“Sushi?”
“Is that becoming a theme?”
Now I’m looking across the table at her in some hole-in-the-wall place with impeccable service three blocks away from our building. How did we ever start talking about the time I belly-flopped into the pool in front of every girl in the ninth grade? How did she draw that out of me? I’m used to being a little cold, a little aloof, when I’m out with women. All except Elisa.
When her name comes to mind I still feel it—that jagged pain, the wrenching worry—but when Carolyn is in front of me, it’s dull, distant.
Am I using her so that it doesn’t hurt?
Or am I really falling for her?
In the end, will it matter?
“Then how do you know about the giant in Harry Potter?”
“I saw the movies.”
“You watched the movies?” She stares at me, open-mouthed.
“In Italy.”
“Oh,” she says, shaking her head slightly as if I’ve just told a joke. “You would do that.”
“Yes.”
Good save. I can tell she doesn’t want to steer the conversation in that direction.
“My turn. One time, I was at the pool with every guy worth knowing in my college classes and all of my girlfriends, and I did an incredible dive off the diving board.”
“This isn’t like my story.”
“No. Because at the end, my top came off.”
She’s so fucking graceful.
I never want her to leave.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Carolyn
It’s easy to put off the rumors during the weekend, with Ace as the sexiest distraction known to mankind, but when I wake up on Monday morning, I know I’ve waited as long as I can.
Rainflower Blue is still buzzing with it, the visitor count humming, climbing by the second. I thought I’d been fairly careful about letting it slip to certain individuals through various channels, but people must be talking because there are new requests for memberships coming in every hour—and nobody is balking at the cost.
Of course, in addition to ad revenue, I implemented a membership fee almost as soon as I started the website. There was a small group of users I allowed in for testing, and when it became clear there was a hunger for this kind of site—secure, secluded, and secret—I knew it was going to need more than password protection to keep out random gossip hunters and the press. And that was going to cost people money.
The fee for joining Rainflower Blue is a thousand dollars a month, which is part of the reason I’ve never been forthcoming about the fact that I own the site. With over a hundred regular members and more coming to the site every day…well, you get the idea.
While I do profit quite a bit from the ad revenue and kickbacks from retailers who I’ve partnered with to advertise on the site, most of the membership fees go toward cybersecurity.
I have two different firms constantly going over the forum with a fine-toothed comb, looking for any weak access points and beefing up the encryption every time there’s a new advance in technology, which seems to happen about every three days. Twice a year, I have them compete against each other to find any hidden backdoors that people might use for nefarious purposes. So far, one has been found, and ever since then the site has been locked up tighter than Fort Knox.
I call in to the boutique. I’ve been running Rainflower Blue for long enough to know that the rumors about Ace won’t settle down until new information comes out. If I can prove he didn’t do it—didn’t murder his wife….Jesus, that sounds so absurd, after the weekend we’ve had—and issue a Magnolia confirmation, then all this will die out, and I won’t feel so damn guilty about sleeping with him.
My heart flutters in my chest.
He’s not upstairs right now, at nine-thirty in the morning. He told me last night that he’s doing some work at his father’s firm—advising someone, or some department—so he had to be in the office today.
“We can’t just stay in bed all day,” he’d said, grey eyes shining with possibility.
I bit my lip. “We could stay in bed all night.”
That’s exactly what we did.
But this morning at seven, while he was in the shower, I crept out, leaving him a note on his bedside table.
Work beckons… ~C
I had every intention of going into the boutique and putting in my regular hours there, but in the elevator I took a minute to check my phone.
Even more alerts.
Even more updates.
People are clamoring for information, and I’m the trusted source.
So instead I’m at my desk, a blank browser window open in front of me, getting ready to do as much of a background check as possible on the man I’m in love with.