Banking Her (A Billionaire Bad Boys Novella)(21)

“Fucking hell. One shy of a basketball team,” Cassie commented, and Georgia’s eyebrows pulled together as if she was mentally trying to figure out if Cassie was correct. I laughed at that.

“What?” Winnie asked me. Her voice was hard, no doubt thinking I was laughing at her.

I jerked my chin toward Georgia. “Little Georgie. Working for the NFL and still no concept of sports.”

“I know about football,” Georgia muttered.

Cassie added, “Sort of,” and we all laughed.

My interest returned to Winnie quickly enough, scanning from her crossed legs all the way up to her eyes. “What happens when none of your brothers can watch her?” I found myself asking.

What the fuck, Wes? This doesn’t sound like ignoring the existence of the kid to me.

Winnie answered me, but she looked at Cassie as she did. “I have a regular nanny. But she’s also a full-time student, so my brothers fill in the holes.”

“I bet they fill lots of holes,” Cassie said to everyone’s amusement but Winnie’s.

She groaned. “Don’t you dare put that goddamn picture in my head.”

“We’ll watch her sometime,” Cassie volunteered once she stopped laughing. “We could use the practice.”

“She’s not like the sample cart at the grocery store,” I grumbled. Three very active sets of eyes swung to me again.

Shit.

But Winnie’s eyes—openly surprised and unexpectedly warm—were the only ones I could seem to see.





I stared out the window, watching the white, bubbly clouds float past as we slid through blue sky. The sun had already set over the horizon, highlighting my aerial view in hues of reds and oranges and pinks. With Georgia and Cassie running the gab show, the flight had been nothing short of entertaining, despite my mind’s incessant need to fixate on every single thing about the tall, handsome, irritatingly surly man sitting across the aisle. It felt like every two minutes or so my brain urged my eyes to chance a glance in Wes’s direction.

I’d never considered myself anything less than intelligent, but on this matter, the one that revolved around my hidden desire for Wes Lancaster, I was two more secret glances away from being a certified idiot.

He was not the kind of man a woman with a six-year-old daughter should ever want to get involved with.

But he is the kind of man you enjoy mind-numbing, wild, hot, insanely dirty sex with…

Before I let myself board that train of thought, I checked the time and realized we would be landing in Phoenix shortly. Since I knew the pilot would be calling for everyone to turn off their mobile devices in the next ten minutes, I made a quick call to Remy to see how things were going back home.

The phone rang three times before he picked up, and I glanced around the cabin to find everyone else pretty much occupied with their own devices.

“Hey, Win,” he greeted.

“I figured I’d call and see how things were going. How’s Lex?” I asked and tapped the screen to put his voice on speaker because, yeah, no one was paying attention to my boring conversation, and I was too damn lazy to hold the phone up to my ear. First world problems, right?

“She’s good, Win. I just put her to bed, and she was out before I finished reading the Mavericks’ offensive stats for their game against Phoenix last year.”

I laughed and shook my head. “I told her no football stats at bedtime.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, well, Uncle Remy didn’t tell her that, and Mom’s not home. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she knows more about football now than I do. When did she get so interested in the NFL?”

“Since I took the job with the Mavericks,” I explained. My six-year-old daughter had a tendency to fixate on things. Once she had the voracious urge to learn something new, she’d use all of her brainpower to absorb and devour anything and everything related to it.

“I’m still trying to figure out how half of Nick’s genes make up Lexi. She’s so fucking smart, Win. Are you sure she’s Nick’s daughter?” Rem asked with a teasing tone.

There was no denying my brother Remy—actually, all four of my brothers—despised Lexi’s father with a passion. But it was par for the course, considering our nasty breakup and Nick’s tendency to be MIA.

I laughed. “Unfortunately, yes. And you act like her dad is a moron. He runs the neurosurgery department at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country, Rem. That’s about as far from moron as you can get.”

“Don’t defend him.”

I sighed. “I’m not defending him.”

“Yeah, you are.” His voice had taken on a serious edge. One that was very uncalled for, but it was expected when it came to anything related to Nick Raines. “Are you guys dating again or something?”