Paris with the Billionaire

We go on eating, and then Forrest makes an over-the-top moaning noise, smirking over at me as he chews.

Anxiety twists in my chest for a frantic moment.

Is he making fun of me?

But then I see the goodwill glinting behind his predator’s eyes, the way his smirk brims with genuine understanding and some sort of affection.

Or perhaps I’m projecting, wishing that this stranger felt about me how I’m starting to feel about him.

It’s a girlish crush, I try to tell myself. Nothing more.

“So, who are you, Fiona?” he asks.

I giggle, taking a sip of soda. “That’s a broad question.”

“One of the downsides to being so well-known,” he says, “is that people can learn everything about me with a few taps on their smartphone. I don’t have that luxury.”

“Everything about you is online, is it?” I murmur, trying to make my voice sassy and fun.

It comes out somewhere between shy and confident, a shivering not-so-happy medium.

“Not everything,” he allows. “But you know I’m a real estate mogul. You know I’m a billionaire.”

“And that’s all there is to know about Forrest Ford?”

His smirk widens. He doesn’t take his eyes from me.

I’ve never been looked at like this before, with utter devotion, as though the Eiffel Tower could come crashing down and he still wouldn’t look away.

“What do you want to know?” he asks.

I shrug, feeling like I’ve suddenly been put on the spot. My cheeks go an ever fiercer shade of red. I wish I could control how much I’m blushing, but it feels as though my cheeks are going to erupt, with self-doubt, with all the things Mom and Kelly tell me I never need to torture myself with.

“Um, your favorite color?” I giggle.

“Easy—gray. It hasn’t always been, though.”

“No? What changed your mind?”

“The day my hair went from black to gray, I said to myself, You know what? Fuck this. I’m going to buy a gray sports car, gray suits, gray everything. I’m going to own it.”

“You could dye your hair,” I murmur, even as I scream at myself silently for the sentence.

I don’t want him to dye his hair.

It’s not gray.

It’s steel and iron and the color of sunbaked rock.

There’s something primal about the color of his hair, like his body is turning him the same shade as armor so he can always protect me.

“No, I couldn’t,” he snarls. “A man shouldn’t dye his hair.”

I laugh. “That’s a pretty broad statement.”

He shrugs. “Call me old fashioned if you want, my little firecracker. But I believe there are certain things any self-respecting man should avoid at all costs, and dyeing my hair is at the top of that list.”

I laugh and then force myself to look him fully in the eyes.

“I like your hair color, anyway,” I tell him.

“How old are you, Fiona?” he asks, his voice turning husky.

“Twenty,” I tell him. “Why?”

“I thought we were getting to know each other,” he smirks.

“Okay … then how old are you? And don’t tell me to look it up.”

“Forty-two,” he says.

Something deep inside screams at me to tell him I don’t care about the age gap, that I like the age gap.

An experienced silver wolf like Forrest will always know how to protect me, how to care for me, how to help me grow and develop in my career.

He’ll never let anything happen to our babies.

What the heck am I thinking? Where are these crazy thoughts coming from?

I need to rein them in before I drive myself insane.

“You still haven’t told me who you are, Fiona,” he growls after a pause.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“How can I make it any clearer?” he says. “Who are you, deep down?”

I bite my lip and my knife scratches against my plate. I’m cutting too hard.

I relax my hands and let out a little breath.

Is this really happening right now?

I’m having an impromptu dinner with the owner of the hotel, in the presidential suite.

In Paris.

Surely this has to be a dream.

“I’m a writer,” I murmur. “I guess that’s the best way to describe me. I mean, I haven’t published anything.”

“But you’re dedicated to your craft,” he says, looking at me in that wholly-attentive way again. “You think about it all the time. You never stop thinking about it. It follows you into your dreams.”

I let out an involuntary whimpering noise, a little puff of air that’s full of shock and want and desire and a thousand other unvoiced emotions.

“I guess I’ve never thought about it in those terms before,” I murmur with a tangled giggle. “That doesn’t say much about my writing ability, does it?”

“But I’m right,” he asks.

“Yes,” I tell him. “If I did as much writing as stressing about writing, then I’d have a hundred books written by now.”

“But without your obsessive thinking, would they be worth reading?”

“Oh my God,” I say, laughing, shaking my head.