Crazy for Loving You A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy - Pippa Grant Page 0,73
of running an empire, but I know that anytime I walk into her office to trade off Remy, she’s on the phone or on her computer. She makes phone calls to Japan in the middle of the night—yeah, he was up at three, but I was up anyway to talk to Tokyo—and the days she’s gone to her office, she’s taken night duty before and after since she’s gone from seven AM to nine PM.
Daisy’s no lazy slouch.
She works hard.
And she’s turning a sly grin my way. “Sort of like how you wouldn’t be nearly as hot without the Jaeger name behind you. Be honest. How many women mistake you for Tyler and just drop their panties right there?”
And there’s the distraction. “Is your grandmother crashing the visit with the social worker next week?”
“She’ll try. I suspect Alessandro will be doing a periodic security exercise that involves locking the house down about the time we get the call that she’s at the Bluewater gate though.”
“Or you could tell her to stay the fuck away.”
“I don’t like my life to be miserable, and I’d really like to not be disinherited. Party girl isn’t an official title anywhere else in the world.”
I shake my head and screw the lid onto the peanut butter jar. Family’s complicated. Mine are all relatively normal—yeah, Mom goes on tour and uses all of us as fodder for her stand-up routine, and my sisters all have their quirks, and Tyler’s a special case all by himself—but none of us are so intimidated by any of the rest of us that we avoid conflict at all costs.
Except Daisy doesn’t avoid conflict with her grandmother.
Not all the time.
Just selectively.
“You completely avoided my question about why you date single mothers,” she says through a mouthful of peanut butter and chip sandwich.
“Don’t think so.”
“You deflected.”
“Says the master deflector.”
“Am I technically a single mother now?”
“You’re complicated.”
She snort-laughs, and my heart stops for a half a second. We don’t need choking part two tonight.
Or ever.
“That,” she tells me after she steals another drink of my root beer, “was the most accurate thing you’ve ever said. High five, big guy. Nailed it.”
I oblige the high five.
And twenty minutes later, when she yawns and stretches, I reluctantly shoo her out of the kitchen and take over Remy duties.
She’s a mess. Nothing at all like the women I’m usually attracted to. But every little nuance I discover in her personality makes me want to know more.
And I can say as friends all I want, but I’ve never been good at lying to myself.
Twenty-Eight
Daisy
Unlike my highly organized vagillionaire friends, most mornings, I hit the snooze button until I can’t any longer, which inevitably results in me rushing through a shower, ignoring the clothes Tiana laid out for me the night before and grabbing something brighter or darker or shorter or longer depending on my mood. I spend thirty minutes too long on hair and makeup, which means Alessandro, Tiana, and I roll through Carbs ’n Coffee on our way to the office for me to scarf down fried deliciousness and caffeine before I wreak havoc on the world.
At least, ideally, that would be my usual morning.
There’s a lot less havoc-wreaking and a lot more fire-extinguishing—of the metaphorical variety—now that I’m a responsible businessperson. I haven’t actually wreaked regular havoc in years, and now, as Remy’s primary caretaker, I’m even less inclined to leap up and light the world on fire.
The good kind of fire, naturally.
But this morning, I get up before my alarm goes off, because there’s a ball of anxiety that’s making sleep impossible. I need to be on my A-game for the social worker—especially since the Rodericks are now claiming I keep rabid animals on-site and that Remy’s in immediate danger—so I surf the internet for random Go Fund Mes to donate a few million dollars to, then treat myself to some pampering before I have to be on for the day.
I’m stretched out in my zero-gravity water chamber in the home spa off my bedroom, cucumbers on my aching eyes, eucalyptus candles burning, audiobook playing softly. Technically, I should be meditating or soaking up the peace and tranquility of being in a sensory deprivation chamber, but I’m actually hanging on to every word of Fake Royal Bride, this awesome romantic comedy written by the coffee author from Drag Queen Brunch. I snagged the audiobook as soon as I overheard that it was available with Teddy Hamilton narrating, because I clearly have a problem.