The Billionaire’s Handler Read Online Free PDF

Maguire being Maguire, eventually had to get a pen, a legal pad, to make notes and comments, and eventually he started muttering to himself. Probably because he still thought she couldn’t hear.
    â€œLobster. Crab. Lobster. Scallops. Hmm. I’m sensing a common theme on your food list. Salmon from Alaska, only really from Alaska. Fresh sweet corn straight from a farmer’s field. Blueberries right off a bush…for Pete’s sake. Has no one ever fed you, girl…?”
    He jotted some more scribbles on his legal pad. The last she’d peeked—less than a minute ago—no one had a prayer of reading his writing, including him.
    â€œâ€¦Grape leaves. Stuffed, you know, the way the real Greeks do it. Actually, I don’t know, tiger, but I get it that you want authentic. If you’re going to be this easy to please, though, we’re not going to have any fun. This isn’t even challenging. And yeah, I know you can’t hear me. But it’s interesting, having a one-way conversation with a woman who can’t talk back. Kind of every guy’s favorite fantasy…well. Favorite fantasy separate from sex, of course…”
    She could hear. Seeing Tommy’s photo had joltedsomething that morning…but not consistently. Her hearing, the volume of it, had gone in and out for hours now. It was only since dinner that she’d been able to hear anything consistently.
    Once he’d hurled himself on the couch with her lists and started muttering, though, she’d heard every word.
    She could have confessed that her hearing was back. She intended to come clean, eventually. Even little lies had always bugged her. But since she was distinctly at the most vulnerable disadvantage in this twosome, Carolina figured it was fair to find out what she could—any way she could. And there was an extraordinarily terrific side benefit to her deceit.
    His voice.
    Hearing the sound of his voice was like a powerful, free turn-on pill, with no risk and no side effects—beyond a tickle of her hormones. The pitch was low, not a bass, but definitely a low tenor, with a roll and timbre to his accent that put a shiver down her spine now and then. Sexy. He was just so altogether hopelessly, helplessly sexy. Those lethally blue eyes. Those all-guy bones of his, the overall look of him, the way he thought, the way he moved. It all came through in his voice. I am man, hear me roar.
    It was that kind of voice. A baby-you’re-gonna-love-how-I-kiss voice. A you-can’t-imagine-how-much-trouble-I-can-get-you-into kind of voice.
    It was mighty stupid, she knew, to travel even for a minute down that silly road. As sporadically as her hearing was returning, her memory seemed to be resurfacing the same way. Everything wasn’t clear. But she’d recalled enough to make her want to curl up in a closet again, go back to where she’d become so agitated she couldn’t keep food down, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, couldn’t escape. Anywhere.
    So maybe it was irresponsible and downright dumb to dwell on Maguire’s voice…but temporarily, it felt like self-preservation. Just listening to him allowed her to push her real life away for a little longer. It was hard to feel too guilty. Nothing was waiting for her in real life but more unsolvable problems and anxiety.
    â€œOkay,” Maguire mumbled. “Moving away from the food list and onto the major life wishes list. And right off the bat, cookie, I can see this list has more potential to be challenging…” He was still obviously talking to himself. He hadn’t lifted his head from the legal pad. “You want to have dinner in a tree house. A real tree house. Hmm. You want fifteen pairs of Italian shoes. No surprise there—the shopping gene was bound to surface sooner or later. You want to sleep in a castle. A real castle. You’d like a weekend at a spa. Now you’re talking. You want to