Bad Swipe Bad Swipe (Billionaire's Club #12) - Elise Faber Page 0,14

start last. Which meant beach day would probably be delayed, and . . . Fred would unhappy.

Which meant she would be unhappy.

Because the little—big—fuzz bucket would probably take his unhappiness out on her sock drawer.

And she wasn’t willing to give up a single pair of them.

So she had cut herself off, was eating her homemade tortillas like a champ, and going to make sure her buzz trickled away so she could drive safely home to her little Freddy-bear.

Grinning to herself, she scooped up an obscene amount of salsa onto a chip and crammed it into her mouth. Then another tortilla. Then more peppers and onions and steak and salsa and chips until she felt like she was bursting from all the food. Only then did she look up and see the entire table staring at her. “What?” she asked, and so yeah, maybe it was muffled from the remnants of a chip in her mouth.

Tanner’s brows lifted, his gaze turning to Kelsey. “Should I check and see if the kitchen has any food left?”

Stef glared.

Kels popped him on the shoulder. “Rude much?”

“The girl just hoovered everything on the table,” he said. “I don’t think that I’m rude, so much as impressed. Where does she put it all?”

Now Stef rolled her eyes. “It’s her fault,” she mumbled after chewing and swallowing, pointing at Heidi. “She works me to the bone, night and day.”

Heidi gasped. “How dare you?”

“How dare I?” Stef teased. “I’m not the one who ate my lunch.”

Narrowed eyes, even as the table broke out into laughter mixed with admonishments. “That was one time,” Heidi said. “And it was an accident.”

Stef smirked. “An accident that you ate the whole thing?”

Heidi blushed.

“I’m just saying, I’m not the only one who can eat.” She pointed at the table, where the rest of them had gone to town on their own plates. “And also, I like salsa too much to give a shit about the fact that I’m carrying a taco baby around.”

Click.

She blinked at the flash, the sound of Tanner taking a photograph.

“Sorry,” Tanner said, setting his camera on the table. “You’re beautiful.”

It wasn’t a come-on, or weird—or not that much anyway. Tanner was a photographer. World-famous, supremely talented. People paid boatloads of money to get him to take their picture.

But he took a lot of photos of everyone when they were all together, and they were fabulous.

Including, she saw when she gestured for the camera and he handed it over, glancing at the screen on the back, the one he’d just taken of her.

If Stef hadn’t been looking at herself, she would have agreed the woman in the photograph was beautiful. Fierce eyes, a flush on her cheeks, hair shining from the lights overhead. There was fire in her, even though she’d been yelling about food and taco babies.

It was . . . nice to see the fire again.

“Okay?” Tanner asked, squatting next to her and sliding the camera from her hands. He glanced at her face and winced. “Never mind, I’ll delete it.”

“No,” she said, covering his fingers with her own. “It’s . . . will you send it to me?”

His face gentled. “Of course.” A beat. “And for the record, I wasn’t trying to make fun of you, I was truly impressed.” A grin. “From one Hoover to the next.”

Laughing, she nudged his shoulder. “Speaking of which, you’d better go eat up before I take care of business for you.”

A grin. “Noted.”

She glanced up, saw Kels smiling apologetically, but Stef just shook her head, letting her friend know she was in on the joke and happy with the picture, even if it felt a bit like Tanner was their own paparazzo.

Still, it was nice to have the moments documented.

She didn’t have many pictures of herself.

She wasn’t really into selfies, and Jeremy certainly hadn’t taken many of her, and her parents . . . well, sometimes things slipped through the cracks when a family was just trying to survive.

Tammy nudged her arm. “You okay, bugaboo?”

Stef’s brows lifted. “Bugaboo?”

“Ignore me.” Tammy’s cheeks went a little pink. “As much as I want to not be like my mother, she still creeps in sometimes.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Stef told her. “I’ve met your mom, and she’s great.”

A sigh. “She is great,” Tammy agreed, sadness flickering behind her pale brown eyes. “But try living in the shadow of all that greatness.”

Stef knew something about shadows, something she’d shared the barest of details with her friends. Something that Tammy obviously remembered because she reached