Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1)(75)

I shook my head in frustration.

He laughed some more.

“I’m gonna run to the restroom, guys,” Will excused himself, fading into the crowd fairly quickly.

Thatch nodded and smiled, taking Will’s leave as an opportunity to shit talk.

“But, really, I guess that’s the same as always. It’s just the reason that’s changed, right? Instead of work, it’s the mystic *.”

“Thatch.”

“I get it, man. Sometimes your dick just gets caught in the snare of a good snatch. Like a vise grip, am I right?”

“Thatch, listen.”

“How is Miss Georgia? Almost done with your ass and looking—”

Eyes to the door, I only heard the first half of his sentence—thank God—because, just as I knew she would, the object of my affection walked in looking like sex on legs right then. Leather and lace and enough beauty to make me think my earlier panic about kids was actually the best idea I’d ever had. Her blonde hair was styled wild, just how I liked it, and I could see the blue topaz of her eyes shining from across the room despite their failure to meet mine.

And arm in arm with her? The face of her profile, a woman I could only surmise was the infamous Cassie Phillips. I’d heard a laundry list of antics and anecdotes featuring Georgia’s best girl, but I had yet to have the privilege of meeting her.

Fuck.

The web of lies was starting to look more like a convoluted clusterf*ck of what are the goddamn odds? We’d each put our friends as our profile pictures—a scenario I should have predicted but absolutely had not—and now, I had to sit through an evening where any second this mess could brilliantly blow up in my face.

Out of time and patience, I turned to Thatch in a flash, and when I did, I led with my fist.

“Ouch,” he said through a smile, rubbing his shoulder teasingly.

“Fuck, Thatch, f*cking listen to me.”

He mocked me with wide eyes and cupped his hands around his ears.

I considered hitting him again, this time for real, but with a glance in the girls’ direction, I knew I didn’t have time.

“The girl in the picture from the TapNext profile, the one you took it upon yourself to—”

“Traumatize.”

I nodded. “Right. Well, I’ve been talking to her.”

“Behind the lovely Georgie’s back?” he asked in faux outrage. Regardless of his mocking, I could tell he was curious. Talking to two women at once wasn’t like me, and when it came to these “two,” he didn’t know the half of it. And I didn’t have the f*cking time or means to explain.

One quick glance showed the women and Will together, hugging and laughing and all too close to heading this way.

I closed my eyes briefly to gain patience. He’d have to wait to hear how twisted my truth had become because that talk required more than fifteen seconds and several glasses of scotch.

“I’ve been talking to her ever since, and she’s here. She’s getting ready to come over here, right now, and she’s gonna be doing it with Georgie.”

With her? Ha! Fuck! More like, it is her.

“Well, f*ck me,” he said with a smile, his eyes searching mine in an effort to figure me out.

“Your picture is on that profile. You need to pretend to know her,” I urged.

He paused for a beat, but he couldn’t miss how important this was to me. Whether he agreed or understood or wanted to play along, or not, Thatch would always have my back. When you pulled back all of the prank-pulling, shit-talking layers, he was unmistakably one of the best kinds of people. “Got it.”

I took air all the way into my lungs for the first time in the last two minutes and turned to greet my girl.

But she wasn’t there. She and her friend had disappeared, leaving only her brother Will in their wake.

As Will made it to us, shaking his head, Thatch leaned over and added with a whisper, “And all this after I gargoyle-dicked her?” He whistled low. “You must have more game than I thought.”

“What’s up?” I asked Will, pointedly ignoring Thatch and hoping my face managed to do the same.

“Who knows, man? Hell if I can understand women.”

When he provided no further information, I was sure my eyes tried to crawl all the way inside his head.

“Oh,” he said, turning from the bar to find my inappropriately intense gaze. “They’re in the bathroom.”

I nodded woodenly in understanding, and Thatch nudged me as a result.

“You gotta lighten up,” he whispered, turning me to the bar and flagging down the bartender. “Order a drink, for f*ck’s sake, and calm down.”

I nodded again because I knew he was right, and it seemed to be the only action I could successfully complete at the time.

“Macallan,” I muttered, knowing he’d make sure my order got to someone who actually made the drinks. Ordering directly was too complicated for me right now.

“Yeah, man,” he said, smirking. “I know you drink Macallan. Macallan and lime, every day, every night for years now.”

The cords of my throat tightened in frightened reflex. “No lime.”

“No lime?”

I shook my head, feeling the tension drain from my shoulders a little at the memory of my sweet, doped up girl. “Georgie’s allergic.”