The Billionaire's Lockdown Baby - Holly Rayner Page 0,3

latter. Yeah, we’d had a fair amount to drink—a full bottle of champagne between us—but Aubrey wasn’t drunk. Buzzed, maybe. But still sober enough to be making fun of me.

“As opposed to you. You don’t do anything in your free time. At least, nothing that makes you happy,” she continued, looking down at her plate as she threw that line out.

Well, I couldn’t argue with her there. Though that had never meant I didn’t at least try. It was the follow-through where I struggled.

“Excuse me, I do plenty of things in my free time, and it all makes me happy,” I said quickly.

Her brown eyes shot up to meet mine, one eyebrow raised an inch above the other. “Damon,” she said seriously. “You forget that I control your schedule. I see how you pack every day with work. You don’t leave time for anything fun. And no, working out in your home gym does not count, before you try using that one.”

Okay, so she had me there. She did control my schedule. She knew every day down to the second—at least, as far as the office went.

“You don’t know what I do once I get home,” I pointed out, the thought moving right from my brain to my mouth before I remembered that she did actually know a whole lot of what I did when I went home, too.

Because she scheduled a lot of that for me, as well. She planned the nights I had to go out and meet clients, the dinners I had to attend with business associates. She even booked my dates most of the time, making the reservations and having flowers sent to girls afterward. She knew when I had social engagements that I felt were a waste of time—and she heard me complaining about them. She knew that I almost never took a day entirely for myself.

Aubrey knew exactly what every second of my life was like.

And at that moment, the air went out of her, her eyes going down to the ground and the flirty energy she’d been exhibiting fleeing. If she’d been a balloon, she had just deflated. If she’d been a puppy, she’d just been shouted at.

She wasn’t either of those things. She was my trusted assistant, and one of my closest friends. She was my dose of humanity on the days when I had too much tech and business in my head.

Okay, she was my dose of humanity every day. The only real consistent in my life. The sole and only person I could count on to treat me like any other person, rather than someone who needed to be handled with care. We saw each other more than we saw anyone else, and that meant that I noticed the sudden change in her mood. Something had taken the confident, sassy girl who had been talking to me a few minutes ago and brought her crashing right back down to earth.

Without thinking about it, I reached out and brushed my fingertips along the back of her hand. “Aub, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Her eyes traveled back up to meet mine, her lower lip trembling a bit, and I watched her make a gargantuan effort to stop it and straighten her shoulders. She lifted her chin, tipped her head a bit, and gave me a smirk.

It was a wobbly one, though. A smile that wasn’t quite a smile—and one that looked like it might dissolve into something else if I said the wrong thing.

Weird.

Then she visibly strengthened and blew out the breath she’d evidently been holding.

“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all. So, what are we having for dessert, boss?”

Chapter 3

Aubrey

I marched up to the sink in the incredibly overdone bathroom, slammed my palms down on the marble countertop, and leaned forward until my nose was only an inch from the mirror, staring at my reflection. Willing that girl in the mirror to be better. Willing her to be braver.

“Girl, it is now or never,” I muttered to my reflection. “This is your chance, and if you don’t take advantage of it, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. You’ve got the speech. You’ve got enough champagne in your blood to fuel an entire rocket. You’ve got him alone and out of the office. Get. It. Together.”

The last three words came out in a growl, and I narrowed my eyes at myself, trying to somehow send energy and bravery and backbone to myself.

Yeah, I know it sounded stupid. But I’d