The Billionaire’s Girlfriend Bet - Leslie North Page 0,9
know I petted a lizard today?”
Blake arched a brow. “Wow. I did not know that. Was it your lizard or…”
“It was the lizard who lives at my school!” Mollie gushed, her s’s lisping slightly.
He smiled warmly at her. Thirty seconds in her presence, and she’d already won Blake over. He loved kids, appreciated their energy and enthusiasm. Sometimes, he even envied them for their innocence. Everything was new and fresh to them, which was just the way Blake liked it. “I didn’t know you had a lizard who lived at your school. We never had a lizard at my school.”
“My school is the best school,” she went on. “We have lizards and gerbils and coloring and—”
“Mollie, honey, why don’t you finish getting your bag ready while I look for my shoes?” Michelle steered her daughter down the hall, inviting Blake to follow. “If I don’t keep us on track, we’ll spend the next forty-five minutes talking about all the new thing she’s learned about gerbil droppings.”
Blake snickered. “Can I help with anything?”
“Magically make my shoes appear out of thin air?”
He snapped his fingers, making a display of looking around. “Okay, they should be around that corner over there.”
The little smirk she sent him caused shivers to run up his spine. There was something so sexy about her. He couldn’t put his finger on it. But how she was dressed today certainly didn’t help matters. Finally, she was out of the standard issue polo-and-chinos uniform, instead opting for distressed skinny jeans and a flowy, wrap around black sweater that hung off one shoulder and practically begged him to slip it off and explore what lay beneath.
“I’m going to check my closet one last time,” she said with an apologetic look. “I’ll be right back.”
Blake watched her scurry back down the hallway, her footsteps thumping slightly up the staircase. Mollie reappeared a moment later, holding a transparent pink backpack that he could see was stuffed with ponies and dolls.
“Is that your bag?” he asked.
She nodded exaggeratedly. “I’m all ready.”
“Good. Glad you brought the ponies,” he said, pointing to her backpack, “because I left all mine at home.”
She giggled. “You have ponies like mine too?”
He nodded very seriously. “Yes. Several, actually. But not with me.”
Just then, a muted shout rang through the house: Michelle, shouting victory. “Ah-ha! I found them!” A moment later, her footsteps thundered down the floor. She raised her fists in victory as she entered the kitchen, black flats on her feet. “We may leave now.”
“Great. Okay, Mollie, you got all your ponies ready?”
Mollie nodded enthusiastically while Michelle watched her daughter with an amazed expression. Mollie ran to the door, and Michelle turned to him to say, “Was she talking to you while I was upstairs?”
“Yeah. We were talking about her ponies.”
“Wow. That’s great. She’s really talkative when she likes someone, but sometimes she’s wary of new people. When that happens, she can be pretty shy.”
“Yet she’s planning a performance?”
“Isn’t that just how performers work? Shy off the stage, but once they have a crowd…” Michelle laughed as they headed out the front door, where Mollie already waited on the front porch. Once Michelle locked up, they headed for his SUV. But as soon as Blake approached, he knew something was wrong. The car looked…lopsided, somehow. He rushed toward the car, immediately spotting the issue.
The front driver’s side tire had deflated. Big time.
“What the…” Blake knelt in front of the flat tire, scoping out the situation. Michelle came to his side, bending to see.
“That’s not good,” she murmured.
“What happened?” Mollie asked.
“Blake’s tire needs to be changed,” Michelle said in a soft voice to her daughter.
“Let’s pump it back up!” Mollie exclaimed. “Hey, Mr. Blake, d’you want me to go get my bike tire pump thingy? Mommy showed me how to pump up my tires last summer and I’m real good at it, I—”
“Honey, that’s a very kind offer, but your bike pump won’t work for this,” Michelle said. To Blake, she said, “Did you bring a spare?”
Disappointment crashed through him. There was nothing he loved more than arriving in style to big events. “No. This model doesn’t take spares, and the design doesn’t allow for a well large enough to carry the actual size of the tire it takes.” He swore under his breath as he spotted the culprit: a nail jutting out of the rubber. “I must have caught a nail on the road somewhere.”
“Dang it,” Michelle said, just as a waft of her perfume reached him. He sat