The Billionaire's Pretend Girlf - Leslie North Page 0,3

bathroom attack,” Daniel said, pushing himself to standing. Once he headed for the towels beneath the sink cupboard, Jackie stopped him.

“Don’t. This is my fault. I’ll clean up. You don’t worry about a thing.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s mostly my fault.” He handed her a towel and grabbed one for himself. “See? We can both do it.”

She smiled wryly at him, knotting her towel in the dip in her breasts before heading over to the bathtub. She pulled the drain, the bubbles creating a vortex as they swirled away.

“I don’t mean to keep you from whatever you have going on,” Jackie said, glancing at him shyly. He thought he caught the faintest tinge of pink in her cheeks. So tough girl Jackie was secretly embarrassed beneath the façade. Somehow, it all added up to an impossibly sexy equation.

Not just because she was all woman, with enough tattoos to make him want to spend a few hours scrutinizing them. But because she’d somehow managed to attract him through little notes over the past six months…and then wasn’t afraid to defend herself in the nude with a Grecian urn.

Little things like that made him think Jackie was the type of woman he could enjoy spending some time with.

But it was a non-option.

Daniel was smart enough to know that he didn’t have the time for anything more than a fling. And Jackie, well…

Jackie was his house sitter. And that’s how she needed to stay.

2

Jackie wasn’t sure her heart would ever stop pounding.

It was the worst mixture of everything. Shock at being found in the most vulnerable position—nude in the water—combined with humiliation at the person finding her being her technical boss. What made it all worse—like extra super double worse—was the fact that Daniel Trent was easily the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen from within a hundred-foot radius.

And that was even counting the time she saw Trent Reznor, her girlhood crush, from the fifth row at a concert.

Every inch of her tingled with awareness the longer Daniel wiped up the floor at her side. And dammit, she was still technically naked. It was like Daniel had read her thoughts, because he got to his feet and tossed the towel in the wicker laundry basket nearby, saying, “I’ll let you get dressed. You must be wanting to put some clothes on.”

Not unless you’re willing to take yours off. She rolled her lips inward, like it might help prevent the thought from escaping in spoken form. She shouldn’t think of her employer like that, but his handsomeness made it hard not to. His business look, with rumpled khaki dress pants and light blue button up under sexily tousled dirty blond hair, spoke to her in a way she didn’t entirely understand.

As a full-time house sitter and a full-time student, she didn’t have time for dating or romance. And it was not like Daniel would ever want either of those things with her. He was the type of wealthy that meant he probably wiped his ass with people like her—the unfortunate souls who had to house-sit to make ends meet. People who, in fact, had to house-sit just to have a place to lay her head at night. Since it was a full-time job for her, there was no point in paying for an apartment. She just had to schedule things carefully so that she went straight from one job to the next.

But now that Daniel was home early, well…she was formally homeless, yet again.

“I guess I’m just glad you burst into my bath time at the tail end as opposed to the beginning,” she said, trying to feign a level of casual she absolutely didn’t feel. “Then I would have really felt slighted.”

Daniel laughed as he left the bathroom. “I’ll be out in the living room. Just come find me whenever you’re ready.”

“Sure thing. Thanks.” She waved at his retreating figure, then scolded herself as he tugged the door shut. What is your problem, Jackie?

At least that was done with. Now she could definitely say she had a new worst moment of her adult life. Being walked in on during a luxurious bath wasn’t bad enough—no, it had to be the bathtub’s owner, who she’d nearly attacked with a vase. She was lucky he was giving her time to get dressed before kicking her out. But he would be kicking her out, and even if he did it nicely, it wouldn’t change the fact that she had nowhere to go.

She had no idea what to