Dirty Rumor: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance(36)

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

This is as much of the truth as I can bear to give her. If I tell her everything in a rush right now, there’s no telling what might happen, and there’s a tiny part of me that questions whether she can be trusted, after all that happened today.

I want so much for it to be a meaningless phone conversation to a friend that I can’t ask the question.

I can’t.

But there’s another truth that I can tell her. This one might possibly open some door between us that will rid us of these silences.

Carolyn’s air conditioning unit kicks on, humming quietly in the background, while I struggle to settle on the best approach. Do I just blurt it out?

Jesus, I’m going to look like a f*cking idiot, no matter what I say. If it’s not perfect, after spending this long thinking about it, she’s going to think I’m a total dumbass. I have to say something, and even though Carolyn is giving me no indication that she’s in any kind of rush, I feel the moments ticking away with the beating of my heart.

Say something. Say something. Say something.

I suck in a deep breath, hoping that by the time my lungs are filled with air, I’ll be certain of the ideal thing to say to this lovely woman with her head in my lap, the woman I want to spend every waking minute with, the one I’m desperate to be sure of before I let myself go completely.

But I’m already gone. That’s the catch. I’ve already fallen so hard for her, for her kindness, for the way she wants me, that it’s too late.

She must be dying for me to say something, after that little preamble. Who wouldn’t be? But she doesn’t move, just lets me keep stroking her hair. There is not even the slightest hint of a knot now. I’ve been thorough.

“The thing is,” I say, and then I have to stop to clear my throat. “The thing is, I don’t want to spend another day without you.”

The unsaid “but” hangs in the air between us, and Carolyn opens her eyes.

She bites her lip and looks away.

Instead of joy, her face shows nothing but guilt.





Chapter 33

Carolyn





Jesus Christ, I am the worst human on the face of the earth.

Ace’s face is red—he basically just admitted to me that he loves me, or at least cares about me enough to want to spend every waking moment with me, and I— I do nothing.

I sit up from his lap and look down at my hands, trying to force a smile onto my face.

This is exactly what I wanted. He is exactly the kind of man I want to be with—strong, passionate, complex. At this point, now that we’ve gotten past the * exterior, I can see clearly that he only has one flaw…and that flaw might turn out to be nothing.

I look up into his face, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking blankly across the room, cheeks flaming.

I can’t stand it.

“Ace,” I say into the silence, and he turns to look into my face, his gray eyes dark, his forehead slightly furrowed with embarrassment. “I feel the same way.”

His expression relaxes, but he keeps his lips pressed together, hard. I waited too damn long to say anything and now this is awkward and awful.

I want to tell him how I feel—how I really feel, like my heart is going to explode when he’s not with me, how, more than anything, I want all these rumors to go away and leave us both alone forever, but if I do that….

If I do that, it’s going to mean coming clean about every aspect of my life. Including Rainflower Blue. Including the private investigator.

Now or never.

My phone buzzes in my purse, and then a ringtone kicks on.

“Shit.”

My phone is almost always on silent, so that it only vibrates, but calls from the boutique have a special ringtone so that I know not to ignore them. I leap up from the couch and hustle across to where my purse hangs on a hook near the doorway, fumbling for it and answering it at the last second.

“Hello?” I say, with just a hint of irritation in my voice. The boutique isn’t open on Sundays, so I don’t know what the problem could possibly be. I glance back into the living room. Ace is looking at me, eyebrows drawn together, and when I mouth “just a second, I’m sorry” he rubs the back of his neck and picks up his own phone.

“Carolyn? It’s—it’s Natalie.” Her voice is wavering, shaken. I’m such an * sometimes. She wouldn’t be calling me on a Sunday afternoon unless something was wrong.

“What’s up, Natalie?”

“I was coming in to the boutique to make sure we were all set up tomorrow, since—since last Monday was so busy, and—”

“Did something happen, Nat?”

“The front window is smashed!” she wails, and I can tell she’s on the verge of tears, if not already crying. “It looks like there’s some stuff missing on the inside, but I can’t tell what, and….”

“Did you call 9-1-1?”

“N—not yet. I just got here, and I—”

“I’m going to hang up, Natalie. You call 9-1-1 and tell them what happened. I’ll be there in five minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, her voice choked. I can’t leave her like that, even for five minutes.