My Unexpected Vow: California Billionaires Book 2 by Harlow James (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗

And the answer is a big fucking yes. I hate spiders with every fiber of my body.

Waverly reaches out and stops my movements, holding my biceps firmly as I stand in place just long enough for her to twirl around me and check out my neck. But the louder-than-life cackle I hear coming from her was the last thing I was expecting.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” I seethe, spinning around to face her and see her barreled over, struggling to breathe through her laughter.

“Oh… my God!” There are tears leaking from her eyes, but I’m not amused. I reach back and feel my neck, no longer sensing anything moving against it.

“What the fuck is so funny, Waverly? Did you find it? Was it huge?”

“Uh, Mr. Weston? Are you alright?” I spin in the other direction to see Ian watching me with wide-eyes, clearly unsure of what just happened.

My heart continues to slam against my ribs as I take a deep breath and turn back to face Waverly, who seems to finally be getting herself under control.

“Care to explain to me what the hell just happened?”

She blows out a breath, lets out a few more chuckles, and then speaks. “I’m guessing you just thought there was a spider on your neck, right?”

“That’s sure as fuck what it felt like and what I said. Get to the point, Beaverly.”

Waverly holds her hand up in the air, pinching her fingers together as if she’s holding something. “Here is your spider.”

I tilt my head back and forth, wondering what the hell it is that I’m looking at. “I don’t see anything.”

She closes the few feet between us and then holds her pinched fingers closer to my face, where the light catches the bright blonde strand of hair between her index finger and thumb, and I about lose my shit.

“It was your hair?” I barely let out, furious that I just made a complete fool of myself in front of a client over a piece of hair on my neck.

Waverly snorts and then covers her mouth with her free hand.

“You think is so fucking funny, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry.” She laughs again. “But if I had a dollar for every time I thought there was some creature on me only to discover it was a piece of my own hair, I wouldn’t even need my trust fund to live off of.”

I roll my eyes as Ian steps closer to me. “You know, I think it’s just part of being married. I find my wife’s hair all over the place too—the floor, the bathroom sink, in my car. Doesn’t matter what I do, it follows me everywhere. And I may have thought there was something crawling on me a time or two as well.” He grins, but not in the amusing way that Waverly is right now.

Waverly smirks and then wraps her arm around my waist, leaning into me slightly. “See, honey? It’s just something you’re going to have to get used to being a married man now.” She winks up at me with a playful grin on her lips, but it’s the feel of her tits pressed into my chest that is making me lose concentration right now.

I step away from her, straightening my jacket before running a hand through my hair. “The joys of married life.” I glance at her briefly with a furrow on my brow before suggesting to Ian that we get back to work.

Sliding into the booth, I watch Waverly walk away, texting on her phone before she turns her attention back to the club, making more notes on her paper, and waiting patiently for me to finish my meeting. And something about having her near, knowing she’s waiting for me to finish, has me eager to get these papers signed and sealed faster than I’ve ever wanted before, even if the woman’s hair gave me a panic attack that took five years off of my life.

Chapter 7

Waverly

With my tongue darting out of the side of my mouth, I tape the last image to the poster board in front of me and hum out loud in approval. “Perfect.” I lift the board and place it on one of the display stands I have stationed around Hayes’s dining room table, admiring my work before turning it over to hide the images from Hayes when he walks in.

I don’t even remember sleeping last night because it felt like my brain never shut off long enough for me to slip into REM. But once we left Las Vegas, my mind kept spinning with ideas and visions for the club Hayes is involved in opening and I couldn’t help myself from letting them spin out of control.

I know I’m overstepping my boundaries by taking the initiative to come up with a design, but at this point, I figured I have nothing to lose. After listening to Abigail drone on and on about red and black décor, I was having trouble fighting the vomit leaching up my throat.

There’s nothing wrong with red and black for a club, especially in Vegas. But Midnight Cowboy is unique and therefore needs a design to communicate that. People will go to that club expecting something western but modern, and as soon as I started walking around the club while Hayes was speaking with the owner, the ideas started flowing.

Coming up with this design doesn’t mean Hayes will even give me a shot to explain my ideas, or potentially work on the club since he technically has already hired someone. But at least I can use some of my creativity that is being wasted waiting on a firm to hire me and prove that I actually know what I’m talking about—not that I care what Hayes thinks about my work at all. Nope, I don’t care in the slightest.

I obviously don’t need to work, my trust fund providing more than enough money to live off