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 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 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.

The moment the thought crosses my mind, my cheeks go dark and my heart starts to race.

Oh, my God…I’m in love with him.

Why is this hitting me so hard right now, after we spent all weekend wrapped in each other’s arms? After he made me laugh? After he started to seem like a different version of himself, not nearly so defensive? I can’t imagine this version of Ace dismissing me the morning after like some prickly asshole.

I put a hand to my chest.

I can’t help how I feel. I can’t stop it, even though I know it grew out of an instant obsession with his body. Now that I’ve spent a solid three days with him, getting to know him, I can feel our rightness for one another thrumming underneath my skin.

My hands tremble above the keyboard, a cold flush of fear trickling down my spine.

What if I find out something about him that I don’t like during this search?

What if I find out that he is a cold-blooded murderer?

Would it be worse to find out that he was a passionate murderer, one who killed in a jealous rage?

Is that what happened to his wife?

Who was she?

“Stop it, Carolyn.” I give myself the command firmly, in a tone that broaches no argument.

First things first: I need to confirm that he was in Italy. There’s no point in getting ahead of myself with this. If there’s anything I’ve learned from owning a website like Rainflower Blue, it’s that most rumors have some element of falsehood. This one, for all I know, could be totally untrue.

I try a few cursory searches, but they reveal nothing but press releases from his company, which apparently he started with the help of his father when he gained access to his trust fund. From what I can tell, he doesn’t run the day-to-day operations, sits on the Board of Directors, so there’s not much to run down there.

Finally, I come across the first solid piece of evidence that Ace was, in fact, in Italy, and when I see it, my heart drops into my stomach.

It’s a photograph of him, his arm wrapped around a petite blonde woman—even behind her dark glasses, she’s stunning—in front of the Colosseum. It’s from an odd Italian paper that seems to have been digitized, and lists him as “American tourist Ace K and his wife.”

So he was in Italy—at least he was eight months ago when the photograph was taken.

I close the monitor and stand up, running my hands through my hair. I feel giddy, anxious, like I need a walk. I’ll go get a bagel from the deli down the street.

And even though my heart pounds—the chase is on, and I’m going to get some information about this, even if I don’t like it—I can’t stop myself from smiling.

I love Ace Kingsley.

I do.