with.”

“Interesting,” I say, keeping my voice light. Of course she wants to make her mark on the world. Perhaps travel the globe, meet interesting people. And my adventuring days are if not over, at the very least put on indefinite pause.

Bella’s hand finds its way up to my head and then her fingers are twining in my hair. My eyes flit closed of their own accord. “Damn it,” I murmur. “Sorcery.”

How can something so simple feel so good? I crack open one eye to see if the girls are still preoccupied-yes, they’re glued to the movie-and close my eyes again.

“Nobody does this for you, huh?”

“No,” I say. “We can’t all be princesses with castles and butlers.”

“No, some of us just have mansions and staff.”

I bark a laugh at that. Evie glances back and gives a sharp “Shh, Daddy!” before turning back around. No sign at all that she’d even registered my arm around Bella.

But there is being reckless and there is being plain stupid. So I force iron-clad will through my veins and remove my hand from her knee. It isn’t easy. The awareness of her body against mine is more than a physical thing. It feels like a force, urgent and pressing, and I’m entirely caught in its grip.

It’s a relief when the movie comes to its predictable end. I extricate myself from Bella, though it feels like losing a limb, and tell Haven and Evie it’s time to go to bed.

Haven accepts her fate stoically-this happens once a day, after all-but Evie puts up a fight. All the usual tactics fail, until it becomes clear she’s just biding for time.

“Bella?” she asks. There’s a rare note of shyness in her voice.

“Yes, Evie?”

“Will you read to me?”

My heart kicks into overdrive. They’re getting too attached, they’re getting too attached…

“Of course I will.” Bella takes Evie’s hand in hers and my daughter pulls her toward her room, almost skipping. The sight is enough to still the quiet panic in my head.

“Daddy?” Haven asks from her bedroom, a book in her hand.

“I’m coming.”

It takes twenty minutes for Haven to fall asleep. I close the door gently behind me, only to see that Evie’s is still open. When I peek inside, Bella is sitting beside my daughter’s bed, the book closed in her lap.

Evie is fast asleep.

Bella motions questioningly. Can I leave?

It makes me chuckle. “Yeah, come on.”

She tiptoes out of the bedroom and I close that door, too.

“She was out like a light.”

“And sleeps like a baby.”

“Very fitting.”

I motion with my head and we walk down the stairs. “Thank you for staying. For reading to her.”

“I enjoyed it,” Bella says. “I don’t have any nieces and nephews, no kids around me… I tried doing voices. I don’t know if it worked.”

“Oh, I’m sure it did. I never have the patience for that. No, it’s safe to say you have two new members of the Bella Simmons fan club.”

She walks ahead of me into the kitchen, leaning against the kitchen island. “Just two?”

“Yes. I’m already a fan.”

“You are?”

“Have been for weeks,” I say. “Did you like the movie?”

In the dark, her eyes are almost black. “I didn’t catch a word.”

“Funny,” I say. “Neither did I.”

“What do you want to do now?”

“I think I have games. We could drink wine and play.”

She nods slowly. “Games.”

“Yes. Most of them are for kids. I have Twister. Operation. Forty-piece puzzles.”

“Exciting.”

“Very. But I might have Yahtzee somewhere.” Potentially in the garage. Or the attic. It seems very unimportant.

Bella steps closer, wetting her lips. “I don’t want to play Yahtzee.”

“It’s not that good of a game,” I agree.

“Too much math,” she says.

I reach up and run my fingers along her cheek, down to her chin, tipping her head back. Her skin is like silk, and now I know that it’s like that everywhere. “Says the engineering student.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“To the engineer.” Her voice is a soft exhale against me.

“There is one game we could play.”

“It doesn’t have a good name,” I admit. “Repeat-of-what happened-in-the-treehouse is the working title.”