Free TheBillionairesPilot by Suzanne Graham

last night. She’d fallen asleep with relative ease
and hadn’t suffered any night terrors. Thank heavens. But now, sitting so close
to Evan with Esmé and Xavier watching, Cassie was far from feeling at ease.
    Surrealistic feelings overwhelmed her as
she fought the sensation that she’d stepped into a fairytale. Evan had been
most charming to her through breakfast with Xavier and Esmé—pulling out
her chair, engaging her in the conversation, and bestowing compliments just
like a fairy prince…or a real life Dom.
    She had to continue to remind herself
this was make-believe, nor was she in a scene. This was all pretend. Though the
sexual heat between her and Evan felt real enough, the rest was playacting.
They were not actually a couple, nor would they ever be. The helicopter pilot
and the billionaire never ended up together in real life.
    “Do you see one you like, darling?” Evan
used one of the terms of endearment he’d adopted for her since they’d been
together, and he sounded so convincing when he said it.
    “Each one is amazing,” she whispered in
awe over the unimaginably expensive display.
    “Yes, my jeweler has a remarkable eye,”
Esmé said. “I’m pleased you like them.”
    Cassie looked up at her hostess. “Like
them? I love all of them.”
    “That’s typical of a woman.” Xavier
chuckled. “Isn’t it, Evan? They get all starry-eyed and can’t make a decision
when presented with too many choices.”
    “I’m sorry, dear,” Evan said to Cassie,
“but you’ll have to be satisfied with only one engagement ring.”
    The warmth of his body pressed against
her side kept her nerves tingling, and she suspected from the glances he’d been
sending her all morning that he felt it too. That earthquake-proof wall she’d constructed
was getting a hell of a shaking, but she was determined not to be a notch on
another man’s bedpost, especially her boss’s, because he certainly couldn’t be
interested in pursuing a real relationship with his pilot, a former soldier at
that. Men of his station might have a fling with women like her, as Trent had,
but they always settled down and got serious with one of their own kind—a
society woman. Something Cassie had learned the hard way.
    “Perhaps you could help her decide,
Evan?” Esmé prompted.
    “Yes, you know women,” Xavier said.
“Sometimes they need a firm hand to guide them in the right direction.”
    Cassie looked up sharply at Xavier’s
second chauvinistic comment. Depending on the setting, his comment could have
been interpreted as coming from a Dom, but from what she’d observed so far, she
suspected he was simply a sexist asshole. She bit her lip to restrain herself
from responding. She would do nothing to jeopardize Evan’s business deal with
this man. Therefore, in order to make mental peace with her host, she decided
to chalk it up to the cultural differences of his Spanish heritage.
    As Evan removed the tray from her lap, he
sent her a covert wink, as if he were letting her know he followed her
thoughts. After setting the tray on the coffee table in front of them, he
reached in with his big fingers and deftly plucked up a marquise diamond with
pear-shaped side stones. “Let’s see if this one suits you.”
    Cassie didn’t know much about carats and
such, but to her eye it looked like the biggest rock on the tray.
    Before she could respond, Evan got down
on one knee and lifted her left hand. Slipping the ring onto her finger, he
held her gaze with his intense brown eyes and said, “Cassie, my love, will you
marry me?”
    Her heart thumped wildly in her chest and
her throat tightened as the moment took her breath away. Then she berated the
little girl in her who wanted to believe her prince had come, as she shied away
from the force of his look. Glancing down at her finger, she lost herself in
the fire within the stone as it reflected the sunlight shining in from the wall
of windows behind her. When she tilted her hand, the side