"Our exes just had a baby together..." Lucas says lifting his eyebrow and winking at Sadie, who removes her glasses and smiles back

"Yeah, they totally did." she coos back seductively, pushing her chest out and leaning against the kitchen counter

"You should've taken me up on the offer of a revenge baby. He would've been cuter." Lucas replies, biting on his lips as his lusty gaze travels down her beautiful face to her chest

Sadie flips the translucent dressing gown open revealing the tiny string bikini barely there.

"I hope it's not too late..." she purrs twisting around and poking her ass out, looking over her shoulder with half-shut lids at him

Lucas pulls his bathrobe off, smiling as Sadie removes her glasses and bites on her lower lip, her gaze burning through his chest and sinking fast towards his boxers

"We can make one right now." He coos, his voice deep and full of desire as he walks towards her spinning her around

"What about Funke?" she breathes as his lips attach to her neck and her eyes close from the pleasure, his hands encasing her to the kitchen counter

"I've never liked her. All she knows how to do is be short and shame her family." Lucas darkly sighs, kissing up Sadie's neck to her ear

"She is so short!" She giggles as he lifts her onto the counter, pressing his lips against her divine laugh

"Let's forget about Funke and make this revenge baby, baby." Lucas coos just as I shift off the bed with a soft scream

Someone shifts in the bed beside me, their hand falling onto my lap, causing me to fall off the bed in pure shock. I grunt, look at what I'm wearing, the shirt I'd won to my meeting yesterday and not much else, my heart racing in my chest. Was I drunk? Had I cheated on Lucas? Had I slept with Arun Saleh?

Wait...had I slept with Arun Saleh?

I look around the room as discreetly as I can, recognizing it as my room in Boyd's house. I was desperately trying to remember last night. There was something odd about the beautiful mansion in the hills, it was as if time froze when I was in there. It was almost impossible to tell what hour of the day it was and it felt like suddenly the night fell. Hanifa Nin didn't seem to need much sleep and I wasn't one to say no to as much money as she was throwing my way. I'd tried to stay up as long as I could discussing plans with her but my eyes kept shutting. I was tired, so tired in fact that I was imagining things, the pregnant Michi arriving on the courtyard on a flying black Pegasus to be precise.

"This isn't a bed and breakfast you know. I'll drive you home." Arun had offered, my eyes so heavy with sleep I think he'd carried me to the car

Arun had offered to drive me home from the meeting yesterday. There was no way Boyd would've let me bring someone home, right? There's no way Arun had carried me to my bed and things had gotten heated and we had given in to the attraction between us? Right? Was I drunk? I try and softly smell my breath but there's nothing there.

Who the fuck was on my bed with me?

Arun?

The hot security guy?

Hey gawd please, I will never speak ill of ghanaian jollof if you rescue me from this situation! I hold back tears just as a familiar brown gaze peeks over the edge of the bed at me.

"Are you OK mogradh?" The familiar deep voice of the sleepy handsome earl rings through the room as I realize I'm having a mental breakdown

Was this inception? Was I having a dream within a dream within a dream? Had my mind refused to comprehend the amount of money I was being offered and therefore plunged into disarray? My mum told me about a friend of hers who went from earning 7k pounds to 200k pounds a month and he quit his job after his first salary hit and disappeared never to be seen again. Is that what was happening to me? Was I too short to have good things?

"I've gone bonkers." I announce to no one in particular

Maybe it was from missing Lucas. Why else were both my dreams about him. Him cheating on me with Sadie and now him sleepily peeking over my bed at me as I lay on the floor I'd fallen onto. I'd missed his calls because meetings and was barely caught up on his frantic texts about Hervé and the baby.

"You've always been two crows short of a murder if you ask me." the obviously imaginary Lucas Rowland softly chimes, smiling down at me

Two what?

"What? Just because I'm short..." I grumble, too tired and shocked to try and understand what he was even saying

"Oh, I forgot to translate that for you. Let me see...you look proper washed." imaginary Lucas says as I realize he's shirtless

Why can I dream of him cheating on me with Sadie but can't dream of Arun in my bed? For research?

"Well if you think I'm going to fall asleep and let you and Sadie make that revenge baby..." I growl at him as angrily as I can considering how very tired I am and that my eyes were shutting again

"Come back to bed Funke, you're delirious." He coos, reaching for me

I slap his hand away tiredly, refusing to get back on the bed. I'd rather chew denim than see Lucas and Sadie make a cuter baby than Hervé and Leisel

"You haven't slept in a while?"

It really sounded like Lucas nagging me to sleep. It's amazing what the human brain can do in a dream-state. My brain was fabricating all of this Lucas but couldn't even be bothered to make me tall! My eyes shut as he shifts off the bed, the soft sound of his footstep somewhere in the background as I struggle to open my eyes.

"No one in that house ever gets tired except for me. I'm so sleep deprived I think I'm seeing things." I mumble as the scent, feel and heat of Lucas' skin wraps around me

I was being lifted into his arms, probably so he can make space for the baby-making him and Sadie had scheduled.

"I may be short but I'll do a girl badly." I mumble the warning at him as my head falls onto a pillow

I was being hugged by imaginary Lucas and it felt really good

"I've even missed your grumpy sleep talking." someone whispers in the distance as the darkness and warmth cover me

Morning was hectic. I woke up to a text alerting me that the hot security guard was here to pick me up for today's series of meetings. I didn't know his name or the sound of his voice, only the text he sent each morning to let me know he was here. I rushed through my routine like a demon, in record time too and was just fighting my hair into a bun while trying to eat some grapes hands free when the man watching me from the pool caught my eye.

Sitting by the window in nothing but swim trunks with a notebook in his hand is Lucas Rowland. My eyes clearly weren't working so I close them and open them again and surely enough the man in swim trunks and glasses is still there. He smiles, lifting an eyebrow. Oh no. I was still trapped in the revenge baby dream!

I step back, carefully, unwilling to experience this again when Boyd walks into the kitchen.

"Surprise?" the apparition at the poolside says, sounding very much like Lucas Rowland

"She's phenomenally shit at surprises. this is gonna be hilarious." Boyd predicts,

You accidentally taze your aunty once and all of a sudden you're shit at surprises.

"You can see him?" I wonder, watching Boyd nod and confirm that he too can see and hear the ghost of sex present

"Lucas... you can see Lucas?" I probe as the man in question gets up from his seat and offers me help tying my hair,

"He got in last night minutes before you did." Boyd reveals just as someone walks in

"Shropshire...are you joining us?" Arun Saleh jovially wonders

Shropshire?

Lucas grumbles something under his breath

"I had no idea it'd be such an early start." Lucas tightly replies, revealing himself to be Shropshire

The fact that Arun had a nickname for him, had never even once accompanied hot security guy to come pick me up but had dropped me off last night and was picking me up tonight was bare suspicious.

"Well you know we never really sleep in my house." Arun shrugs not only walking towards me and Lucas in the friendliest way I've seen him treat someone that's not Michi but also taking a grape and putting it in my mouth, his eyes on Lucas the entire time

I was not having threesome fantasies right now! I swear I wasn't!

What's happening?!

"Good morning sweetheart." Arun softly says to me, almost taking my knees out with his tone as he turns his burning blue gaze to me

Sweetheart?! Me?

My mouth falls open, my cheeks heating at the pure hypnosis of his attention. Arun Saleh wasn't necessarily attracted to me, he was more like a magnet, a dense magnetic field of gentle power and dangerous sex appeal...and he had called me sweetheart.

I couldn't reply before he shoved another grape in my mouth and leaned in, my entire body clicking into place, ready, not a thought in my mind.

I am just a humble hole...

"I missed you in my bed last night. I hope Shropshire did that thing you always beg me to." He adds in that voice that made me want to obediently climb onto his lap, biting his lip as I realize I was dreaming

Right?

I was dreaming! I had to be!

Arun Saleh had made more eye contact with me today than he had in his entire lifetime, and I was starting to understand why Hanifa had told me to ignore him and not look him in the eye. It had been a useless warning, because he hadn't looked into my eyes before last night and now that he had

"That's enough, isn't it?!" Lucas growls

Arun grins