Read Online The Billionaire's Bridal Bid by Emily McKay - Free Book Online Page A

don’t—”
    “Right. You don’t date. Well, pretend you do.”
    “Okay.” She sucked in a bracing breath. “Normal first date.”
    With the man she both loved and hated. Easy as pie.

Five
    T he rest of the date passed in blur of food she barely tasted and wine she drank more of than she probably should have. At one point Suzy came out to the table to check on them and Matt invited her to sit with them for a while. Suzy seemed blissfully unaware of the tension between them. Matt seemed…thoughtful. As if he were assessing Claire like a specimen under the microscope and hadn’t yet decided if she was going to become penicillin and save countless lives or merely make all the fruit on the counter go bad.
    Claire felt her nerves drawing tighter and tighter.
    His phone buzzed again and again. Each time he looked concerned, but he ignored it. However, it only ratcheted up her tension. By the time Suzy returned to the kitchen and the main course was whisked away, she’d had it.
    “Stop acting like we’re on a real date when we both know this is just a farce.”
    “A farce?”
    “Yes. This is just part of the Twelfth Annual Ballard Festival of Putting Claire in Her Place.”
    “The Twelfth Annual…” He rocked back in his chair, turning his hands up in a what-the-hell gesture. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Hey, you’re the genius. You figure it out.”
    He dropped the legs of his chair forward and reached across the table to grab her hand. “Has my family been giving you a hard a time about this date?”
    “No more than usual.”
    “No more than usual? ” he repeated, his tone darkly steady. “What’s that supposed to mean? Do they normally give you a hard time?”
    The gleam in his eyes was almost…protective. Of her. Startled, she jerked her hand away. “Look, your family is…” She shrugged at the difficulty she had putting it into words. “They’re your family. You know what they’re like. Being a Ballard is everything. And they really get off on reminding people that they’re the richest, most important people in town. Any chance they have to remind me that I’m just grasping white trash, they’re going to take it.”
    His face slowly darkened as she spoke. “And you think that’s what this date is about? That I’m putting you in your place?”
    She couldn’t read his expression and it unnerved her. She dropped her hand to the table and toyed with her fork. “Look, I…I don’t know what to think this is about. You waltz back into my life after all of these years…” Her emotions choked her and she broke off, struggling for the words. “You take me on this amazing date. AndI’m so obviously out of my league here. I make grilled cheese sandwiches for a living and you introduce me to a woman who’s won the James Beard award like we’re supposed to be colleagues. And there’s this elephant in the room between us that you seem determined to ignore. To ignore him and…”
    Beside him his phone started buzzing again. It shattered her nerves. She slapped her hand down on the table, rattling the fork.
    “Would you please just answer that!”
    He stared at her, scrutinizing the lines of her face like she was a mystery he was trying to figure out. “No.”
    “Yes. Answer it.” She looked away, unable to have this conversation with him now. Maybe ever. “It’s obviously important. Your phone has rung six times in the past thirty minutes.”
    “I don’t take calls from work when I’m on a date.”
    She threw up her hands in exasperation and then pressed both of her pointer fingers to her temples. “This isn’t a date!” She blew out a long, exhausted sigh. Trying to let go of her anger. Trying to see him, not as the enemy, but as just a man, a guy on a first date with a woman. Like he asked. When she spoke again, she managed to make her tone civil. Logical. “Look, it’s work. It’s obviously important and you must know it or you could have just turned your phone