NautiCal (Forever Wilde 8)

He made a disgruntled noise and tried to flatten out the part that tickled his nose.

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” I asked because apparently my brain filters were still dead asleep.

His fingers continued to toy with my hair as he let out a breath. I’d been joking about his breath before. Like everything else associated with Worth, it was miles away from putrid.

He shifted his hand down to my back, and the feel of his smooth fingertips along my skin made me shiver. “I broke up with someone about six months ago. Well, longer now, I guess. It was just after New Year’s. So… more like eight or nine months. It made me gun-shy, to say the least.”

“Why?”

He exhaled. For a minute, I thought he wasn’t going to elaborate, but he surprised me. “Because the kind of man I find myself attracted to is not the right kind of man for me.”

“What does that mean?”

Worth’s fingertips trailed up and down my spine. “Mason wanted my money. More specifically, he wanted my business. And not even my business. He wanted my father’s company, or what was left of it.”

I remembered reading online that the Worthington family was originally involved in making grain harvesters in the early 1900s. That had led to a larger business centered around agricultural manufacturing, but I wasn’t sure if that was the company his family still owned.

“Is the venture capital firm your father’s company?”

He shook his head and moved his hand back up into my hair. Even if he started talking about agriculture futures or combine harvesters, I’d lie here happily as long as he kept his hands on me.

“No. That’s my company. I started it when my grandfather died and left me some money to invest. It was my final year in college, and I was taking an economics class from a woman who ran a successful venture capital firm. Several of the examples she used in class were based on her own experiences with funding start-ups, and it really piqued my interest. I approached her with a ton of questions, and she connected me to a professor in the Software Engineering department, who introduced me to a group of friends that had developed an app for a class project. They were trying to get the app off the ground. After lots of back-and-forth and getting to know the group, I decided to back their efforts. The company grew from there. Faster than I ever imagined since that little app was bought by a tech giant five years later for $850 million dollars.”

I sputtered and craned my head to see if he was pulling my leg. He wasn’t. “Holy fuck. That’s amazing.”

He cracked a smile. “It was. You should have seen these guys’ faces when they got the offer. It was definitely one of my best memories since going into business. We’ve had a lot of celebrations and incredible acquisitions, but those guys… it was definitely something special. So you can imagine how much that helped me to fund other businesses, and it’s snowballed since then.”

“But that wasn’t the company Mason wanted? Why the hell not?”

Before he could answer, my stomach let out an embarrassing growl. Worth smirked at me. “It’s a long story. Let’s get you up to Julo before you waste away. You must not have eaten enough at the restaurant last night.”

I groaned and rolled out of his arms. “How is that possible? I ate every marine animal in the islands and enough dessert to put my grandpa’s sweet tooth to shame.”

But he was right. I was starving, and I could tell from the edges of the window coverings that the sun was already up.

I stood and stretched, not missing the caress of his eyes along my body. “Okay, but promise me you’ll tell me the story when we get upstairs?”

Even though I was desperate to know more about what had happened, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to hearing about Worth in a relationship with someone else. Maybe it was because I knew it didn’t end well and I was waiting for the part where someone got hurt. Or maybe it was because I’d started to give a shit about this guy who was turning out to be more than I’d expected, more than I’d given him credit for.

Worth narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re not diving in that skimpy suit, are you?”

I extended the stretch and waggled my hips a little. “Why? You scared it’ll distract you from all the pretty coral?”

I expected him to scoff, but instead, he scraped his bottom teeth along his top lip before saying, “Maybe. I can’t deny you’re sexy as fuck.”

My face suddenly felt warm. “Thank you. But I’ll remind you about the fancy wet suit you bought. So, yes, I’m going to wear the Speedo because it’s much easier to pull the shortie over it than trunks. But you won’t be able to perv on me while we’re diving.”