He looks at me, and his eyes narrow for a split second, and then go wide. I’m still naked, and he can’t stop his gaze from traveling down the length of my body.
“Hey,” he says into the silence. His eyes are bright with what looks like lust, but there’s something else happening in his expression that I can’t quite place.
“Are you okay?” He looks more than fine to me, with all of his muscles on display, but I can’t help myself.
“Yeah,” he says, glancing back down at his phone before he turns off the screen. “Yeah, just checking in on some business stuff.”
Something doesn’t ring true about what he’s saying, and I open my mouth to say so, but then close it again.
Who am I to accuse him of lying? I’m the one who’s looking into his past instead of asking him directly.
Of course, I’ve tried that, but he didn’t have anything to say.
I go back into the bedroom and get a pink silk robe from its place on my bathroom door, tying it around my waist on the way back out to the couch. Then I take the place next to Ace, leaning down so that my head is in his lap.
His hand goes to my hair, running his fingers through it, though his eyes don’t meet mine. There’s a little wrinkle in his forehead that tells me something is on his mind, but I doubt pressing him is going to get me anywhere.
I close my eyes and lose myself in his touch.
“You’re gorgeous,” he says softly.
“You’re gorgeous.” It’s the absolute truth. He is the most gorgeous man I have ever seen in my life, and just being close to him sends a knife-like twist of guilt through my gut.
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 Thirty-Two
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.