Dirty Rumor: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance(35)

What am I getting out of all of this, anyway? A lifetime obsession with rumors? The secret satisfaction of knowing that I’m the queen of New York City’s wealthiest gossips?

If Ace were really a murderer, why would the Italian officials have let him return to the United States?

What’s any of this worth, if I lose him in the process?

I open my eyes for a moment and see that he’s pressed his lips together, and my heart plummets to my toes. I close my eyes again. Is he preparing to tell me something that I’m definitely not going to like?

Is this a repeat of that first night we spent together, only with higher stakes?

“Is something on your mind?” I keep my voice as gentle as possible, not daring to ask about anything specific.

“Yes.”

There’s another silence that lasts so long that the only reason I know he’s still in the room is that I’m literally on top of him, and he never stops stroking my hair. My body melts, but my mind is still tense, waiting, bracing for impact.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

Maybe if I let him off the hook, he’ll feel like he can talk to me. Maybe he’ll tell me what happened before he came back to New York City, and everyone can just move on. If he did that, then I could be certain I wasn’t being set up for another hard fall, and I’d tell him right then that I love him, that I’m in love with him, and that I have to see where this goes.

“I don’t know if I can find the right words.”

That sends my heart racing, thudding against my rib cage, because his tone is so neutral.

The next words out of his mouth could be about anything, and all I can do is lay here and wait, even if I want to whip my head up and look him in the eye and demand that he tell me everything, right now….

Ace takes a deep breath.





Chapter 32

Ace





I am desperate to know what the numbers on Carolyn’s phone mean. I am desperate to know who she was talking to. I am desperate to know if this is all a horrible waste of time.

All my questions stick in my throat.

“Hey,” she says from the doorway, and the sound of her half-asleep voice guts me.

How could this sweet, perfect creature be hiding anything from me?

How could she not be?

When she asks me if I’m okay—I don’t know why she does, but something in my expression must give me away—I lie to her.

I want to tell her that no, there are things on my mind I don’t want to ask her about, but I can’t force the words from my mouth.

She disappears back into the bedroom and comes out a minute later wearing a delicate pink robe, knotting the belt around her waist. I want to unknot the belt and take her back into the bedroom, and I can see by the way she’s biting her lip that she’d be into it, but I don’t get up from the couch.

Carolyn comes around and sits next to me, then leans delicately over so that her head is resting in my lap.

It seems like the most natural thing in the world to run my fingers through her hair, over and over, working out the knots from her sleep.

Her eyes search my face, but I keep mine purposely unfocused. If I look at her now, I’ll lose myself entirely.

She closes her eyes.

I want to say, I heard you. I didn’t mean to, but I heard you through the door, and I want you to tell me who you were talking to. But even in my head, the words sound too overbearing, even for me.

“You’re gorgeous,” I say.

“You’re gorgeous,” she murmurs, keeping her eyes closed, but I feel her back arch a little bit like she’s replaying me f*cking her not long ago. Her lips turn down into a little frown, and my mouth goes dry. I want to know what’s happening in her mind so badly that it hurts.

Her eyelids flutter, and I look away from her face. When I look back down, they’re closed again.

“Is something on your mind?”

Her tone is so soft it’s almost pleading. It’s the most gentle invitation possible for me to talk to her.

All the things I could say rush through my mind in a cacophony of words, senseless and jumbled. You need to tell me what you’re up to. Tell me what’s on your mind. Don’t hide things from me because I don’t think I can take it again. Not one more time in this life or any other. Just tell me, tell me, tell me.

Instead, I say, “Yes.”

Then there’s a thickness in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow away. Elisa swims up in my memory, the way her face looked before she died, and my mind rears back away from it.

I can’t say anything.

I can’t break the silence, which grows heavier by the moment. Carolyn’s face remains completely neutral—I haven’t stopped running my fingers through her hair, and at this point I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to—and her muscles are relaxed against me with a hint of tension humming underneath.

She parts her lips, and I want to lean down and kiss her, but I don’t.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

My heart twists. Her voice is so sincere, so soothing, that for once I don’t feel like I’m being baited into revealing something in spite of myself. Her shoulders tense a little bit, waiting for my reply.

I can’t leave her hanging indefinitely.