Mr. Hot Grinch (Alphalicious Billionaires Boss 3)

I head out to the backyard. It’s quiet back here since it’s late. The sky is a wash of black overhead, but there aren’t any stars I can see. I wonder if they’re there or if they aren’t out because it’s sometimes hard to tell with the lights from the city. I think it’s cloudy, but I can’t be sure.

As I perch on the top step of the deck, I have this sense of being super small and insignificant, swallowed up and dwarfed by the sky above. Those stars, when they are out, just look like little pinpricks, but they’re likely huge in the sky. What do I look like to them? Do I even really matter at all?

Okay, I didn’t come out here to have an existential crisis, so I slide my finger along the bottom of the phone. Luke doesn’t have a password on his phone, which is weird. Don’t most people? Maybe this is also his way of showing me he trusts me. A phone is a personal thing, and I wouldn’t let just anyone touch mine.

I let my finger rest on the screen until it goes dark. Then I flick it open and do the same thing again. I repeat it a few times before I get frustrated with myself. Just freaking call them already. Luke probably wants his phone back sometime this century.

I swipe the screen again and go to press the phone icon. I mean to barely look, type in the number, and hit call, all before I can lose my nerve, but stabbing at the screen doesn’t produce good results. The first time, I open some calendar thing right by the phone icon, and the second time, I accidentally open his email. I’m about to exit the app and try again when the title of the third email down the list catches my eye because it’s all in capitals from someone named Ashley Johnson.

MAX, PLEASE READ. IMPORTANT!!!!

I know I’m being snoopy, but I click the email. It still hasn’t hit me yet that the first word in the title was a name, but it becomes more than clear when I read the brief email.

Max,

We’re seriously behind right now, and I have a bunch of problem areas I need you to go over. No, don’t tell me to pick and choose. You’re the head of things and the one running the show, so you make the decisions. The last time I tried to delegate, it was a disaster. I booked a meeting for you tomorrow afternoon. Please be there, or I’m going to lose my mind. You don’t want me to lose my mind, do you? That would be really bad for you because you’d be down a secretary. So please. Show up.

Thanks,

Ashley.

Her signature is underneath. Why the heck did Luke end up with an email for someone named Max? Where have I heard that name before? And why is my shirt suddenly damp under the armpits?

I should just close the email and call my parents, but something else comes to mind. Something that just doesn’t make sense. I exit out of the inbox on the phone and scroll down the list into the sent messages. I click one and bring up the first one I find before scrolling down to the end of it, and yes, sure enough, there’s a signature at the bottom of the email.

Max Stone.

As in Maxwell Stone.

As in the Maxwell Stone that my parents wanted me to freaking marry?

I drop the phone like it’s a tarantula that just fell from the sky in all its hairy, spidery glory. This doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t make any freaking sense. How did Luke get Max’s phone? Does he know him? Is that even his email? What the heck is going on?

I’m breathing so shallowly that in just a second, bright spots blur my vision. I blink hard and force myself to inhale and exhale, then do it all over again. Calm. I have to stay calm. I have to go back into the house and ask Luke what the heck is going on because it doesn’t make any sense.

But then he’ll know I looked at his phone. Then again, who gives a shit if he knows? Get in there and ask him!

Right, I don’t have a choice. I’m so distracted that I leave the phone where it fell. I don’t even think about it. I gather steam with every step I take, and by the time I’m back in the living room, I plant myself in front of Luke. He’s back to watching sports again, so I block the TV and cross my arms. I don’t try and calm down because there’s no calming down now. I’m so mad that my voice comes out like a shuddery hiss that sounds ghostly and far away, even to me.