The Billionaire's Challenge - Final Google

She picked up the towel and carefully dried her hair, thinking she probably needed a stronger conditioner if she was going to swim more often. The chlorine definitely caused the ends to dry out. She saw movement in the house and realized that the catering crew had arrived and were setting up. She didn’t want to be caught out here in just a bathing suit, so she wrapped the towel around her and padded barefoot back inside.

At the door to the kitchen though, the deep voices stopped her cold.

“Damn, what a gorgeous rack!” she heard Brant say.

The deep laugh made her whole body freeze. “Yeah. Hard to find a rack like that. Impressive, right?”

Both men laughed and she could imagine Reid shaking his head. “Just another piece of meat. Need to keep that in perspective and not lose my head.”

That cold sensation inside of her turned to ice. He wasn’t talking about her, was he? She glanced down, realized that the towel had slipped, revealing her breasts in the bathing suit. Impossible! Reid had never been so crude before.

Shrinking back, horrified that he would refer to her breasts as “a gorgeous rack”, she tried to find some other explanation. Reid wasn’t like that! Nor had he ever treated her as “just another piece of meat”!

“I saw the way you were watching out the window a few minutes ago,” Brant teased. “I noticed the way you were drooling.”

Reid snorted, almost as if he were trying to dismiss his brother’s comments. “As if you weren’t drooling?”

“Yeah, but I prefer to call it salivating instead of drooling. Drooling seems so juvenile.”

Reid chuckled. “Right. Like we’re not acting like complete juvenile idiots over a piece of meat! Get over yourself. We’re both ready for a taste. No use denying it.”

She pulled back even more, disgusted by the possibility of Reid offering to share her. He wouldn’t! He was jealous when some other guy even looked at her! Why would he offer to share her with his brother?!

Impossible!

And yet, those words were so similar to what she’d heard years ago. She shouldn’t be surprised, but she was. Selena was horrified and disgusted. Reid had always treated her so sweetly, always acted like a gentleman.

But that was the way men operated! She knew from painful experience that men like that didn’t think of women as individuals with hearts and souls. They considered women to be conquests. Hadn’t she just been thinking about Reid as a man who liked a challenge? Someone who thrived on overcoming obstacles?

Well, she’d been a small obstacle, hadn’t she? Or maybe she’d been a big one! She clutched at the towel, trying to hide her body as the old insecurities came rushing back. In her mind, she wasn’t standing in the beautiful stone covered patio of Reid’s lovely home. She was back in the frat house, the smell of stale beer and dirty socks surrounding her, making her gag as she listened to the fraternity brothers mock her. And worse, they were throwing empty beer cans at the guy she’d just given her virginity to the previous night. His laughter echoed once again in her mind as “fat girl” and “pathetic conquest” filtered back. Words she’d tried so painfully to banish from her mind.

As she stood there listening to Reid and Brant refer to her as “a piece of meat” and discuss the tastiness of her, all of those insecurities welled up, almost choking her. No longer was she the head of a new and innovative marketing idea, ready to launch her ideas onto the cosmetic world. She was the overweight, insecure college girl who had gone into a frat house thinking that the guy who had invited her had genuinely liked her. That he was willing to overlook her chubby thighs and round stomach. She’d smiled happily that night as she’d entered the dubiously-sacred hallways of the frat house, nervously searching for the guy who had invited her.

This wasn’t happening! Not again! She pulled away, stepping back and almost tripping over her own feet as she tried to hide from the pain lashing at her heart. No! Reid wasn’t like that! And yet, he and his brother continued to joke about different “pieces of meat”, how one was just the same, it only mattered how much careful attention was put into the care of the meat, into the preparation.