Page 9 of Oops I Fell For The Billionaire Next Door

"My dad's a high school math teacher. Thirty-four years. Still uses an overhead projector. Calls my phone a 'device' with genuine suspicion. When I told them about the sale he went quiet for a really long time, then asked if the tax implications were manageable."

"Tax implications."

"My mom cried. My dad asked about taxes. That's their whole marriage."

Something eases in my chest. The picture of him shifts. Not a man who grew up wealthy and bought his way into everything. A man who built it from nothing, same as me, and ended up so far from where he started that the people who raised him can't bridge the distance.

"My parents met in a church kitchen in East Vancouver." The words come out before I decide to share them. "My dad was washing dishes. My mom told him he was doing it wrong. Took the sponge out of his hand, showed him the right way, and he fell in love on the spot."

"Smart man."

"He was. He used to say that Maman didn't save him from dirty dishes. She saved him from doing everything alone." My thumb traces the rim of my mason jar. "They built the restaurant together. Every wall, every menu, every twelve-hour shift. When the landlord sold the building, my dad stood in the empty dining room for an hour before he locked the door. Then went home, made my mom coffee, and started planning what came next."

"What came next?"

"Her catering business. His support. Same partnership, different building." The tightness in my throat is familiar. Comes every time I talk about them. "He died in the restaurant kitchen. Heart attack. Six months later the landlord sold the building. My mother stood in that empty dining room alone. Locked the door. Went home and started her catering business because stopping wasn't an option."

Beck's hand moves across the table. Stops an inch from mine. Waits.

My fingers close the gap. His palm is warm. Rough. Enormous under mine.

"Your wall work," he says quietly. "The stone wall in your garden."

"What about it?"

"You built things that root. Because they took something rootless from your parents and you decided never again."

Nobody has ever said it back to me that simply. Five years of telling people I'm a landscape designer and watching them nod politely. He said it in one sentence. My hand tightens on his.

The rain slows. My wine glass is empty. His coffee is gone. Neither of us moves. His thumb is tracing slow circles on my knuckles, each one sending warmth up my wrist into my arm.

"I should go check the panel. See if anything's salvageable tonight." He stands. The blanket falls off his shoulders. His shirt is still damp, stretched across his chest, and my eyes track the dark hair visible above the neckline.

"I'll walk you out."

We step onto the porch. The rain has thinned to mist. My garden beds stretch below, the stone wall running the length of the south border. Moonlight breaks through the clouds.

"Your wall work is perfect." He's looking at the stonework, not at me. "Dry stacked?"

"Every stone hand placed."

He turns. Full attention. The way he looks at things he's trying to understand. We're close already, the porch narrow, two bodies' width at best. But he takes a half step forward and the air between us compresses to nothing.

My hand is flat on his chest before I decide to put it there, pressing against wet cotton and warm muscle underneath.

His breath catches. I feel it under my palm. Those whiskey eyes drop to my mouth.

"Tell me to go home." His voice is low, rough.

"No."

The kiss happens against my garden wall.

He steps us off the porch, backward, my feet leaving the wooden deck for wet grass. His mouth finds mine and the world narrows to the taste of him, coffee and rain. My spine meets stone. Cool rock against my back, his body burning hot against my front. One of his hands cradles the back of my head, fingers in my braids, protecting my skull from the wall. The other grips my hip. Massive. His hand spans from my waist to the top of my thigh.

My body arches into him. Every inch of contact feels deliberate, earned, inevitable. His tongue slides against mine and a sound comes out of me that I've never made outside of a bedroom, low and raw.

"Inside." I say it against his mouth.