The Billionaire Next Door (Billionaire Bad Boys #2)(14)

Adonis turned his head but refocused his attention on the crackers.

“These taste about the same as what’s in your bowl,” she said, giving up and handing over a Ritz. Then she ate one. Heaven. Buttery, salty heaven. “Well, maybe not.”

She finished her soup, sharing more crackers with Adonis, her mind on Tag and the way he’d looked at her when she suggested that women liked to brush his hair. It made her laugh when she remembered it right afterward, and it made her laugh now as she washed the mug and spoon and put them into the dishwasher.

Tag was ridiculously outside of her playing field, though, right? He was massive, both wide and tall, had a thick but well-groomed beard, and longer hair than she’d ever seen on anyone—male or female. She hadn’t been far off with the Tarzan zinger, either. He looked like a trail guide in a jungle, or maybe a wrestler on television, grimacing and flexing until the veins in his neck popped out.

She laughed aloud but it paired with her fanning her face. Because imagining Tag oiled up and shirtless…or sweat-covered in a safari outfit… Those were warming thoughts indeed.

Two months wasn’t that long to be without someone, but it was longer if she counted back to the last time she and Shaun had sex. She had done the math once, and the halting of “love you, Rach” and the death of their sex life coincided. They also coincided with the hiring of a cute girl in the design department who had purple streaks in her hair.

That chest-crushing feeling returned. Rachel had trusted him. With her heart, and as a friend. Shaun taking credit for her hard work was reason enough for her to end things. But there was a sting of embarrassment when she thought about how clueless she’d been for so long. How much she’d trusted him—how well she thought she knew him.

Never could she have guessed underneath that neatly buttoned shirt and penchant for double espressos was a man who would step on her head as he climbed the ladder instead of lifting her alongside him.

Adonis chuffed, snapping her out of her reverie.

“What’s it matter, right, boy?” she asked his gray eyes. He chuffed again. “Want to go for a walk?”

He danced in a circle and she smiled.

The apartment and dog were more than a step toward independence; they were a step in helping her deal with unresolved feelings over Shaun.

This time, for good.

*



Biceps straining, Tag blew out a breath from his mouth and pushed the bar up to his best friend’s smiling face. He made it, and then because he knew Lucas was waiting to catch him quitting early, lowered it to do another.

Lucas laughed. “Oh man. He’s doing it.” He looked to his right, talking to someone Tag couldn’t see. “He hates to lose money.” Then he bent over Tag’s face—Tag’s sweaty, red face by the feel of it—and readied his hands. “Just say when, you *. I’ll take it off your hands.”

Smug bastard.

With a grunt of achievement, and a hell of a lot of effort, Tag pushed the bar to the brackets and dropped it with a heavy clang! A few of the guys in the gym clapped their hands, and Lucas swore under his breath. By the time Tag sat up and rested his spent arms on his knees, a folded twenty-dollar bill landed on the bench between his legs.

“I have to quit giving you my money.” Lucas sat on the leg machine across from Tag. He tipped a water bottle to his mouth and drank. “You probably keep the cash you win from me in a big bin and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.”

Tag laughed and reached for his towel, wiping his brow. He’d been friends with Luc for going on a dozen years. They’d met in high school when Lucas moved here in his junior year, and learned they’d had the same thing on their minds then and now.

Girls.

Even when Luc went to college, they still met and picked up girls—competing to collect the most phone numbers. Then Lucas won the lottery. He won Gena, sassy black-haired bombshell, now wife and mother of two to Lucas’s rug rats. Gena took no shit and was as cool as they came.

The competition for phone numbers stopped for both of them then. Luc because he was gone for Gena, and Tag because there was no game if he was playing alone. Tag settled for the more sophisticated, but no less rewarding, picking up a girl for dinner and sex—one or both. Usually both.

“Been a while.” Lucas tugged his earbuds from his ears and looped them around his neck. He was rarely without them. As a music producer, he was often listening to either his musicians’ latest albums or potential new clients.

“Since I took your money?” Tag asked, shoving the twenty into the pocket of his shorts.

“Since I saw you. Is it because of work, or because you can’t be around my smoking hot wife without dying of envy?” Lucas grinned, an idiot in love. His dark hair was short and spiky, but he used to wear it longer and shaggier. The tattoo of a dragon on his leg hadn’t gone anywhere since college. He may be a husband and dad, but Luc was also a badass. It was admirable.

“The last one.” Tag stood, his arms feeling like limp noodles, and did a few windmills. While he was teasing his buddy, it hadn’t been a line. A part of him was envious of Luc, who’d managed to have a beautiful family and thriving career and keep his fun-guy personality. “Well, that and I’m tired of turning down Gena’s advances. She loves me.”

Lucas chuckled, taking the ribbing good-naturedly. They both knew Gena too well to believe that lie for a second. She was one of Tag’s favorite people, but probably because she gave him more shit than Lucas, and that was saying something.