Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(8)

Her nose crinkles, and then her smile spreads wider. “Are you flirting with me, West from Everywhere?”

“Are you dancing with me, Daisy from Right Here?”

“What can I say? I love to dance.” She winks. “And flirt. You gonna strip, or what?”

Once more—fuck it.

Why the hell wouldn’t I strip?

I step back, pull my polo out of my jeans while I keep doing my best to dance. You want a mountain of boulders moved, I’m your man. Need a makeshift linebacker in a pick-up game of football in the park, I’m the first guy you call. You want a striptease—can’t say that’s ever been my style.

But I’m doing this anyway. Slowly giving her a peek at my abs. Tugging my jeans down at one side, like I’ve seen on the cover of so many of my sisters’ romance novels.

Her pupils go dark, and she keeps swaying to the music, tilting her head so her unnatural neon red ponytail swishes with the beat too.

“You strip often?” she breathes.

“Couple times a day.”

“Where?”

“Usually my bathroom.”

She tips her head back and laughs, and fuck me, that happy, rich laughter makes me want to get a hearing aid so I can soak in the sound fully in both ears. She’s curvy and bold and bright, and she’s rendered my balls mute.

“I think I like you, West from Everywhere,” she says.

I don’t let that go to my head—not the one on my shoulders anyway—because this has first date written on it, and first dates and I don’t get along. “Let’s leave it at that,” I tell her.

She laughs again. Sips her drink. Nods to my stomach. “C’mon, then. Let’s see what else you’ve got.

I’m about to whip the shirt over my head when a loud bang erupts behind us.

I spin and crouch, ready to face danger, and find myself eyeball to eyeball with—fuck.

Imogen Carter.

She’s a crusty one. And meticulous to boot. Julienne Carter-Roderick might’ve officially been in charge of the nursery renovation, but her grandmother stopped by nearly every day to make sure the two-by-fours were straight enough and that none of my small crew were drinking.

Surprised the hell out of me when she hired me to fix a few windowpanes in her solarium after that one-star review Julienne gave me, but she did, and she was even crustier the week I was on her solarium job.

And that sour expression darkening her face is making even the dolphin chandelier above us wince and shrink back.

“Daisy, shut that music off before I have Pierson toss your phone into that abomination of a pool,” she orders without taking her ice blue eyes off me. “Mr. Jaeger, I presume?”

I open my mouth to remind her we’ve met, then realize with people like this, it doesn’t matter. She won’t remember me.

I’m just the hired help.

Much like to the curvy, petite woman behind me, I’m just the stripper.

“Gram-gram!” Daisy kills the music and tucks her phone into her cleavage, though she’s still swaying to the beat. “If I knew you wanted to party, I would’ve called up ol’ Piersy and told him to find you some club clothes.” She lifts her glass with a grin. “And did I tell you I closed the Milan deal last week? Summer in Italy, here we come. Woot! Also, a stripper? Nice, Gramalicious. I expected way less of you!”

“You’re drunk,” Imogen sniffs.

“Nope, just buzzed and happy.” Daisy tosses herself sideways into one of the low sea blue chairs and drapes her bare, curvy legs over the armrest, which is shaped like a dolphin too, and reaches over her head to deposit the drink on the floor behind her.

Sweet Jesus, she’s flexible.

Another noise has me whipping my head back toward Imogen, and this time, I don’t miss the people behind her.

A tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man in a suit carrying Imogen’s ivory purse. A brick shithouse with dark blond hair and a scowl who looks like a bodyguard. And Stanley Chihuahua, who’s now carrying a baby carrier that’s the source of the noise.

“Whatcha drinkin’, Granny-boo?” Daisy asks. “Alessandro, get The Dame a cognac. She’s about to stroke out. Then we can all take a nice, deep, cleansing Moon-breath and be happy again.”

“How drunk is she?” Imogen asks the bodyguard who isn’t moving to get the older woman a drink. Alessandro, I assume.

“She’s not.”

“You’re completely certain?”

“Yes.”

Daisy winks at me, like we’re sharing a secret, except I don’t know if it’s that she’s actually drunk and her bodyguard is lying, or that she’s sober and just trying to get her grandmother’s goat.

But I don’t give two fucks about Daisy and goats.

I give two fucks about the kid in the carrier.

He’s young. Super young. So little, his legs don’t reach the edge of the carrier, and he has little control over his hands as he waves them about, crying his lungs out.

Another lightheaded feeling washes over me as I realize who he is.

He has to be, doesn’t he?

“Nothing better to do on the night we laid your cousin to rest than to throw a party?” Imogen scowls at Daisy, who rolls her eyes, grabs her drink, and sips off it upside down.