Banking the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 2)(96)

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it gently. There was more to tell, but he’d tell me in his own time if he wanted too. Knowing that much was enough. “Thanks for telling me, Thatch.”

He stared out the window while his thumb rubbed soothing circles over my hand. “Thanks for being you, Cassie.”

Eventually, he glanced over at me and smirked. “And thanks for defending my honor.”

I grinned. “Thanks for letting me go all Fight Club on someone and for stopping by McDonald’s on the way home.”

He chuckled. “You’re hungry?”

“So hungry,” I groaned. “The Frogstown Police have shit snacks in their break room.”

“You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me. You were in their break room?”

“I’m not kidding about that or the fact that I’m hungry.” I snapped at the windshield and held my stomach. “Get moving, baby. I’ve got a Big Mac with my name on it.”





“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kline said as he and Georgia walked up to us arm in arm. “You brought the pig? To this?”

“Hey! Watch it, Big Dick. Not everyone’s animal is an *,” Cassie retorted.

“Um, excuse me?” Georgia cut in, and I tuned the women out.

“We couldn’t get our usual sitter,” I told Kline ridiculously. He looked like he was constipated with amusement—f*cking dying to get it out, but it was all backed up in there.

We’d just gotten back from my parents’ house last night, but we’d both promised Maureen we’d be here, at her charity Black Light Slide event, months ago. Of course, we’d responded separately, to two very separate invitations. Now, we were a real “we.” Living together. Engaged. Fuck, I’d been the one to do it, to demand that it happen, and part of me still couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

Two serial daters with nearly blank relationship histories were engaged. To each other. I’d have been tempted to call an exorcist if I weren’t f*cking thrilled to be chained to this devil.

“Georgie!” Georgia’s dad, Dick, called from the opposite side of the slide. People filled the closed-down street, and only the bright lights of several light trees on the perimeter made it so you could see anything. The whole thing about a black-light event is that it needs to happen at night.

“Hey, Dad!” Georgia yelled back. We all waved like little puppets in time with one another.

Dick looked to us and back again, trying to find an easy way to get around the slide. It ran nearly an entire block in length, and people clogged the only available space along its sides. When seconds turned into a minute of trying to navigate the people and stuff around him, Dick gave up and just climbed right f*cking through it, sloshing the glowing water with his feet and ignoring anyone who called after him.

I didn’t even try to stop my laugh as Georgia grumbled, “Oh, for f*ck’s sake.”

Kline wrapped his arm around her shoulder as her mom, Savannah, followed in Dick’s footsteps, clad in nothing but a string bikini. Cassie tucked her face into my chest to hide her laughter. She might have even snorted, but when I looked at her, she pointed down at Phil.

“It was the pig.”

“Hey there, Kline!” Dick greeted with excitement, slapping him on the shoulder first, then his back, and then finally pulling him into a tight man-hug. Their little father-son-in-law bromance never got old.

“Thatch, Cassie,” he acknowledged when he finally released Kline, and then wrapped Georgia in a hug. “This is some shindig, huh? Not Maur’s usual charity scene.”

I glanced around the neon spectacle. “Yeah, I don’t think the crusty upper-class crowd is happy about it, but it seems to be a big hit.”

There were more people here than I’d ever seen at one of these things, and the atmosphere was really f*cking cool. Glowing shirts and neon-looking water all the way down a giant Slip’N Slide that had to be five hundred feet long. There was nothing adults—especially ones like me—liked more than acting like a big f*cking kid. Doing it for the good of someone else was even better.

“Thank f*ck,” Dick snapped. “Only so many times I can sit through one of those f*cking hoity-toity dinners.”

“Dad!” Georgia scolded.

“Hey, I’m with Dick,” I said, and Cassie agreed, “Me too.”

I raised an innuendo-filled eyebrow. Savannah noticed. “Wow. There’s some really great sexual energy between you two.”

I smiled, but Cassie didn’t stop there. She never did. “That’s because we’re banging like bunnies.” When other people got embarrassed, Cassie became emboldened. It was so f*cking sexy.

“Fantastic!” Savannah shouted. Dick held out his knuckles for me to give him a pound, and Georgia dropped her head into her hands. “Why me, God?”

“Baby,” Kline said through a laugh, tucking her into his chest.

“Where’s your mom, Kline?” Savannah asked. “I want to say hi.”

“She’s here somewhere,” he muttered. All our eyes scanned the surrounding crowd to see if we could find her, but really, it was like looking for a little piece of conservative fluff in a giant lint ball.

“Oh!” Cassie pointed out, completely defying the odds. “There she is.”