The Billionaire’s Kitten

But what made the dinner really enjoyable was the conversation. Not just because Gray’s mom was easy to talk to, completely unpretentious and kind, but also because Gray himself is a charmer. That deep blue gaze can be forbidding, but it can also worm its way into your heart, making shivers go down your spine, your insides growing mushy and soft.

“Is it true?” I asked softly. “Is that really true?”

“You bet it is!” exclaimed Rhonda, patting her lips delicately with a napkin. “It’s absolutely true. Tell her, Gray.”

The big man shot his mom a look before swinging that penetrating gaze to me.

“It’s true,” he ground out. “I was kicked out of boarding school for helping another student allegedly cheat on an exam.”

I gasped.

“But it doesn’t sound like what you did was cheating,” I protested. “You were helping a disabled student take his test. You were just reading the questions to him, he was blind!”

The big man shrugged.

“It didn’t matter, the administration was out to get me,” he ground out. “They thought I was feeding my buddy the answers, not just reading the questions to him. So I was kicked out,” he shrugged. “No biggie.”

Rhonda, however, wasn’t done.

“Your father and I were never so proud of you for standing up to that headmaster,” she proclaimed. “Dad and I always knew you would do the right thing,” she said. “We thought about bringing granddaddy in to appeal the expulsion, but you didn’t want it.”

Gray shrugged again.

“I know what I did was right. I know I didn’t cheat. And guess what? Who the fuck cares? The school sucked, I got into my first choice college anyways.”

I bit my lip.

“But it must have been hard,” I said softly, my gaze full of compassion. “You were what, sixteen? It must have been really hard to go through the process.”

Gray shrugged those big shoulders again, but those blue eyes were shuttered.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he ground out. “That place closed its doors five years later because they were such a mess. What goes around, comes around, you know?”

And I nodded slowly. There was more depth to this man than I’d originally thought. First, he’d volunteered to help a disabled friend. That was kindness that you don’t see every day, Gray could have been off partying but instead, he chose to give up his free time for a blind person.

Second, the big man was incredibly independent, even as a teen. Because yeah, he’d been falsely accused and had to pay the price. His powerful family could have stepped in, they could have gotten him re-instated, but he turned them down. Even back then, Gray was a man, he was ready to take the consequences, deserved or not.

And I felt something well up inside unexpectedly. It was admiration for the billionaire. I admired the way he’d stuck to his guns, the way he ran his life, the way that he wasn’t after revenge of any sort, because that would have been petty and lame.

Instead, he’d moved on, and look at the success it’d brought. Gray was a CEO now, a hotel king, and suddenly, I was even more interested than before. He was someone to know, someone to admire, and I shot a warm smile his way when Rhonda interrupted, placing her hand on mine.

“Enough about my son, you have a lifetime to get to know him. Tell me about you,” she invited, delicately cutting her meat. I glanced at the silverware, emblazoned with the letter “C.” God, how to start? My family was nothing like theirs, and the truth probably wouldn’t do any good.

“Um, there isn’t much to know,” I hedged. “We’re just regular people.”

Rhonda laughed again, patting her mouth with a napkin.

“Regular is good,” she said with a warm smile. “We like normal around here, don’t we Gray? Now honey, tell me a little about you. I’d like to get to know my new daughter-in-law.”

Oh shit, there was no way out of this.

“Well,” I began slowly. “My family is in the service industry. We’re all very into service.”

That was good. It made it sound like we were into doing charity, and not charity cases ourselves.

Rhonda nodded approvingly.

“What kind of service?” she asked. “Is your dad a doctor, working in a children’s ward? Or is your mom a lawyer for a non-profit?”

Those sounded like great jobs, but the truth is that my dad is a janitor at a neighborhood restaurant, and my mom a waitress there. How to tell that to someone who probably had caviar for breakfast and champagne at lunch? How to explain that we diluted our OJ to make the juice last longer, that my mom cut coupons non-stop so that we could make it to the next month?

So instead, I hedged.

“Um, no, not exactly service like that,” I mumbled, looking down at my hands. “More of the food-variety kind.”