“Thanks, Carolyn.” Her cheeks go pink with relief. The break-in seems to have shaken her much more than it did me, even though nobody was actually at the boutique when it happened. Discovering it must have been pretty damn unsettling.
I walk the three blocks home in the cool September air, treasuring the late afternoon sun on my face and trying to stop my heart from pounding.
This isn’t going to be a fun conversation. But when it’s over, we’ll both know exactly where we stand, and that’s what I want. I love him enough to ignore these rumors, and he loves me enough to know that my feelings for him are separate from the jobs I do.
I hope.
The doorman, Arnie, traps me into a conversation in the lobby, so I spend five minutes talking to him about the beautiful weather before I can extricate myself. I hope Ace hasn’t come home from work early for this. I just need a few minutes….
The moment Arnie sets me free, I race for the elevator, then hurry down the hallway to my door.
The moment I put the key in the lock, I know something is wrong. There’s no resistance, like there would be if the door was locked from the inside.
I take my key out and push the door open slowly. Did I forget to lock it this morning when I left for work? Did Ace—God forbid—show up early and forget to lock it behind him?
I know immediately that the second scenario has played out when I step into the entryway.
I know immediately that things are even worse.
Because Ace stands at the end of the hall leading into the living room, a large envelope in his hands.
By the look on his face, he’s seen the contents.
He knows.
He knows.
I feel my face go pale.
“Ace, I—” I want to be angry that he opened my mail, but I can’t begin to choke those kinds of accusations out. My heart beats slower, clenched in a cold fist. All I want to do is explain this to him, to take the pain away from his face. “I can explain all of this—”
“Can you?” His voice is low and sharp and angry. “Can you tell me why there’s an investigative report from someone in Italy in your apartment? Can you tell me why that would possibly be necessary?”
Every word is a slash of a knife to my gut.
“You shouldn’t have opened my mail,” I whisper, and even as I say it, I know it’s just the beginning of the disaster.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ace
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I try to keep my voice level, but it’s impossible to keep my rage out of it. “What are you, some kind of spy? Are you that fucking damaged that you need to do background checks on the men you sleep with?”
“No,” she says, stepping toward me. I hold up one hand. I don’t want her any closer.
I want her much closer. I want her in my arms, relatively innocent and hot for me and falling more in love with me every second. I want her mouth on mine, kissing me like there’s no goddamn tomorrow.
It feels like that right now, but if she comes any closer, I’m going to fracture into a million pieces.
“Then what?” I throw the envelope onto the couch, the papers spilling out.
Carolyn holds up both hands for a moment, then drops them to her sides. “I run a website.”
I raise my eyebrows. That doesn’t fucking explain anything.
“I run a website called Rainflower Blue. It’s very exclusive, and very secret, and it’s basically a closed gossip site for New York’s wealthiest people.”
My stomach turns over. Really? This is what sweet, kind, compassionate Carolyn does in her spare time? I shake my head, letting my disgust show on my face. “Let me guess. They’ve been talking about me. And my time in Italy.”
“Yes,” she says, her cheeks turning a deep red.
“Why the hell would you believe any of it?”
“Because—” She looks away, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “It’s not that I believed them, Ace. I wanted to be able to deny them so that we could move on.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s why you just asked me about it outright?”
“You didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
“No shit I didn’t want to talk about it,” I spit. “It’s my personal fucking business. The internet doesn’t need to know. You don’t even need to know.”
“I want to know,” she says softly. “I didn’t want to be—to be caught off guard by another man.”
“Right,” I say, my mouth curling into a sneer. I fucking hate this version of myself. “You probably have a reason for everything.”
She looks down at the floor, and I’m so angry I could die right here.
“You want to know what happened in Italy? Fine. I’ll tell you.” I take a deep breath and brace for the pain of what happened with Elisa. “I went over there for business, and while I was living in Rome, I met a girl. Her name was Elisa, and she was everything I wanted at the time. Fun. Carefree. Beautiful. I thought it was the real thing.” I want to actually spit on the ground at this memory. “We were together six months before she dropped the bomb.”