Dirty Rogue: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance(34)
Heat screams across my cheeks whenever I think about it.
There’s nothing holding me back in Colorado, no reason I should ever have to return there, and everything is beginning here in New York City.
It’s enough to make any girl giddy, but I resolve to play it cool. It was late at night, when we said those things to each other, and nearly asleep. People say things late at night. You can’t always hold them to it the next morning.
A smile plays across my face. Those words had the ring of truth, though. So even if we don’t speak them again for a while, I know they’re waiting in the wings.
I’m sure they are.
I leave the office that night still floating on cloud nine and spend the ride home texting Christian flirty messages. He’s at some kind of event with his father on behalf of Pierce Industries, and I have plans with Carolyn.
She’s waiting when I get back to the apartment.
“Hey!” she says from the kitchen. Something smells wonderful.
“Hey! Are you cooking?”
“Baking,” she answers, laughing. “Your house burning down calls for cake.”
“You can’t go wrong with cake,” I say, and go to open a bottle of wine.
Over takeout and chocolate cake, Carolyn considers me. “You’re in an awfully good mood for someone whose house was destroyed. Weren’t you trying to sell it?”
I groan a little. “It was an unbelievable pain in the ass, Car. It would have been nice to have the money, but to not have to think about it…it’s priceless.”
“Is that all that’s going on with you? You’re practically glowing.”
It’s hard to get anything past Carolyn.
“Christian and I…might be taking things to the next level.”
“Might be?” she says, her voice rising in pitch.
I can’t help but laugh. I love that about her. “Things got a little weird for a couple of weeks, but he came over last night…”
“Wait. Christian was here, and neither of you told me?”
“It was late.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes. “You little minx.”
My abs are sore from laughing, but the words out of Carolyn’s mouth send me into another fit of giggles. “Yeah…what do you want from me?” I take a sip of wine and smile at her. “I think we’re going to date.”
Concern crosses her face. “What about your job?”
“It’ll have to be secret.”
“That won’t be easy. Christian’s pretty high-profile.”
“It doesn’t have to be secret forever.”
“Well,” she says, brightening, “as long as you’re okay with it. You’re not afraid to get fired?”
“Oh, I’m totally afraid to get fired.” I feel myself turn serious. “But Car—I have to see where this goes. I have to. I know he’s a womanizer and a playboy, but there’s something…there’s something else there. I can’t give up the chance to find out what it is, where it may lead. You know?”
“I know,” my roommate says, her eyes sparkling. “I’ve never heard of him going to a woman’s place before,” she comments, a note of wonder in her voice. “You could really be the one.”
Chapter 26
Christian
I feel so f*cking good as I’m tiptoeing out of Carolyn’s apartment in the early hours of Thursday morning that I almost forget that this thing with Quinn—this mind-blowing, heart-stopping thing with Quinn—is bound to crash and burn. We’re speeding toward the inevitable fallout the moment I tell her the truth about what happened that fateful night.
I walk a block and a half before Louis pulls up to the curb. I didn’t give him much advance warning, but the guy’s a f*cking professional. He doesn’t so much as rub—or roll—his eyes.
I collapse into the back seat and let everything wash over me.
It felt so damned perfect to lie there with Quinn resting gently against my chest, my arms wrapped around her lithe body. In that moment, there was nothing standing between us. She was mine to protect, although I’m learning every day that she doesn’t need protection. I’ve never met a woman who can bounce back like she can.
And she was willing to jump in with both feet, despite the way things have been going the past couple of weeks.
The truth is that I just needed time to make the shift.
Nobody’s going to think anything of it.
I’ve taken a few weeks off from my nightly trips to the Swan, only going there once or twice every week, and never with a date. At least, not one that I take home at the end of the night. Sooner or later someone’s going to ask what happened to the Christian Pierce who gleefully adds notches to his belt without a second thought. I’ve long since lost count of the women who have sat by my side at the Swan for three dates and then never seen there again.
At least this way, it won’t be a sudden shock. At least this way, when word gets out that I’m seeing someone—and it will get out—they’ll look back and see that I wasn’t quite so active at the Club, and they’ll chalk it up to a new obsession, maybe even real love.
Real love.
That’s what I confessed to Quinn last night, consequences be damned, and now, as Louis steers the car through the pre-dawn gray of the morning, I don’t regret a word of it. Instead, my heart pounds with a kind of electric thrill. It’s the kind you only feel when you stumble upon something so true, so deep, that to lie about it would be unthinkable.