The Billionaire Next Door (Billionaire Bad Boys #2)(27)

He’d been so sure she liked him. Now he wasn’t so sure. What was up with her? Maybe there was something wrong with him. He’d never been off-kilter when it came to women. Hell, women occupied his mind only up to a certain extent. He wasn’t one to fantasize and space out and lose sleep over a woman. But Rachel…He couldn’t shake her. He couldn’t quit thinking about her. What her touch did to him. No other touch had ever been as welcome as her tentative fingers brushing his abdomen. Damned if he could figure out why.

“Seriously, what’s going on? You look…weird.” His oldest brother was frowning now.

“No, he doesn’t.” Merina touched Reese’s hand and rolled her eyes. “You don’t look weird, Tag. You look”—she assessed him, and he squirmed in his chair, worried she could read his thoughts—“consumed.”

He was consumed. With the woman he even now couldn’t shove out of his psyche.

“Is it the bar project? It’s a massive overhaul you’ve taken on.”

“I can handle it,” he grumbled. He ground his back molars together. Did Merina assume the project was too much for him?

“I wasn’t implying you couldn’t.” Her eyebrows tilted. Then her eyes narrowed and he could practically feel her reaching for the real reason for his lacking attention span.

“Yes,” he blurted, taking the out Merina had offered and running for the goal line. “The bars are all I think about.”

“I approach problems the same way. Completely buried until I work my way out.” She sipped from her mug. “Have you considered taking a mental break? Shift your attention to something else for a while?”

Like Rachel?

“He has no time to take a break,” Reese said, formal tone set to lock, but his eyes glimmered with challenge.

“I’m not taking a break.”

Reese straightened and fiddled with a cuff link. “You could, you know. The board isn’t concerned with GRS.”

He was doing that on purpose. He knew damn well Tag wouldn’t take a break while his department lost money no matter how the board rated it.

“The board isn’t concerned with your shitty racquetball skills either, but it doesn’t stop you from trying to beat me.”

“Okay, boys,” Merina said with a chuckle. “If you want to get them out and measure them, I’ll turn away.” She gestured at Reese’s pants.

The quip earned a hearty laugh from Reese, who put his arm around his soon-to-be wife and kissed her square on the lips. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Again, Tag was hit with the strangest desire to have what his brother had. A woman at his side, good-naturedly jabbing him. A woman who made an effort to be involved and informed about his work. The desire was disconcerting and threw him so far off, he might not find on again.

What Tag needed was to get laid. Preferably by the cute blonde with the dimples currently mangling his brains. “I’m done if we’re done.”

Reese, not taking his eyes from Merina, said, “We’re done. Close the door on your way out.”

Tag did as asked, leaving the Crane with no real destination in mind.

First, he stopped in to Andromeda, said hi to Bree, and ordered a beer. After pretending he wasn’t looking for her blond cohort, he casually slipped into the conversation the question of whether Rachel was working today. Bree had narrowed her eyes and offered a knowing smirk when she’d said, “Rach has the day off.”

At the lobby of Crane Tower, he considered another beer, figuring he could loiter until she walked by with Adonis. Which sounded pathetic. Sternly, he reminded his balls he wasn’t a fifteen-year-old any longer.

“Come on, man,” he scolded himself, standing halfway between the bar and the hallway leading to the elevators. Indecision wasn’t typically his MO.

She’d turned him inside out, and he had no idea why. Although it could be argued he’d never had a woman behave almost scared of him the way Rachel was. He didn’t get the impression she feared him or his actions, though. More like she didn’t trust herself with him.

Which intrigued him.

What was she afraid might happen?

He had a big personality. No problem pushing. But in her case, he hadn’t wanted to push her away. Which was a new approach for him. He’d never had to be careful. Either a woman wanted him or she didn’t. And if she didn’t, there were always more. Hell, there were plenty more. He’d clocked a leggy, black-haired, mocha-skinned beauty at the bar watching him the second he’d set foot inside the lobby.

But he didn’t want the leggy woman currently staring at him over her wineglass. He wanted a cute, dimpled blonde.

Worse, the situation with Rachel had created a niggling in the back of his skull that felt a lot like doubt. His gut wasn’t telling him anything, and his people instincts were failing him miserably.

There was only one of two foreseeable paths to take in this case. Either seal the deal with his neighbor or forget about her. Those two choices left him with no choice at all.

“Fuck.” He used the word to propel him to the elevators and to Rachel’s apartment. He wasn’t going to give up or back away from what he wanted. And what he wanted was Rachel.

He had come up with a plan earlier today to involve her in his bar-rehab project. She’d had a lot of opinions the evening she’d stopped by his place unannounced, and he was a man in need of another opinion. Hers, preferably.