I reach for Ace, the gentle afternoon light filtering in through my eyelids, but he’s not there. I still feel half-drunk from what happened—there’s no other way to describe it—but the cool, empty sheets put a damper on the warm buzz that I felt when I woke up.

Where is he?

I push myself up onto my elbows and peer over the foot of the bed. I can see one of the sleeves of his shirt from here, which means he hasn’t gone home, unless he left in a hurry and didn’t think about clothing.

He’s good.

I run a hand through my hair. I can feel how messed up it is, but I doubt he’ll care.

I want him to get back in bed with me.

My heart picks up the pace a little, but I dismiss the tingling in my fingers. Why should I be nervous about the phone call I made before Ace showed up? If he had a problem with it, he’d have said something. There’s no way he would have come in and pressed me up against the wall if he suspected that I’d hired a private investigator in Italy seconds before he knocked on the door.

There’s no way.

Right?

My shoulders start to tense up, but the memory of Ace’s hands on my back, on my ass, on the rest of my body, sends a flood of calm through me. It ends with a spark of need. I want more of him, and I want more of him right now.

But first I swing my legs over the side of the bed and move to the bathroom, where I take a few seconds to brush my teeth and corral my hair into something slightly more presentable. My face is pink from being pressed against the pillow.

There’s no sound from my bedroom, so I go to the doorway.

Ace is on the couch in the living room, looking down at his phone.

“Hey,” I say, and my voice is low, still fighting off the deep sleep.

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. “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 being close to him sends a knife-like twist of guilt through my gut.

What am I getting out of all of this? 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 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 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 move on. If he did that, then I could be certain I wasn’t being set up for another hard fall. I’d tell him right then that I love him, that I’m in love with him, and I want 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.